Back in July (July 27th or 28th I think) I made a big change to my appearance and general annoyance level in the world. I cut my hair. Pretty astounding right? But I didnt just trim my hair, or make a slight style change. I chopped off 9 whole inches of my hair to donate to make wigs for cancer patients. So essentially I went from looking like this:
And as soon as I cut my hair, everyone LOVED it. Oh short hair suits me so much better than long. Oh I look so much more grown up. Oh I am such an amazing person for donating my hair, they could never do it, they would just bawl, yadda yadda yadda.
But I hated it.
Ok, that's kind of a lie. I didnt HATE it. I definitely agree that short hair suits me really well. But I just didnt like the cut. I didnt like the hair on the back of my neck. I didnt like how awkwardly it curled. I didnt like that I had NO idea how to style it. I didnt like that when I had a bad hair day, I was going to have a bad hair day - I couldnt pull it up to hide it anymore. ("Yeah, but you could put a hat on!"... not at work I couldnt :S).
And more than anything, I was told over and over that short hair would be so much less work than long hair - and that was a lie. If your hair is straight, maybe that's true. But not with curly hair. If curly hair isnt styled just right, it looks SO wrong. Now, I'm not someone who wants to ages and ages of effort into my hair on a daily basis. Once in a while, maybe for a special occassion - sure, why not. But I am way too busy and have way to short an attention span to want to have to do this every single day.
But I bore with it. Maybe it would "grow" on me (ba-dum-chh). Maybe it would look better, feel better, style better, if I grew it out a bit. So I told myself that I would wait until November. 3 months. If it was still bugging me then, I would cut it.
And then I spent the last month and a half fighting with myself, convincing myself that NO, I am not going to cut it today.
Now, it wasnt all bad. There were days when I could make it look quite attractive on myself. I just never knew how I did that. I would try to repeat what I did, and it never EVER took. Oh! Using a hair dryer, THATS The trick. Or not. OH, I need to use a cream in my hair, not a mousse. Nope, thats not it either. OH, I should comb my hair and then muss it. Or I should never attempt that again... it was all so very frusterating.
And to be quite honest, I was quite happy about half a week ago when I discovered my hair was not long enough to pull back into to cute little pigtails. Best I think I felt I had looked since I cut my hair.
Then the next day I woke up, went to the gym, had a shower, left my hair to dry... and halfway through the day I walked into the school hair salon. I was sick of my hair and well aware that pigtails everyday was NOT the answer I was looking for.
Of course, I made two big mistakes there.
1) Spontaenously deciding to get a hair cut. Sure I had been thinking about this for a while. In fact, I had quite the expansive list of qualifications for how my hair should look (not TOO short, spunky, better defined curls, easy and quick to take care of, etc. etc.) but I also had NO IDEA what I wanted. And if I have learned something from all this hair cutting I do is this: Hairdressers are not magic. Sure, you can get some really good ones. But for the most part, they are people, and they cannot read into the depth of your soul and pick out your perfect hair cut. Though, man, life would be so much easier if they could!
2) Going to the University hair salon. Now dont get me wrong. I've been there before. When I had long hair, I came away satisfied each time. Maybe not raving in praise, but satisfied. However, whenever I had long hair getting a haircut always went something like this:
"So what do you want done today?"
"I dunno, just a trim and tidy up. Keep it looking pretty much the same."
Which is essentially the same as tell the hair dresser "here, just cut along the lines". Sure there is always room for screwing up, but generally the task is not all that complicated.
But if you have a new haircut and you are scared of how it might turn out, here is a lesson for you. Dont go to the place that costs $20 for a haircut. And dont go to the one peron in the entire salon who barely understands english, which means that all those fun qualifications I had listed in my head? I dont think she understood any of them. (Ok. To be fair, she did get "short" and "I just dont know what I want" down pretty well).
Not knowing whatI want, and not knowing english the greatest, she was unfortunately reduced to shoving those STUPID hair-style books in my hands. I hate those books. With a passion. No matter how you cut your hair, it will NEVER turn out looking like those books. Those girls are over styled and probably had 10 minutes of hair touch up between every shot. On top of that, every single style in both those books were for STRAIGHT hair. In case you hadnt noticed, my hair is anything but STRAIGHT. And my hair is THICK. It looks *nothing* like the hair styles in those stupid books.
So there I was, no idea what I wanted and dealing with a hairdresser that could only guess at what I am saying. So did I do the logical thing and say "Actually, I think I will come back another time"? Pffft. No. Since when do I show forsight like that?! Instead I said "Ok, well, a friend of mine suggested I do a bob. So why dont we try that out..." and she smiled, nodded excitedly and started babbling something about "short" and "layers" and "very good, very good" that I unfortunately could barely understand through her accent...
She then sat me down in the chair, choked that stupid reverse cape thing around my neck, and for the first time since I got my glasses told me to "no. Leave on." Because, as it turned out, she was going to get me to approve every single layer after she cut it. Which is a WONDERFUL sentiment, if you know what the hell you want your hair to look like. Me? I had no idea. So I smiled and nodded and said the obligatory "cute" every time she held up that damned mirror, hoping that everything was working out for the best.
Spoiler alert: It didnt.
When she finished cutting, I asked her if she could blow dry my hair so I could see what it looked like dry. She she obligingly did. With a round brush. To straighten it. In the worst possible way imaginable. I dont even know if I can describe it. She blew-dryed (... blow dryed? Blew dry?) my bangs so they were hair of the side of my hair and had my hair hair straight except for where it curled under my ears. Effectively making my head look square and giving a very definite line right around the middle of my face. It was AWEFUL.
And to top it off, it wasnt what I asked for. Or, at least what I thought I had asked for. I thought a bob was shorter in the back, longer in the front. And maybe I am wrong about that. But either way, it was very much the same length all the way around my head. I hated it.
So I went home, I stuck my head under the tap, washed the style out and tried to style it myself. After watching several youtube videos about short hair. And it turned out... ok. pulled it back with a headband, and I was happy enough to trek off to work anyway. But still not happy.
So after tossing and turning for a night, reading many blogs and articles about what to do with a bad haircut, and spending much more time than I would have even wanted to trying to style my hair, I decided I was going to go back and ask to have my hair redid. And I did. And I explained a bit better about what I wanted, because I now had a bit better of an idea. And I walked away... satisfied. Its not perfect. Im pretty sure one side is longer than the other, one side has more hair, etc. etc. But I can happily live with this. And in the end, I suppose that is what is most important.
So without further ado, my new haircut:
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| From the Back |
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| ... I am really bad at taking pictures of myself... |
So, now that you have all been thuroughly put to sleep from reading about my hair adventures, I will bid you adieu. So long Internets!
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