A "Hairy" Situation

So yesterday I ventured out to do one of the bravest tasks any human can do. No, I didn’t climb Mt. Everest, or sign up for the Peace Corp. I went to the hair salon. “What’s so brave about that,” you might ask?? Well, because going to a new hair stylist (especially in a foreign country) is quite possibly the scariest most daunting experience ever!

I have gone to two different hair dressers in my entire life. Two! That’s it! Marcia and Claire. I only trust THEM to touch my hair, I only value THEIR opinions, and I only like the way THEY style it. I went through 3 years at UC Davis without seeing a single hair dresser except when I went back home to LA for Christmas and Summer, because I was convinced if I let someone else do my hair, I would wind up looking like a little boy in his second grade school photo with a bowl-cut.

But yesterday, I had finally had it with my hair, and my fears. My hair was simply just too long, and too dead, and was getting too hard to deal with every morning. I had had enough. After spending most of my day going back and forth, “should I go or should I just wait till I get home in September,” I just grit my teeth, shut my eyes, and walked into the hair salon cowering like a little lost puppy.

In place of a pretentious, snooty receptionist, there was the ol’ “take a number” and wait for your number to appear on the magical board. I call it a magical board because it really was. There was no rhyme or reason or any sort of logical, cohesive order to this board. When I first sat down, it was on number 56. I had number 17A. So it was really just impossible to tell how many people were in front of you, so you really did have to pay extra close attention to whatever random-ass number they were going to call next.

Something I noticed however, while waiting there, was even though by my standards this was a very atypical hair salon experience so far, is that there is at least ONE universal truth about all hairsalons, regardless of their location or budget: tacky 1980s-1990s “hair style magazines.” They have magazines full of thousands of awful, awful, AWFUL haircuts that have gone down in history as “worst trends of all time.” We’re talking asymmetrical mullets, very angular, spikes, awful coloring. Essentially David Bowie/ Jon Bon Jovie at their prime sort of hairstyles. I do NOT understand how these magazines stay in business, or furthermore, why every single salon in the world seems to find it appropriate, nay, necessary for these magazines to go on existing! It’s just one of those things, right up there with “how did life come to be” that we just may never really understand the answer to…

So anyway, the next observation I make, which I’ve actually known about myself my entire life, is how timid I am when it comes to making decisions about my hair. I’ll sit there, reading my magazine, looking at pictures of Natalie Portman, or Angelina Jolie, or the “it” celebrity du jour, and think to myself “ya! I want too look like her!! I could pull of that massive bang, and those massive curls! Let’s do it!” My mind starts day dreaming of all the different styles and new things I could try out with my new hair. So what if I have a calic that makes it impossible for me to have bangs?? Nothing that an hour with some expensive styling gel and hairspray can’t fix!! So what that I have ultra fine hair that makes it impossible to curl or have any lasting hairdo that isn’t stick straight?? Maybe if I invested in a really nice curling iron or hair curlers I wouldn’t have that problem! Oh and that overly priced wax that she just put in that girls hair. I have no idea how to use it, but I bet it’s worth the $100 per bottle!

But then that moment comes, when your hairdresser says “so what are we doing today??” And you want so badly to point at that picture of Angelina, and say “this please! Make me look like her!” but ultimately you wimp out, and very dejectedly sigh, “oh I don’t know.. just a trim I guess…”

I guess I’m fine these days with the trim and the same ol’ hairstyle. I’ve come to terms with myself that I simply don’t want to take the time and energy that inevitably comes with having a fabulous hairdo. Sure it looks great (and I mean GREAT) when you come out of the salon feeling like a million bucks (and spending close to that amount, too…), but the sad reality of it is, is I just simply can’t replicate that look, no matter how hard I try.

For instance: every time I see Claire to get my hair done, she always dries it using a round soft brush, and tells me I should buy one and dry my hair like she does. But then, flashback to yesterday, at this haircut place, you have to dry and style your own hair. So I of course pick the “soft round brush” and try to do that curling effect thing, and I swear to god, it is impossible!! There is just no possible way for any normal human to simultaneously hold a hair dryer, while also using that stupid round brush, and drying to get it to wrap around your hair and look nice and “voluminous” and stylish!! Impossible!!

Anyway, the moral of the story, is I’m glad I got my hair cut, and it only cost 12 euros, and it was also a good German practice session. The end.

Till next time,
HBP