The Bad Haircut
Blues
by Roz Warren
I have an
appalling new haircut.
I’d
injured my leg, which made the long drive to my
usual salon out of the question. But my hair was
looking so long and drab that I’d begun
wearing a cap to cover it up. So I decided to
duck into the “chop shop” at the local
strip mall and get myself a quick cheap cut.
What could
possibly go wrong?
Over the years
I’d gotten a few perfectly adequate haircuts
there, as well as one truly spectacular cut from
a stylist moonlighting from an upscale salon,
which, because Cheap Cuts was running a special
that day, cost just five bucks.
That, in case
you didn’t recognize it, is the Haircut Holy
Grail.
Hoping that
lucky haircut lightening would strike twice, I
entered the place with high expectations.
This time I
got exactly what I paid for.
My haircutter
was an affable, upbeat, bright-eyed young thing.
“I want
it shorter,“ I told her. “But not too
short. Can you cut it so that it falls right
below my ears?”
“You bet,”
she said cheerfully.
Then,
inexplicably, she cut my hair so that it fell mid
ear. The look I was going for was
“short and chic.“ The look I
ended up with was “Bozo the clown.“
Why
didn’t I stop her? She’d told me to
remove my glasses, and I can’t see past the
end of my nose without them. She could have been
making preparations to set my hair on fire, and I
wouldn’t have known until she lit the match.
Actually,
setting my hair on fire would probably have
resulted in a better look than the one I ended up
with.
When
she’d finished and I put my glasses back on,
I didn’t gasp, scream or curse her out. I’m
far too polite. I was in shock. And the damage
was done. The hair was gone. She couldn’t
put it back. Speechless, I paid and fled.
The moment I
was out the door I put my cap back on.
Years ago, my
nephew got a haircut that was so abysmal --
uneven, too short, and just weirdly off-putting -
that when he got home he donned his
Phillies cap and wore it nonstop till the
ghastly cut grew out. Just once, when he was
relaxing with a group of trusted pals, they
persuaded him to take it off.
When he did,
they burst out laughing.
I could
continue to wear my own cap until my hair grew
back. Instead I decided to try going about my
life sans cap and see what happened.
I’d been
invited to my sister’s house for dinner.
When she opened the door, she did a
double take, then quickly said, “It’s
not that bad.”
All my brother-in-law
could find to say about my haircut was,
“It’s short.“
Then again,
straight guys don’t really care about hair.
Unless they’re your husband, and you’ve
always had dazzling waist-length blond hair, and
then, because you have a new baby and no longer
have time to wash, brush and endlessly untangle
the stuff, one day at the salon you find yourself
saying to your stylist: “Just cut it
all off. I’d like it to fall just below the
shoulders.”
This will make
your stylist’s day, but, trust me,
it’ll make hubby miserable.
On the day,
two decades ago, that I myself impulsively went
from having super long hair to having a
manageable cut, my then husband took one look at
me when I got home and wailed, “How could
you do this to me?”
Which is
probably what I should have said to the stylist
who “scalped” me.
Over the next
few days, everyone noticed my catastrophic coif.
“New
haircut!” said my friend Nancy Bea. “It
looks great!“
“Do you
really think so?” I asked. “Honestly?“
“No,”
she said. “But it’ll grow back.”
“It’s
awkwardly short,” said my pal Maria.
“But it’ll grow back.”
My friends had
clearly chosen “It’ll grow back”
as my new mantra.
“OMG! You
poor thing. But it’ll grow back.”
“Wow!
That’s extreme. But it’ll grow back.”
“Do you
like my haircut?” I asked Joan, a usually
outspoken co-worker at the library where I work,
after a shift in which she’d been oddly
silent.
“I
wasn’t going to say anything…” she
said, “But it’s TERRIBLE! What
the hell happened?”
And although
both his parents assured me that it looked
“very nice,“ the terrific five-year-old
I baby sit for took one look at me and said, with
refreshing honesty, “That’s ugly.”
Having a bad
haircut has given me new insight into the people
in my life. Some, I’ve learned, are blunt
but honest: “Holy shit! What happened
to you?” Others are considerate, bold-faced
liars: “Great haircut! You look
terrific!” The rest fall somewhere in
between: “Fabulous cut! Gee, I hope
you’re one of those people whose hair grows
quickly.”
When he saw my
new cut, Mark, the man in my life, said
“You’re gorgeous.”
That’s
why he’s the man in my life.
It was my
friend Deb whose response was the most
instructive. She didn’t say a thing.
When I finally prompted, “So how do
you like my hair?” she looked at me
for a moment, then said, “It looks nice. Is
it different?“
I’d
assumed that my appearance had been so
transformed that just to look my way was a
painful shock for my friends and family. And yet,
it hadn’t even turned up on Deb’s radar.
So… maybe
my awful haircut wasn’t such a big deal
after all?
When I
returned home, I took a good look in the mirror
and thought, “Get over yourself, Roz.
It’s only a haircut. It‘ll grow back.”
Then I took
another look and put my cap back on.
First
published on www.womensvoicesforchange.org
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