I was already in desperate need of a haircut (and color adjustment) in early March. Since I was sick for the first two weeks of March, however, I had to postpone my appointment. Then came the stay-at-home order, and I had to postpone my salon appointment again – this time until early May. I thought I could make it that long, but when the County Executive announced last week that he was extending the stay-at home order “indefinitely”, I decided I had to take matters into my own hands.
One would think that since I’m working from home and not going anywhere, I wouldn’t really care what I looked like. That might well have been the case, but for Zoom. Pre-coronavirus lockdown, after leaving the house in the morning I might have gone all day without looking at myself in a mirror. Now I have hours of Zoom meetings every day. This means I spend hours a day looking at myself on my computer screen. (Yes, I know that there is an option in Zoom that allows you make it so that you can’t see yourself, but what if I have food on my face or lipstick on my teeth and don’t know it – or even worse, what if because I can’t see myself I forget that others can still see me, and then do something embarrassing?) In addition to having been without a haircut since December, I should also add that I stopped dyeing my hair last October and am in the process of “going natural,” which means that I have about 3-4 inches of white/gray hair and the rest is an over-processed blonde color, the latter being an attempt to reduce the contrast between my previous auburn color and the new growth. (BTW, this look has a name now: grombre!)
The many, many hours over the past six weeks that I’ve spent looking at myself on Zoom ample opportunity to obsess about how awful my hair looks and fantasize about getting a hair cut (and to imagine how I might look like Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones once my hair is grown out and mostly white). So, when I found out that our county stay-at-home order was going to be extended “indefinitely” and that I was going to have to go even longer without a salon appointment, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to attempt a home haircut.
This was a huge decision for several reasons. My hair is very important to me, and I am a firm believer in the power of good quality haircut (and salon color). In my experience you usually get what you pay for when it comes to hair, and one gets a good quality hair cut from someone who has lots and lots of training and experience doing it – an expert. I have almost no experience cutting hair. Furthermore, I am a firm believer in going by the consensus of the experts in a given field (as opposed to following the advice of the few dissenters, which is why I vaccinated my kids, think that global warming is a thing, and don’t believe that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time less than 7,000 years ago). The expert consensus among hairstylists everywhere – including my own beloved stylist of over 16 years – is that we should resist the urge to cut our own hair and just wait it out.
But I felt that I couldn’t keep looking at myself every day on Zoom unless I had a haircut. Furthermore, even if the experts advise against home/self haircuts, I have friends who cut their own hair, and I think their hair looks just fine. So I ordered some clips, a cape, and hair cutting shears. (The shears are particularly important, I’m told. If you are contemplating your own home haircut and don’t have shears yet, you should order some ASAP – as of two weeks ago, most of the lower priced shears were out of stock or back ordered.) While I awaited the delivery of my purchases, I researched self hair cutting techniques. I won’t bore you with many details, but if you, yourself, have researched self hair cutting techniques and are curious about which ones I used, it was a combination of the pull your hair to the front under your chin and put it in a pony tail and the pull your hair to your forehead and put it in a pony tail techniques, plus some blending.
The result after three, nearly hour long hair cutting sessions, was not too bad. I wish I had taken a photo to prove it. The problem was that I couldn’t settle for “not too bad,” when it could potentially be better. Thus, I kept cutting a little more and a little more every day or so. It didn’t get better, though. In fact, I think it might be getting worse. It’s definitely getting shorter. My partner keeps talking me down whenever he can tell that I’m thinking about cutting more. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hides the scissors from me.
The long and short of it (pun intended) is that perhaps I ought to have listened to the hair experts, after all. Now I’m even more desperate to get to the salon. In the meanwhile, I’ll just have to settle for a pony tail.
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