As I reached for the handle and pulled open the salon's heavy glass door with one of my lanky arms, excitement consumed me. I was ready for a change, no longer wanting to look like all the other middle school girls it was time for my shoulder length brown hair and side bangs to go. Eighth grade marked a new year for me, one that I believed signified the end of my maturing. So, acting like any truly grounded adult I decided to get a trendy celebrity haircut. After countless hours of flipping through my most trusted middle school guidebook, Seventeen Magazine, I settled on a sassy bob a la Katie Holmes. Before I knew it I was sitting down in the stylist's chair showing him pictures of my dream haircut.
Just as the first piece of hair dropped to the floor so did my stomach. What was I thinking? The excitement from just a mere ten minutes before had dissolved and was now replaced by a sense of dread I had felt too many times before. It was too late to stop the stylist who was by this point wielding a pair of scissors in one hand and a lock of my hair in the other. As the layering and cutting progressed it only become more and more apparent that I couldn't have chosen a worse haircut for my face. The choppy layers and blunt bangs that the aforementioned magazine said would "frame my face and highlight my cheekbones" instead made my head look freakishly oval. The length was another issue altogether as the short cut exposed all of my neck, which now looked like it was more akin to that of a giraffe than of a human.
"Well, you can always put it in a ponytail!" exclaimed my mother upon laying eyes on my new do. If only this were the case. It would have taken dozens of bobby pins, gallons of hairspray, and maybe even a small crane to get all the short layers into anything that resembled a ponytail. I wish I could say that my classmates reactions were any better than my moms but sadly I was met with the same reassuring remarks about how fast hair grows out and how many different ways there are to pin bangs up with barrettes. Needless to say, I sat out the upcoming middle school social and opted to watch reality TV for the evening instead.
Though the experience was borderline traumatic for my middle school self my reputation and I managed to come out of it intact. After several weeks the horrendous situation on my head managed to grow out into a hairstyle someone might willingly have and I was able to attend social events again. I learned a lot of lessons from that haircut, one of them being never trust a magazine that suggests you ever wear a poncho or mix different animal prints "just to be edgy" and the other is that it's important to be yourself and try sometime different every once in a while. Even though this particular haircut didn't work out for me I did manage to differentiate myself and ended up keeping a somewhat shorter more sophisticated style. I admit that a little part of me is glad I went out on a whim and got what is hopefully the first and last bad haircut of my life.
Just as the first piece of hair dropped to the floor so did my stomach. What was I thinking? The excitement from just a mere ten minutes before had dissolved and was now replaced by a sense of dread I had felt too many times before. It was too late to stop the stylist who was by this point wielding a pair of scissors in one hand and a lock of my hair in the other. As the layering and cutting progressed it only become more and more apparent that I couldn't have chosen a worse haircut for my face. The choppy layers and blunt bangs that the aforementioned magazine said would "frame my face and highlight my cheekbones" instead made my head look freakishly oval. The length was another issue altogether as the short cut exposed all of my neck, which now looked like it was more akin to that of a giraffe than of a human.
"Well, you can always put it in a ponytail!" exclaimed my mother upon laying eyes on my new do. If only this were the case. It would have taken dozens of bobby pins, gallons of hairspray, and maybe even a small crane to get all the short layers into anything that resembled a ponytail. I wish I could say that my classmates reactions were any better than my moms but sadly I was met with the same reassuring remarks about how fast hair grows out and how many different ways there are to pin bangs up with barrettes. Needless to say, I sat out the upcoming middle school social and opted to watch reality TV for the evening instead.
Though the experience was borderline traumatic for my middle school self my reputation and I managed to come out of it intact. After several weeks the horrendous situation on my head managed to grow out into a hairstyle someone might willingly have and I was able to attend social events again. I learned a lot of lessons from that haircut, one of them being never trust a magazine that suggests you ever wear a poncho or mix different animal prints "just to be edgy" and the other is that it's important to be yourself and try sometime different every once in a while. Even though this particular haircut didn't work out for me I did manage to differentiate myself and ended up keeping a somewhat shorter more sophisticated style. I admit that a little part of me is glad I went out on a whim and got what is hopefully the first and last bad haircut of my life.