Hair Today, Gone in a Few Seconds

I have to admit that I haven’t always been faithful.

To my hairstylist.

When one stylist couldn’t fit me in, I’d run to another who was more than willing to fulfill my hair fantasies. When I wanted to go blonde after having very dark hair, my regular stylist talked me out of it; she told me the upkeep would be too much, and it would look unnatural. Off I went to someone who was willing to do it.  Being a serial cheater, I quickly left that person, too. 

While seated in the chair of one of my recent hair consultants, I decided that I wanted my hair dark brown? again. However, when the new stylist said “let’s try dark auburn.” I was seduced by the word, “auburn.”  In the coziness of the salon with all those celebrity magazines, it sounded like a good idea .I didn’t think I would walk out with hair that looked like I dunked my head into a vat of cherry cordials. Lesson learned.

Another lesson learned during said visit was that the term “trim” apparently means different things to different people. To me it means, “take off a half-inch’” To this stylist it meant chopping my long locks off at the ear.

I thought we had agreed on shoulder-length? I guess I should have asked if she meant my shoulders or those of a circus freak who has no neck. Should I have clarified that one. Or maybe the person to whom I was paying a criminal amount of money to both cut and color my hair should have double checked with me?

The word “bangs” also seems to be burdened with conflicting definitions. Normally, when I’ve asked for bangs in the past, my stylist would ask what exactly I meant by that and perhaps bring in a therapist to make sure I was mentally capable of making this huge decision. This time, when I mentioned bangs, what I really meant was, “let’s open a dialogue and discuss our options.” But she just cut.

I can’t say my hair looked bad, necessarily, but this was a more modern style that didn’t fit my personality. It was art-student hair. Perky, art-student hair. I am neither perky nor an art student.

And while it may have looked okay in the safety of the salon, it involved careful styling, and unfortunately I am round brush incapable. As I left the salon I knew that was the last time my hair would ever look the way the stylist had intended it to. I’d like to say I could do my own hair correctly, if only I had the right tools and products.  But I know that’s a lie. 

A few years ago, I had a cut that was layered around my face. People actually stopped me on the street to tell me how cute my hair was, but that style didn’t last. I bought all the tools and products the stylist had used – those very expensive salon potions like a gloss to keep my hair from frizzing, wax to separate layers, a treatment to bring out the shine, and a special hairspray for even more separate-yet-equal layers – my hair looked super for about fifteen minutes, or two seconds if there was a sudden drop in the humidity.

I’m often fooled into thinking that that I might walk out of the salon looking like the person in the photograph I brought in as a haircut model. My biggest shocker was when I was twelve and convinced that a perm would make me look like Mariah Carey. Guess who didn’t wind up looking like her? Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Eventually I realized it would help if I tried to emulate the haircuts of celebrities that resembled me. However, that didn’t work out as well as planned, since whether the chosen celebrity resembled me or not, I don’t have a team of stylists on call. She does. Plus I got sick of having the stylist smirk when I showed a picture of Kelly Ripa or Claudia Schiffer and asked her to “come as close as you can.” I swear I heard at least one of them cough something that sounded a little like, “delusional.”

But after this last dark cherry, perky do, I’ve decided to go back to bringing in pictures of the cut, style, and color that I want. At least that minimizes confusion over those esoteric salon terms like “color” and “length.” I may get laughed at by the stylist for wanting one of the Rock of Love girl’s haircuts. But that beats saying, “Oh, whatever you think is best,” then wearing a hat for a month.

Krysten Lindsay Hager is a journalist and writer whose first experience with hair color (in elementary school) involved a bottle of Sun-In bleach spray with the hope that her mother wouldn’t notice. Her father fondly remembers her natural hair color, but few others recall it. Her most recent work can be found in the anthology Patchwork Path: Grandma's Choice and in the March issue of "Girlfriend to Girlfriend" magazine.