The longing to refresh your look is natural, nay, unavoidable. You want bold strokes, a little change that makes a big impact. You want a radical haircut. And, if you’re like me, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-er, you don’t want to labor over the decision, hemming and hawing for months
But readers, oh, readers, beware the spontaneous radical haircut! It can go terribly wrong.
The deal is this: my hair is, as you see here, thin, generally lifeless, the kind that looks worse the longer it gets. I WANT to
be a long-haired beauty but I am not. So, recently, I decided I had to accept my hair’s limitations and get it chopped off. I opted to forgo the cheap local salon on the corner and splurge on the fancy Manhattan salon I sometimes go to – Arrojo, started by Nick Arrojo from What Not To Wear. I always make last-minute appointments and end up with whoever’s free at the time I can squeeze the cut in, and this time I ended up with . . .The Mean Stylist.
You know the type. He makes faces of disgust when assessing your hair pre-cut, asking you what kind of shampoo you use with eyebrows raised, wondering where on earth you went for your last (implication:awful!) haircut, informing you that your ends are way too dry, that the cut you’ve chosen makes your face look fat, and, for extra measure, recommending you get your color done – by him – as soon as humanly possible.
This stylist also told me that I was parting my hair the wrong way. I HATE when they tell me that I am fighting against my hair’s natural part because I think this shit about having a natural part is a bunch of baloney. But he convinced me
1. To go from past shoulder-length to a chin bob.
2. To get bangs, despite the fact that in 30 plus years I have NEVER looked good in bangs
3. To part my hair on the other side
This is me in the Arrojo bathroom, trying to put on a happy face:
As I told the Mean Stylist, “I’’m past the age where I’m going to burst into tears if I don’t like the cut.” However, I am NOT past the age where I’m gonna write blog-rants about it.
I hate this haircut. I hate that it makes me feel like a broadcast journalist or a soccer mom and I hate that it makes me feel like I am in the early 90s. Most of all I hate that I am now forced to part my hair on the opposite side which makes me have a minor nervous breakdown every time I look in the mirror. It’s like an alarm goes off in my head, which bleeps: “Wrong side part! Identity compromised! Adjust part! Adjust part!”
So now I’m just trying to remind myself that hair grows and hey, nothing wagered, nothing gained.
Are you as spineless as I am in the face of the mean stylist? And does the spontaneous radical hair-cut EVER work?
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