Barber Pursues Dancing, Sports at a Fast Clip

By her smooth strides, you can tell Jacquie Watson is a dancer, but it’s hard to imagine she was and still is a jock.

Or that she was a tomboy.

Or that she makes her living as a mustache and beard stylist.

“I was always different,” said the divorced Anaheim woman, who has a daughter, 22. “I was ticked in high school because I couldn’t play against the guys. Sports was not really ‘in’ for women in those days.”

She said she played basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball and tennis. And she skied on both water and snow.

“I played women’s Triple A softball when I was in high school,” she said. “I guess I was a pro except I never got any money for playing. I once thought I might do it for a living.”

She played first base.

Playing sports was easy for her.

“It just came naturally to me and I enjoyed competition,” she said. “I found it was a thrill being better than someone else and being a winner most of the time.”

Watson keeps in shape these days by dancing three nights a week and she recently won a dance contest in the swing division. She also competes in the two-step, tango and waltz.

“I still water and snow ski and that helps me stay right,” said Watson, who became a barber because she felt cosmetology schools didn’t offer a good course in haircutting.

She owns Mustache Junction in Anaheim and has a staff of five barbers, all women.

“I feel that women are trained right from the beginning to take care of hair and to wear their hair in the best style for them,” said Watson, who has been barbering and styling mustaches and beards for 13 years.

That’s why women become better barbers, she reasons.

“Women seem to know how a man wants his hair cut,” she said, and notes that men don’t complain as much as women and they tip better. “Men want to please women and have faith that our women know how other women like to have a man look.”

Although her business is flourishing, Watson feels that it may be time for her to find a new career.

“Actually it’s past time for me to move on to another trade,” she said. “I’m thinking about computers. I want to know how to use them in business.”

Before barbering, Watson worked at a phone company, took shorthand classes to become a secretary, got married, had a daughter and got divorced.

“I needed a profession and picked barbering,” she said. Her original goal was to be a kindergarten teacher. “That didn’t work out,” she said.

For the time being, Watson plans to continue hair, mustache and beard styling and cutting.

“There are very few places that will do a beard or mustache’s shape,” Watson said, “because most hair salon barbers don’t know how.”

Beards and mustaches are popular these days, said Watson, who notes that men sometimes take better care of them than their hair or clothes.

She said that the style for hair today is longer in the back and shorter in the front and top. But she prefers a man with short hair all over and a flattop.

“I guess I’m just old-fashioned,” she said.

John Reeves celebrated his 70th birthday Tuesday by playing two games of basketball at the Santa Ana YMCA where he plays ball three nights a week with 15 other players.

They surprised the Diamond Bar resident with with a chocolate birthday cake and a basketball signed by all the regulars.

“One of the guys said people make me out to be a real good guy,” Reeves said. “But he told me I was the worst fouler on the floor. Can you imagine that?”

Acknowledgments--Anaheim resident Elaine Manning was named “Outstanding Director of Volunteer Services” by Directors of Volunteers in Agencies (DOVIA). Manning, volunteer director of the Speech and Language Development Center in Buena Park, was selected over 75 nominees.