It’s Not You, So It Must Be My Hair

My hair was getting too long in back, so I decided that instead of trimming my bangs myself, I would just pay for a haircut and get the bangs taken care of at the same time. As my father would have noted, why cut my bangs myself if I can get it included for free with a regular haircut? This is a good example of how I often make decisions based on my cheap nature, and why I often end up regretting my decisions.

Typically I look forward to getting my hair cut with all the enthusiasm I have for picking up dog poo. Now that I think about it, maybe even with a little less enthusiasm. Dog poo, after all, does not result in your in-laws running up to you and exclaiming, “Oh, don’t you just look like a little Chinese girl!”

Today I decided to go to a hair salon in Waltham that I had visited once before during the pre-bangs months, which will soon prove to be an important point in this story. The hair salon was cheap and quick, and I figured that an adequate haircut was all I was looking for, anyway.

As soon as I arrived, I was seated at a stylist’s station. I attempted to make small talk (”Wow, is it always so crowded in the parking lot?” and “How many stylists work here?”). These attempts were not well received (”Yes” and “Four”), so I shut up except to point out how short I wanted the back of my hair.

The stylist decreed that the length I had chosen would “look stupid,” so she cut the length she wanted in back. That was fine with me. Even though the name of the salon was Stylecuts, I knew that for $13.95, I shouldn’t expect style. A cut was good enough, and at least the back of my hair was shorter and not visibly crooked. Also, she had only taken 10 minutes out of my life so far.

When it came time for the bangs, she opted to allow me an opinion.

“How short do you want the bangs?” she said.

“No shorter than the bottom of my eyebrows,” I said.

“So not very short,” she said. “How much do you want taken off?”

I gestured with my fingers, indicating a tiny amount no greater than 1/4 of an inch. “Not much,” I said.

She cut. I winced. Without looking, I could tell she had cut it a bit shorter than I wanted. Maybe it would look okay when she finished, though.

She snipped rapidly away, and then stood back to admire her work.

In the mirror, I saw that the right side of my bangs were at least 3/4 of an inch higher than the left side, and both sides were above my eyebrows.

“Um,” I said. “They seem crooked.” Having been raised to not criticize strangers in public, I added politely, “Or maybe my eyebrows are crooked.”

The hair stylist seemed offended by this. “No, the bangs aren’t crooked,” she said. “Look — ” and here she flattened the right side of my bangs with her hand — “this is the same length as the other side. But you have a cowlick here.”

“So that makes it crooked?” I said.

She nodded. “Yes, I cut it straight. There’s nothing you can do about that.”

She looked in the mirror. I looked in the mirror. I was willing to accept that I had a cowlick. But if I understood her correctly, she meant that I had to go around for the rest of my life with bangs that looked crooked, because there was “nothing” I could do about that.

I wanted to scream at her and explain a few things. Had she not been holding a sharp pair of scissors, this is what I would have said:

“There IS something you can do. You know what? When people want their hair cut straight, they usually don’t care if the actual, individual pieces of hair are the same length. They just want it to look straight. So there IS something you can do, you can cut my hair CROOKED next time so it looks STRAIGHT!!!”

This would most likely have been followed by some curse words.

But she was still wielding the scissors, and I was afraid of what further damage she might inflict if I asked her to correct the mistake by, say, gluing on some scrap pieces of hair onto my head. So I just got up, paid, even tipped, and drove home.

As I drove, I glanced into my rearview mirror. I couldn’t understand how “no shorter than the bottom of my eyebrows” had translated into being high above my eyebrows, or how I had ended up with bangs that sloped awkwardly from one side up to the other, making me look permanently drunk and confused.

Maybe I just didn’t know how to talk to people. Maybe, at the next haircut, I would bring my laptop. And type out all the instructions, as well as any comments I had for the hair stylists post-cut. I could diagram where they’d gone wrong, how they might have saved the play even then, and at what juncture they had hit the point of no return.

In the meantime, I suppose I have to wear a sweatband over my bangs. Then everyone can see that the bangs are really cut straight, and it’s just my hair that refuses to cooperate.

Posted by: ssjane | December 18, 2006 | 5:36 pm
Posted in: This Life