Why I hate getting a haircut
Since as far back as I can remember, visiting the hairdresser or barber has been an intimidating, embarrassing experience that seems designed to humiliate me. And yet everyone else treats it like some sort of fun outing from which they emerge, like a butterfly, oozing with joy about their new 'do, finely coiffed and strutting. I always emerge looking not unlike a goblin with mange, skulking home in the shadow of buildings, avoiding my reflection in shop windows and desperarely hoping I can sort out the hopeless mess on top of my head when I get in and shower out the 'styling'.
Why is this? Why is it so hard to get a decent haircut? My main theory has always been that I have an abnormally shaped head and face. But it also cannot help that I am singularly unable to communicate what I want to the person cutting my hair. I have no idea how you're supposed to do this. My parents never told me, and I certainly never picked it up at school. There seem to be two main methods; either you take in a picture of someone you want to look like, or a combination of styles you think might work, or you utter some instructions in an arcane technical language involving words like 'layers', 'no. 4', 'clippers', 'no. 6', 'feathering', or 'no. 8'.
I eventually got round to trying the first method, but the problem there is that most of the people in magazines that one wants to look like are rock stars or models, or at least are very photogenic and almost certainly a lot more attractive than me. That's why they're in magazines. Therefore, their hair on my head and face simply doesn't work. But this is easier at least than the second method, because in this case I simply haven't the faintest idea what any of these words they use mean. When I have asked what some of the words mean the answer has been just as baffling as the thing I'm asking about. And I've certainly never managed to string the terms together in a way that makes any apparent sense to the person snipping away at the top of my head.
Whenever I go to get my haircut therefore, following an agonizing period of a few weeks when I realise that I'm starting to look like Keith Chegwin or Rod Stewart, I try some variation on 'like it is already, but shorter please'. The hairdresser then askes me various questions I don't understand which I answer with either a non-commital grunt or a rambling paragraph ending with 'like it is already, but shorter please'. They then start cutting my hair, and at this point I find it best to stop watching. They are going to do what they are going to do whether I want them to or not, I find, and it's easier not to witness it until it's done. Whenever I do interject with a 'no, not like that please', they pause what they're doing, look at me exasperatedly, and say 'yes, but if I don't do that then the flange vestibule of your trouser line won't match the colour-fastening of the backwards infibrillation mounting, and that's what you asked for before' or something similarly incomprehensible, and I usually back down having nothing else constructive to offer. And then they style my hair in a way completely unlike what my hair looked like when I went in, and which I am entirely incapable of replicating when I get home no matter how much I try. And then I pay and walk, desultorily, home.
I spend the next 6 months cutting my own hair just to save on embarrassment, until it gets so out of control I can no longer cope with it and the whole cycle starts once more. Is there some secret everyone else is aware of but which I have somehow missed?
Why is this? Why is it so hard to get a decent haircut? My main theory has always been that I have an abnormally shaped head and face. But it also cannot help that I am singularly unable to communicate what I want to the person cutting my hair. I have no idea how you're supposed to do this. My parents never told me, and I certainly never picked it up at school. There seem to be two main methods; either you take in a picture of someone you want to look like, or a combination of styles you think might work, or you utter some instructions in an arcane technical language involving words like 'layers', 'no. 4', 'clippers', 'no. 6', 'feathering', or 'no. 8'.
I eventually got round to trying the first method, but the problem there is that most of the people in magazines that one wants to look like are rock stars or models, or at least are very photogenic and almost certainly a lot more attractive than me. That's why they're in magazines. Therefore, their hair on my head and face simply doesn't work. But this is easier at least than the second method, because in this case I simply haven't the faintest idea what any of these words they use mean. When I have asked what some of the words mean the answer has been just as baffling as the thing I'm asking about. And I've certainly never managed to string the terms together in a way that makes any apparent sense to the person snipping away at the top of my head.
Whenever I go to get my haircut therefore, following an agonizing period of a few weeks when I realise that I'm starting to look like Keith Chegwin or Rod Stewart, I try some variation on 'like it is already, but shorter please'. The hairdresser then askes me various questions I don't understand which I answer with either a non-commital grunt or a rambling paragraph ending with 'like it is already, but shorter please'. They then start cutting my hair, and at this point I find it best to stop watching. They are going to do what they are going to do whether I want them to or not, I find, and it's easier not to witness it until it's done. Whenever I do interject with a 'no, not like that please', they pause what they're doing, look at me exasperatedly, and say 'yes, but if I don't do that then the flange vestibule of your trouser line won't match the colour-fastening of the backwards infibrillation mounting, and that's what you asked for before' or something similarly incomprehensible, and I usually back down having nothing else constructive to offer. And then they style my hair in a way completely unlike what my hair looked like when I went in, and which I am entirely incapable of replicating when I get home no matter how much I try. And then I pay and walk, desultorily, home.
I spend the next 6 months cutting my own hair just to save on embarrassment, until it gets so out of control I can no longer cope with it and the whole cycle starts once more. Is there some secret everyone else is aware of but which I have somehow missed?