L.A.'s Best -Kept Secret
Despite my massive financial investment in the system, I've never had a hair cut I liked. I've tried swanky salons, ghetto black market barbers and fluorescent mall mills but none can meet my rigid standards of hair artistry. I even tried cutting it myself but got violently upset while cutting and ended up with 1/2 inch long hair as a result.After that disaster grew out I went back to the "professionals." When my hair got lanky I would agonize over whether to hit up Supercuts for a cheap, bad haircut, or shell out the money for an expensive bad haircut at a salon. After a few years of this, my husband got fed up with my whining and demanded that I let him cut my hair since he would happily give me a terrible hair cut for free. Out of frustration with the system, I accepted. This south-paw lawyer from rural Montana who probably hadn't used scissors since elementary school was welcome to take a stab at my hair. Everyone else had.
I was totally shocked when Spike's first attempt at barbering was not only painless, but completely adorable! An older friend of ours tried to talk him into cutting her hair when she saw me a few days later. He declined, but his ego soared and he's been my personal styling diva ever since. Maybe it's just the fact that it's free that makes me overlook any deficiencies. Or maybe the guy has a true gift with hair. I'm not sure which, but I do know that after one of his haircuts, I skip around the apartment catching glimpses of myself in anything remotely shiny and grinning.
Despite his consistently stupendous work, it's been hard for me to overcome a lifetime of mistrust with my stylists. Tonight I gave him rough directions and showed him how short to go. He started cutting and after he'd cut halfway around he faced me to the mirror.
"Too short?" He asked, eagerly.
"Too late!" I gasped, shocked to see his initial brute trauma chop to my hair was more than an inch above my directions. My fate was in his hands but I didn't say another word while the chopping continued. After far more cutting noises than I could rationalize, he told me to look at the mirror. As you can see from the before and after pictures, all's well that ends well. Lawyer by day, hair stylist by night. I'm living every wife's dream!
Comments
I have two funny haircut stories for you--neither which turned out as well as yours:
One, I had this companion who had a serious "Samson" thing going on with her uber long hair. I'm not kidding. One day toward the end of our sometimes hellish stint together she told me she wanted me to cut her hair. With not nearly enough trepidation at hand, I reached out with my scissors and lopped off her pony tail--I'd seen it done in a magazine, how hard could it be? It was so wrong. The front hair was miles longer than the back hair and it was a miracle I finally got it all mostly evened out--but it ended up much shorter than she anticipated. I was just sick about it--because I knew how deep that Samson thing ran.
Turns out she was a completely different person after that hair cut--seriously. A kinder, gentler, person. Needless to say I sort of got a rep after that, but I was smart enough never to pick up another pair of scissors...
...but that didn't stop me from picking up a set of clipping shears one day. For my then four-year-old son. How hard could it be? So I promptly took off all the guides--not realizing at all that they were there for a reason--and boldly sheared a path down the middle of his head. OOPS!
It was my first--but not my last regulation army haircut.
The great thing about hair is that eventually it WILL grow back.
The great thing about your new do is that you don't need to worry about waiting for that because it already looks so fab!
hehehehe
I don't know how the industry stays in business with all the horror stories I hear. The last time I got mine cut, we very specifically reviewed how short it was to be. Then after the shampoo the first cut took place. First comment from the stylist: "Wow, I didn't realize how curly your hair was". Too short is an understatement.
I'm nothing without my hair. I know it's my best feature. Only a very trusted few have touched it. I swear I should have it insured. My current stylist just had a baby. I hold her baby while she does my hair. I don't know what I am going to do when she moves.
My stylist (the darling, brilliant woman who spends an hour chopping and layering my hair into a bob that lays perfectly- WITHOUT STYLING... I love that woman) is pregnant. And I'm so pathetic, when she told me I think my exact words were "Really? That's great!! Wait... when? What does this mean for my next appointment? How long till you can fix my hair again? I mean, No, really, congratulations!"
In my defense, she said everybody's reactions were almost universally "Congratulations!! What does this mean for my hair?"