Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Life Lesson: Cutting Your Own Hair

A few weeks ago, an incident took place that was oddly similar to one that happened to me as a pre-teen girl. I saw a woman with the most gorgeous haircut and decided that, rather than making an appointment with a trained professional (as most sane people would do), I was going to cut my own hair. I am aware that there are many folks out there who do this without issue, and being a creative type, I thought there was little harm I could do to myself by taking scissors to my own locks. I was wrong.
Fortunately, I kept them a little long, but they were quite uneven
Fortunately, I only cut a bang portion of my hair, rather than my entire head. I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking, but I do know that I was pretty ill that day, so I am convinced that the fever talked me into this momentary lapse in judgement.
They were a bit better if I tried to do something with them, I suppose
I knew one thing was certain:  I would be on the receiving end of a lecture at my next hair appointment. I spent several days prior to my appointment attempting hair dos to cover this little mishap, which resulted in a lot of very tight rubberbands close to my scalp (think: I Dream of Jeannie style dos). Bobby pins were the next stop in my attempts to repair the damage, and my scarves were used as headwear on cooler days.
Swept to the side seemed to work best, but then my grey roots started showing
The worst part was that I cut such a thick chunk it was nearly impossible to hide. I took some solace in the fact that my hair grows fairly quickly, and remained hopeful that this little incident would be remedied by my appointment, and certainly prior to the upcoming show opening for my thesis in mid-April.

I'm guessing that I'm not alone in this and that there are others who have had similar situations, whether self-inflicted or at the hands of someone else? Or, perhaps I am truly the only one on the planet over the age of 13 who would even attempt this? While the pictures don't really show the devastation that actually took place, I can assure you, it was bad. When I arrived for my appointment about a week ago, I knew that I was in need of a haircut to save any semblance of appearing human for several months, so I came prepared for such an event.
Horribly fuzzy photos of the new hair
Sure enough, a haircut was recommended as the remedy for the self-inflicted scissoring of my hair, and while the pictures aren't great (my apologies), I figured I could prove that, in the end, it isn't so bad. I lost about a foot of hair (which in some ways was a relief), but learned a valuable lesson in the process: scissors should be left to the professionals, and certainly not used when one is ill.

5 comments:

  1. I once let my mom and her hairdresser talk me into getting a perm. I was 14. The nice lady showed me a photo of a male model with wavy hair (mine's as straight as a board) and I couldn't say no. Well, my hair was as far from wavy as it could be. It had been closer to the photo before she touched it. My head ended up covered in thousands of small, tight curls. She was shocked that I didn't like it.

    The bad news was it was a school night. And my mom wouldn't let me stay home the next day.

    These days I am perfectly okay with letting my wife cut my hair and have, at times, buzzed my own head with the clippers. I've never had much luck with strangers cutting/styling my hair.

    My most recent attempt at public hair care was no better. A young man with a Flock-of-Seagulls do (no kidding) only cut a quarter of an inch of length, when I was specific that I wanted much hair removed. My wife ended up doing a much better job the next day.

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  2. Thanks for the information.
    Keep it up..:)

    Thanks
    Mike

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  3. Oh boy could I tell you some stories about hair mishaps! From bad perms to self inflicted cuts to spur of the moment chopping it all off (which I'm in recovery from right now. It's almost long enough to get a new cut!). My favorite of all time though was the time that a friend of mine and I, buzzed on several Saturday afternoon daiquiris, decided that I needed to bleach out big stripes in my then black hair so as to dye the bleached sections pink. And this might have worked had we not decided to wrap my hair in foil after applying the hair bleach. After about 15 minutes smoke started coming out from the foil! It was so hot we could barely touch it to get it off my head! Once freed we hosed my head down with cold water. After all that there were no stripes. But there was some nice crispy hair! I lost about 5 inches that day. :)

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  4. I've cut my own bangs a couple of times and wound up looking a bit like Mamie Eisenhower. I don't recommend that look. My main problem, though, was when I used to dye my hair red. I could never remember which shade of red I used the last time and would wind up with streaks of orange-red mixed with burgundy-red. One lady told me she thought I'd done that on purpose for Halloween.

    I leave it to the pros these days.

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  5. I love your hair stories - all of them! I think almost everyone has a tale of some sort, but it does help when you know you're not alone. :O)

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