Anne of Green Gables - a classic tale of bad hair
Uncomfortable
I am not that comfortable with hairdressers. Some people have their regular hairdresser who they know and trust and continue to make appointments with them for years and years. I imagine those relationships between hairdresser and client to be intimate and warm and they have discussions about life and the universe rather than if they are ready for Christmas or where they are going for their holidays. But as I say, I only imagine that is what happens because I don't like to talk to hairdressers.
Are you ready for Christmas?
Risky Business
Having a hair cut is a risky business. Notice I use the term 'hair cut' because that is what I have. A hair cut, technically a cut and blow dry, but nevertheless a hair cut. I am not the type of woman who goes for tints or highlights or colour or curling or japanese or Brazilian straightening or weaves or extenstions. I'm a women with simple needs. To be more accurate I have simple needs now that I am a grown-up woman but in the not so distant past there have been times of really bad hairdressing experinces that have left me in tears, full of regret and looking ridiculous.
Some of the blame has to be well and truly put on my shoulders but not always. I mean surely a hairdresser who is professionally trained can be trusted to cut, perm or colour my hair and fulfill my expectations?
Perhaps I should apologise to my hair?
First Bad Perm
My mother must be held fully responsible for perming my hair when I was three (3). When I look at the photograph of my three year old self back in 19**(?) and, once I have stopped crying/laughing, I have to wonder just what went on in my mother's head that she felt the need to buy a home perm kit and use it on a little girl's hair when it was so obviously straight and thin. Oh, I think I've just answered my own question. The straight and thin version was not desirable so the permed and crispy version seemed like a good idea?
Basin Cut
After the home perm at the age of three I don't really have much memory of getting my hair cut but the annual primary school photo shows me and my brother with the same basin-cut year after year although both of our fringes are never straight so we can only assume there must have been a big chip in the rim. My brother is adamant that my dad still has the bowl so it is an unspoken rule that it should never be mentioned fear he should want to use it on unsuspecting grandchildren or their friends.
Introduction to a hairdressers salon
The growing of the hair was interminably long and I put this down to having the slowest growing hair in the world. But after a while it reached my shoulders and I pinned it back out of my eyes with two clips, if I had a middle parting, or one if I decided on a side parting. My mother once again stepped in and insisted that my hair had no style so I needed to visit a ladies hair salon. The idea did appeal to me. If I had my hair done in a salon then I would, by default, be stunningly beautiful and heads would turn as I walked down the street. "Oh look at her hair, its beautiful" people would say as I confidently trotted to the bus stop.
An appointment was made and I sat on the waiting seats for my turn infront of the mirror. The salon was at the crossroads in Fishburn, Co. Durham and was full of pensioners having their weekly shampoo and set. Once the setting lotion was slathered about their heads and the curlers were pinned into place then they sat in a line under the dryer with a nylon scarf tied about the curlers waiting until the ding of the bell when they'd be released from the drying hood and let back in the seats in front of the mirrors where one curler would be taken out and the curl tested for curliness.
Why did I think I would treated any different to the shampoo and set brigade.? Why did I imagine that the hairdresser would look at me and immediately see a pre teen who was striving to build self esteem and a confident demenor? She did my hair in the same way as she did the pensioners. Alarm bells should have rung when I noticed she was winding strands of my long hair into big curlers and if the length didn't seem quite right she cut a bit off. I sat there in silence, horrified and nervous by what I could see but too timid to say anything and my mum had popped to the Co-op while I was being 'done'. Upon her return with a loaded wheelie bag, I had been shampooed and set and was having my hot dried curls combed out and fixed into place by copious amounts of hairspray.
My mother thought I looked lovely. I had her hair style, why would she not like it? I looked like Wendoline from Wallace and Grommit.
Lesley aged 12
This experience led to a most embarrassing day because I had to go to school with an OAP shampoo and set which rendered me helpless with shame, so by first break I was ready to put my head under the tap in the girl's toilets to wash out all the setting lotion. My so called friend insisted that it looked 'alright' and could we please stop hiding behind the boiler room and go back to the yard where everyone else was? It was terrible. Other kids looked at me puzzled asking what I'd done to my hair. I had no answer.
Once back home I ran straight upstairs to the bathroom to wash my hair. In those days a quick hair wash involved a rubber hose on the bathroom hand basin taps and lots of bending forwards and lots of water up the nose. When I brushed my wet hair it was glaringly obvious that it had been butchered. There were various lengths in various places and I had been right to be worried as I'd watched the hairdresser hack away lumps of hair. I was duly taken for an emergency hair cut to my Aunties house where my cousin did her best to straighten it up. I can't recall if she just liked cutting hair or was actually trained? While it had been held in place with setting lotion and curls my poker straight but now incredibly wonky hair cut had been disguised. I sat on a stool in their kitchen with a towel round my shoulders listening to my mother, my Aunty and my cousin all making tutting noises as it was combed and inspected to reveal the very bad hair cut. I felt so awful and lacked any amount of self esteem after this experience that I refused to go to school the next day due to the extent of the bad hair cut.
The Bob
In the last couple of year at school I had a bob. It was fairly cool I remember. I managed to have it cut regularly to keep it in shape and some compared me to Cleopatra. It could be looking healthy and shiny and I was proud of it until it got too long and needed cutting. Why is it that I've always got to grab hairdressers wrists and stop them from cutting my fringe too short hence making me look like Jimmy Saville. This did happen and I did have to go to school looking like the gold lame clad one for a while.
Me with a bob
Time Consuming Hair
I mentioned my poker straight hair didn't I. I am aware the these days women pay to have their hair straightened and ironed and blown out but I have had the opposite problem for many many years. I so wanted to have curly hair that I went down the road of having it permed continuously for around 15 years.
My fine hair frizzes into a perfect afro after a perm. I had to commit to spending valuable hours of hair doing time each evening before I slept and each morning before leaving the house in order t achieve the optimum texture. It was a commitment to hair clips, heated rollers and hair dryers plus stlying lotion and hair spray. Hours and hours of changing the over frizzed permed hair to a smooth natural curl took skills.
Never Let your Friend Cut your Hair
Under the influence of The Liver Birds I shared a house with other girls (and boys - so that could be Robin's Nest?) and although I could pay the rent and have a few nights out I wasn't exactly flush with cash so was always on the look out for a special offer or a friend of a friend to attend to my hair.
At this point in my life it had become obvious that my slow growing hair was never going to be long. Short hair has to be kept up to so as I sat in that small slug infested kitchen in Shoreham Street and allowed my house-mate Susan to cut my hair for free, deep down I knew I should have had more sense.
She carefully wrapped a towel around my shoulders and neck. I think it was the position of the towel that confused her because it was too high up my neck so she couldn't see my hair line properly and quite confidently, for someone who had never cut hair before, chopped off such a huge chunk from the back that I had to wear a cardigan with a huge roll collar so as to disguise the lawn mover affect she had created on the back of my head. At a party the day after the fateful event in the kitchen someone commented "Oooo very Vidal Sasson" the sub text being "your hair is weird". An emergency hair cut was required and no discount rates were achieved. All in all an economic and stylistic fail.
Worst Perm
Not counting the first perm at the age of three, my worst experience was at a small salon somewhere in Walkely, Sheffield run by a couple of Italians who seemed to be just having a new water heater installed to cooincide with my appoitment. This meant the hair wash and subsequent rinsing was all done with freezing cold water and because of their distraction by the gas man they failed to notice how long I'd been sitting with perm solution burning my scalp so by the time they took out the little plastic hurty rollers my hair was frizzed like a brillo pad. Even after it had been blow dried to a 'soft natural' curl (?) every rectangular roller section could still be clearly seen on my scalp from a distance of 100 yards. My friends just stared blankly at the result and it took approximately two weeks for any one to comment on the new style and then it was to say
"Your hair looks better now than it did when you came back from the hairdressers two weeks ago".
That bad tight tight perm look months to grow out. Obviously I didn't go back to the Italians with the cold water but when I did have a hair appointment after that the chosen stylist looked at my hair and called over other members of the team to inspect just how much damage I had and how it was beginning to break off leaving little sprigs of new undamaged 1 inch sections. I was an example of how not to treat a client and they all looked in silence and shook their heads sympathetically as they pulled at my broken hair.
Post birth hair cut
After givng birth and the subsequent breastfeeding trap that is a new baby, I was desparate to have a hair cut to 'make me feel better'. Under the impression that a new modern fresh hair cut would perk me up after weeks of being housebound and where having a shower and getting dressed was the most I achieved in a day, I made an appointment at a salon I had never frequented before.
I was so looking forward to going out alone and leaving HB to look after the baby. It was going to be great, a little bit of pampering would do me good plus I would come home with a nice new hair cut.
Wrong!
Yet again I came home looking like Wendoline from Wallace and Grommit with a fringe pulled in a triangular shape from my crown. I arrived home completely distraute with tears rolling down my cheeks knowing that although I'd said "Thank you its lovely" in the shop I had not meant it and couldn't get into the car fast enough before someone saw me. I sobbed a lot once back home and even when HB attempted to make me feel better by saying it was alright and I could wear more hats, this confirmed that it was actually awful.
I required an emergency hair cut by a mobile hairdresser who visited me in the privacy of my own home. She didn't seem to mind the tears and nose blowing, new mothers tend to be highly strung, and did manage to salvage some sort of presentable human head once she had finished looking at the terrible hair and taking sharp intakes of breath.
Ambition
The truth is that I would really rather have no hair at all but am simply lacking guts to have a permanently shaved head. I admired Senead O'Connor. I have always been in awe of Annie Lennox and her short peroxide hair. The advantages would be that;
I eliminate the necessity to buy shampoo and conditioner, hair putty for sculpting, hair spray and combs.
I would never need to worry about having a bad hair day.
The weather would be of no consequence to me, a windy day or a rainy day would not interest me vis a vis my hair.
No more sitting in a salon having to explain the hair cut I want and coming out with a hair cut I didn't want.
The disadvantages of having a shaved head would be;
People would think I was recovering from a terrible illness.
My head might be a strange shape but I just didn't know it.
I would have to deal with the grow back and that would mean exposing the fact that some of my hair is grey. It would not be possible to dye such short tufts.
If I had, say, six weeks holiday where no one I knew saw me I could test out the shaved head scenario, and if it was terrible I could have grown it back, mostly (?) by the end of six weeks and just wear an interesting head wrap until I had achieved sufficient length to face the general public again.
To shave or not to shave, that is the question. All comments/suggestions glady received.
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