Tuesday, October 10, 2006
I decided today that I'd had enough of these Great Clips, Fantastic Sams, etc. type hair salons. For once in my life - and I knew going in it would probably only be once - I was going to go to a real hair salon and see what the difference was. I was aiming for one of those trendy places that serves you drinks while you get your hair done, all the people working there look like they live in Starbucks but want to be punk rockers if only they could understand all that political stuff, where everyone walks around telling everyone else how cute they are, and as an added benefit, I would like the person doing my hair to be an outright human torch of flaming homosexuality.
I found the place, and aside from the lack of the flaming gay man styling my hair, it was everything I was looking for. My stylist's name was Brittany, but she didn't look like someone who should have this name. She looked more like a Natasha or a Samantha. She had this great bottle red hair that hung just below her shoulders and her style just said, "I spent two hours doing this do this morning." She wore black jeans and a gray shirt with little purple skulls on it, and she was sort of Kelly Osbourne like chunky. You know what I mean... the type of body that isn't really thin but how the hell can you notice?
So I walk in and am told Brittany will be with me in a moment and I took a spot on a leather chair that was so low I should have just sat on the floor, and dealt with the fake tree ripping at my head from above.
Brittany takes me to her "stall," which is a chair in front of a full length mirror, as if I really need to see my shoes while she's working on my hair. I look around the salon and realize I am the least trendy person there. I'm sporting a pair of well worn blue jeans, a Riverdance t-shirt (which, btw, ended up being very trendy and I wasn't aware that it was... I just like Riverdance), and a pair of black slip on shoes that squeak when I walk. So I'm stuffed in my little funky design chair and looking at the outfit Brittany is wearing, and seeing she is probably just above me in the trend. Everyone else is sporting little pig tails for that look of forced casual, little colored head scarves, hippie outfits or pin stripe suits, etc. Seriously, I could not tell the two girls at the front desk apart. And no, they aren't related, I asked.
Once again I am told to stand and am now walked over to a dim lit little alcove with sinks standing alone. I sit. The chair starts rubbing my back and my feet go up as my head goes into the sink. One nice little head massage later and I am back at Brittany’s "stall."
Now, apparently, Brittany is an artist. And this frightens the shit out of me when it comes to hair stylists. I was thrilled to find a salon that didn't think twice or charge you extra to wash your hair instead of spray bottling you and then styling it when you were done. But I about fainted when Brittany sat down and told me we needed to talk.
Apparently, I have made a grave mistake. The biggest mistake ever known in the hair world! One that should make you hide the children! Folks... I have very curly hair that I cut short! OMG!
Our heart to heart was about the length of my hair. Apparently, it is a horrible hair sin to cut curly hair short. Truth be told, my hair doesn't like the levels of chlorine in the NC water, so it has been trying to escape for five years. This has left me with bald spots which cannot be repaired easily. I went from hip length to shoulder length to ear length in five years because my hair made me look like the crazy drunk lady that used to walk around my NJ town. It was horrible. It looked dirty and uncared for. And the more length I had the bigger the chunks of hair were that fell out. Since I cut my hair this short I have seen a large amount of that hair returning. Some is fuzz, but it is a start. And today was the first time I didn't have a record amount of hair fall out during styling.
But because of this, Brittany’s inner artist decided to step in. She pretty much cut off very little hair. Which pisses me off. I like my hair this short... it saves me on shampoo costs and it doesn't cost me a paycheck to get it trimmed anymore. Plus it takes me two minutes to do my hair in the morning, a phenomenon I am still in awe of after so many years of long curly hair. But it was getting unruly and needed to be cut. She didn't help me out here.
Worse yet, she told me "soft curls" are "so in" right now, so there was a lotion type product used on my hair and nothing else. She does her creative masterpiece and every customer and employee in the store tells me this is "so cute" and "what a great transformation!" I am turned around to see...
...exactly how my hair looks when I wake up in the morning!
I was horrified! Everyone in the place, paid or not, was cooing and swooning over how cute this was, and Brittany wrote this down as her best work to date. All I could think was thank God I didn't have to go to work after this because I surely would have been fired!
I tried explaining to Brittany that my job wouldn't allow a hair style like this. After all, nail polish is frowned upon and that is an expected thing of a female usually. How would I explain this unstyle? She tells me my boss would be awe struck. I tell her she doesn't know my boss. I tell her I sell guns for a living, not coffee or CDs. I explain to her that I am a wallflower, not the DJ. I'm a nerd, not a trend setter.
She tells me I need to lighten up.
I tell her I need my job.
Long story short, I have never run for my car so fast in my life, and I am sure any cop who would have caught me on the road today would have had a field day. I took back roads home to avoid being seen like this. I was actually embarrassed.
I get home and walk into the living room where my mom is sitting. She stares at me. The dog stares at me. Mom says, "Um... it looks nice." The dog stares at me. I sigh. Mom says, "How much did you pay for that?" I went right upstairs and emptied a bottle of gel into my hair.
I dished out $40 - and only did so because I decided to cut my loses and run because this would only get worse - to end up with my hair looking the way it did before I dished out $40, and it isn't cut much shorter, either. Which says something, because I was in dire need of a hair cut. And Brittany wants to see me in a month and a half, to give my hair a chance to grow to my chin at the very least. I hope she doesn't hold her breath, because in a few weeks I'll be back at Great Clips with some spray in my purse to deal with the spray bottle induced frizz after the $10 cut.
Note: before I get notes about how people wouldn't have paid for that, please, just don't. I was traumatized and no one there was hearing that this style wasn't just perfection. I wasn't in the mood to argue, I just wanted to go home and cry.
Suck Lead did something BAAAAD at 10/10/2006 10:58:00 PM
