Now Hiring: A Hairdresser for an Antarctic Research Station

If you can cut a bob or a buzz a head and don't mind wearing a parka while you wield your scissors, the U.S. Antarctic Program has just the job for you. The government organization, which runs scientific research and support services on the southernmost continent, is looking for an official hairdresser.

The successful applicant will be responsible for providing haircuts to all personnel at McMurdo Station, the largest of the three American research bases in Antarctica. (It hosts about 1000 scientists and staff in the high season.) The stylist would serve during the austral summer—from November through March—when the sun never sets and temperatures may reach a high of 46°F.

Gana-A'Yoo, an Anchorage, Alaska-based staffing company, is handling the hiring process. Qualified candidates will be expected to excel in salon management, including scheduling appointments, monitoring supplies, laundering towels and robes, sweeping the floors, and abiding by sanitation rules. Applicants should be licensed cosmetologists with on-the-job experience totaling two years.

"Experience with military haircuts is preferred," the job posting advises.

McMurdo personnel are unusually lucky to get a trained stylist on duty—other researchers working on the continent have to deal with much less experienced hands. At the Australian Antarctic Division's bases, for instance, random workers with minimal snipping skills volunteer for the job. At its Mawson Station, a volunteer named Peter Cubit admitted in a blog post that he was a little nervous, "but as everybody knows, there's only a week between a good or bad haircut." At the Davis Station, a French chef named Sebastian stepped into the role—and, because Antarctica is a mostly cashless society, he accepted payments of two beers for a men's trim and a glass of red wine for a women's cut.

Haircuts, professional or otherwise, are a long tradition in Antarctica—in 1992, archaeologists investigating Robert Falcon Scott's hut at Cape Evans discovered a plate-glass photographic negative of a man getting a haircut, believed to have been taken during Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.