>Hair I am

>The deliciously selfish confidence inducing perfect haircut, and yes we all wait too long between them. After spending most of my life aspiring to be Crystal Gale.. I broke down in hormone induced frizz to get a short and sassy look while pregnant with my second.The former Duran Duran groupie/stylist shaved zigzags into the hair on the back of my neck. When he wielded the mirror of truth I could feel my daughter to be kicking for freedom . Embarrassed of me in utero. Figures.

>The worst was when I let my older sister give me a home perm back when we were in high school. It was definitely a “finger in light socket” moment and I had to wear headbands to calm it down for a long time! I got her back though, when she asked me to give her highlights right before she was going to be in a wedding – oh was it ever bad!

>I became a devotee of the $10 haircut in college. I had no hair savvy before that anyway, so I didn’t notice a difference. Two months before my wedding, I went to a cheapo place for a “trim,” just to get rid of split ends and such. They cut off several inches, and what was supposed to be long, flowing princess hair for my wedding turned into shoulder-length, early-90s frizz.

>My worst haircut was THE day of my high school senior pictures. I was a totally cool punk rocker back in the day, but I still needed a haircut. I wanted to touch up the cut I already had, but that had grown out. It was simple short in the front, a little longer in the back with a little lift, a sliver of bangs parted in the middle and placed near the hairline, it was a cool haircut at the time. The lady TOTALLY missed the mark and I looked like something out of Hairspray! And my mother having paid “good money” wouldn’t let me change it.Once pictures were taken and I was able to brush it out and style it a bit different it looked awesome! Of course, AFTER my senior pictures.I’ve always been cursed with bad haircuts, until I started paying $100 for them, I’ll NEVER go back!

>I had a $65 haircut at ~Salon FX~ years ago, and I hated it! I've always had good experiences with Heads Up, and $100 for a haircut is insane to me. But I've also cut my hair myself and loved it.Here's a Heads Up cut I loved..http://s436.photobucket.com/albums/qq86/lucybellecrater/?action=view&current=Me28.jpg

>Oy. Bad haircuts. I have many stories, but the worst of all had to be this one…I had just moved to a new town, and knew very few people, so I had no one to really ask for recommendations. I went to a place in the local mall thinking “how bad could it be??” My cut is fairly simple- longish layers, maybe some face framing ones and VERY subtle dark blonde/light brown highlights. Let me also point out that I am a very, very pale girl with dark brown hair and blue eyes, so I really don’t have much leeway when it comes to hair colors with that fair a complexion. For me, the darkest browns always look best. So to continue my story, after I relayed all of this to the girl cutting my hair, she proceeds to give me “layers” as in “punk rock wannabe that missed the mark”, took off more than a few inches that I didn’t ask for, and to top it off? Did my highlights so light and so many of them I looked fully blonde. Seriously. BLONDE. I have translucent skin, now with washed out blonde hair and a fugly haircut to boot. It took everything in me to hold my tears in until I was outside the salon. It took me over a year to grow it out to where I used to have it and just as long to finally cut out the overprocessed, dried, dead blonde parts of my hair. I now go to the best salon in the city and pay $100 for it with a big smile on my face. To me, the extra is worth it knowing that I’ll walk out happy with what I got, rather than paying half that (or less) and taking a very real chance I’ll walk out in tears and a year’s worth of growing out to be back where you started.Sorry for the long comment. I’m still a bit bitter over that one, can you tell? 😉

>Oh and Gertie, you made me laugh. As usual. But I’m sure at the time, it was anything BUT funny…

>I was 7 mos. pregnant with what turned out to be a 10 lb boy(I was gigantic)and went in to my regular stylist for highlights. Somehow(hormones) she talked me into a “light” perm(no such thing) although I have wavy hair, instead of the highlights. She said it would make styling my hair easier with a new baby and the perm solution would lighten my hair slightly. At the time I had layered long hair(halfway down my back, grown for forever) hair. After the “light” perm, I looked like I had a frizzy afro with severe pyramid head. I had her cut it to my shoulders before I left(she was also the owner of the salon) and cried for the next month. I looked hideous during delivery(probably scared the poor kid)and for the next year, until it grew out. I now get my hair cut about once a year professionally, and do most coloring and trimming myself.

>Six months after having my daughter I decided to make a dramatic change and go blonde. Probably not the wisest decision since I am half Italian, but I was still sleep deprived at that point and thought blonde hair would change my life. I made an appointment with my regular stylist and was so excited to have some time to treat myself. The day I came in she was standing outside smoking and talking on the phone. No problem, I waited for her to come in relished the time to read magazines in the waiting area. She stepped inside and looked visibly upset. I sat down and she told me that her boyfriend of eight years had just broken up with her. Uh oh. We discussed the changes I wanted and she got to work. During the entire process, she must have stepped out for a smoke at least ten times. At one point, she was hacking the back of my hair with the scissors as she explained how she’d moved with him, supported his new business, blah, blah, blah. I cringed each time she took a hunk off my hair and started to worry. When the color went on, she disappeared again. I could hear her outside crying on the phone with one of her friends. By the time I left I had a short crazy blonde new do… but not in a good way. It took forever to grow out. So there I was with the baby weight and bad hair to boot. It took me five years to have another one (baby that is, later that year I got another hairdo)!

>My worst haircut was right before my Junior Prom.My hairdresser “nicked” the back of my head with the clippers leaving a tiny divot. You couldn’t even see it if you use eyeliner to color in the spot. I am a guy, I could care less.She, however, was so devastated, “RIGHT BEFORE YOUR PROM!” etc…, she could never cut my hair again without out being excessively nervous or apologetic.The haircut was fine, but it destroyed my relationship with the hairdresser, because she couldn’t get over it.

>The last time I got a $10 cut, I was 13. Adolesence had just gifted me with curly hair and I hadn’t quite got a handle on what to do with it yet. The hairstylist cut bangs (OK- it was the 80s, everyone had them), but insisted that they start a good 1/2 inch OVER my eyebrows. Seen the little Debbie box? I was a good facimile for a good 6 months!

>My sis went to MasterCuts at Hickory Hollow once (back when you could still go to Hickory Hollow), and the stylist that called her back had some sort of advanced palsy. Now I’m not saying that people with palsy cannot or should not succeed in the workforce. But probably cutting hair isn’t the best field. I felt terrible for my sis, because it isn’t as though you can change your mind when you learn your stylist is disabled. Propriety and all that. But it was *not* a good cut. She just sat there helpless in the chair, watching the poor dear’s hands bobbing like a music conductor.But she didn’t cry after, like she did when I cut six inches and some bangs on her several years later in my bathroom.I’ve had a lot of bad cuts, but probably the worst in terms of consequences was the three-inches-all-over that I got in 7th grade. It wasn’t a chic cut. It was more like what you would see on a 45yo woman. Anyway, 7th grade was the year when all my girlfriends started “going” with boys, and it was the year that all the kids from different elems came together, and most subsequently went on to high school together. As for me, I had my first date in college; and while I *know* The Haircut wasn’t the only reason (!), it was definitely a huge factor. I was kind of untouchable in my formative relationship years. Happily married now, though, to a man who never saw that haircut. (Whew.)

>My absolute worst experience with my hair (though I’ve had a few very bad ones) was the day I let my neighbor try his hand at it (I believe I was in the seventh grade). He owned a salon in the mall and the girl who used to ALWAYS cut my hair had just moved away so my mom and I figured ‘why not?’. To give you all a rough picture, I have very long, very thick golden blonde hair. Even uncut I consider it one of my best features. I went in asking for just some tapering around the face, to give it body but take out some of the weight…I went out with a gob that could only be described as it looked like I had the overdone doll hair (such as where it is the same length all the way around and just doesn’t look natural). I spent the entire night crying because he’d cut off enough that I couldn’t get it fixed without going at least above the shoulders (something I feared with a passion).Nowadays, I don’t go so far as paying $100/cut, but I will save up $25 (plus a $5 tip) to go to one of the better looking salons around here. It’s not exactly top-end, but I fell in love with one of the stylists there…and he does not fit the stylist picture. He’s got sleeve tattoos and has his ears gauged and really stands out, but makes hair so light it seems like it’s floating on air. I do have a kind of rough picture from when he styled it for my HS graduation here: http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa161/TheStripedElfa/Pics%20of%20Me/MariettasPicofMeatGraduationCropped.jpg

>My worst haircut I ever had was one I gave myself…I was 2 at the time…I did like the boy haircut I was given after tho, since that was all they could do with it.

>I can’t believe Lauri’s hairstylist wanted to give her a new look while she was pregnant! I asked my stylist to cut my hair short while I was pregnant, and she refused to do it. She said it was the hormones talking, and I’d be sorry. She also said that short hair would be bad with my “moon face”, which sounds mean, but I did gain 45 pounds during that pregnancy.My worst haircut was right after I’d started working in New York. I went to one of those drop-in places (in New York, that’s still a $35 haircut, not $10!) and got some lady who didn’t speak much English. She cut off about 2 inches instead the 1/2 inch I wanted taken off. And she hurt my head while shampooing me!I have to say that one of the worst things about moving a lot is finding new a new hairdresser.

>My worst haircut came at the worst time to have a bad haircut – freshman year of high school. I wanted so badly to be one of the cool girls…just admitting to that fact makes me unconditionally excluded, right? But there was a cute haircut going around my high school that year, and I had specifically asked one of the less snooty popular girls how to ask my stylist for it. It was really short, jaw length, and “stacked” up the back. Lots of layers stacked on top of each other to create a full, swingy backside. Sounds dreamy, no? I mean, for a skinny violin player like myself…full and swingy was all I ever could have wanted in a hairstyle. My older brother drove me to the mall, to MasterCuts. I’d always gone there in the past, and had no problems. Granted, I’d never had a bonafide ‘style’ that I was trying to achieve. My stylist that day seemed nice enough, and nodded knowingly when I told her what I wanted. She wasn’t very talkative, so I kept stealing glances her way in the mirror. It’s hard to look at someone who’s not talking to you without seeming like you’re staring. But stare, I did. Because she was twitching. Every now and then, she’d take the scissors away from my head (blessedly) and have a tiny glitch or something. Or her eyes would start to kind of roll back into her head while she took a deep breath. I swear! I don’t know if she was going through withdrawals of some sort, or had a disorder that made her do these things. Either way, it was nerve wracking. I was freaked out, but too nervous to ask for a way out of the hair cut. She always stepped slightly back from me during her momentary ‘episodes’ so I just sat it out. Trying not to stare. I was so distracted by her, um, mannerisms, that I didn’t pay too much attention to what was going on with my hair. When it was finally over, I looked at my new ‘do, and forced out a smile. She actually asked me how I liked it, so I had the opportunity to tell the truth. But I couldn’t. She seemed so fragile…or psycho…that I stayed quiet. Really, I would have stayed quiet anyway…I’m not a confronter.But my hair was all wrong! Instead of the shortest layers on top, she put them UNDER the longer layers. So the long ‘outside’ hair covered an inverted stack of layers. It looked like I had shaved the entire back of my head, and just left a flap of hair covering it up. Like an awful secret. There were some grunge/freaky kids in my school that actually had that haircut…along with black lipstick, chains, and Marilyn Manson’s clothes. Soooo not me. Marilyn Manson probably didn’t wear loafers and watch Saved By The Bell reruns. I started crying on my way out of the salon. My brother tried to convince me that it wasn’t that bad, but the next day at school, he was proven wrong. All day long, kids were asking me to lift up the back of my hair so they could see if it was shaved. Ah, memories.

>I think this subject deserves its own blog!! Your stories are all so descriptive and harrowing.I can’t believe I forgot my own hair horror story here in Nashville. This woman was so bad I actually forgot I used to go to her until just now. Her offense wasn’t so much the hair cutting as it was SOMETHING ELSE- Something just as bad!Here it is. The hairdresser part is in the second half of the post.

>Great hair! I would rather cut off my left boob than give up my Hair Goddess.

>My twin and I were 7 with white blonde hair to the middle of our backs. Our mother decided we were going to get PIXIE haircuts.We went to Thelma the hairdresser. Her cat had fallen off her 2nd story porch about a half hour before we got there.Needless to say the combination of her anxiety over her cat left us with the shortest, most uneven haircuts ever.In school on Monday our classmates LAUGHED at us and we hid in the coat closet crying….We went from adorable to hideous with one haircut.