LJ Idol Season 8: Week 33; Ensemble
I often forget where I’m at, until something happens and then just like that, I realize I’m not in Kansas anymore. Or in my case, Missouri.
Growing up poor meant I didn’t spend large sums of money on my own vanity. Getting shoes from Payless or clothing from JC Penny was comparable to most women shopping at Bloomingdales.
Then I grew up and moved to Southern California. Damn you, Katy Perry. Damn you and all your glamorous California Girl talk. Because that’s just not my style.
Vanity is the norm around here, and has made me more than a little uncomfortable as I often shop for clothing at Target and would never spend more than $20 on a bag. Much less a haircut. Hair just grows back anyway and spending hundreds of dollars a month just to do it all over again next month? That seems like a waste to me.
I’m not ashamed of being frugal (aka a cheapskate) when it comes to things like haircuts. When it comes to a place like Great Clips though, it’s luck of the draw with whatever stylist happens to take you under their shears. It’s a risk but it’s one I was always willing to take in order to save money. When I had the interview for the job out here, I decided to splurge a bit and go to Supercuts instead since I wanted to look extra nice. My hair stylist was a punk rocker with a pierced face, fake black hair with pink streaks that stood straight up, but I’m not one to judge personal style so I sat down in her chair without a second thought.
I had hair that fell just below my shoulders so I asked for a simple angled bob. I pulled out photos of girls with soft, professional hair styles that I thought suited my face. With barely a glance, she started cutting my hair without so much as wetting it down. As I watched my hair flying through the air, I started getting nervous at the large chunks accumulating on the floor around my feet.
To keep a long story short, she gave me emo hair. The front still hung down in a shag to my shoulders. The back? Pure pixie cut all the way. There was no transition between the two sections, it was almost like two haircuts on one head. I was given a reverse mullet and I had a job interview two days later (and was also meeting the boy of my dreams for the first time too, and wanted to look especially pretty). I inwardly groaned at the train wreck on my head and had hoped a straightening iron might be my best friend once I got home.
I freaked out, but paid the girl so she wouldn’t lay another hand on my head. I rushed out of there and ran home to try everything. I tried headbands, bows, cute hats... Nothing hid the horror on my head or made me look acceptable for an interview. I was just about to start pricing wigs when I decided to scrounge up the cash to pay someone to fix it.
They had to take it all off. Meaning I had a full-blown pixie cut. While I always envied girls who could pull off pixie cuts, I am certainly not one of them. I have a slightly misshapen head due to a malformation, and with this particular style, it made me look like an alien.
I’ll admit, I cried a bit. Okay, I may have cried a lot. It’s just hair, sure... But I had gone in with feminine shoulder length hair and ended up looking like a male alien refugee.
I learned a very valuable lesson that day: Always be fearful of hair salons. Like dentists, they can ruin your life. I fear getting a haircut more than I fear going to the dentist for this reason alone. I’ve had my wisdom teeth pulled with only local anesthesia and have had dry socket to boot. Traumatic hair cuts can have that same effect on a person apparently. Or maybe that's just me.
It took almost two years before I worked up the nerve to let someone else touch my head again. I trimmed my own bangs, even tried to cut my own dead ends. My background hadn't included hair styling school, but I trusted my own hands over a supposedly trained professional. You could say that I developed some trust issues. Maybe a teensy bit.
On one particular day, I managed to work up the nerve to go into a salon and sit down. I watched as they worked their magic on other customers, I watched their techniques closely. There was one person I specifically didn’t want since it looked like she’d taken a hacksaw to her own hair. But it looked as if the hipster guy was going to pick me, which wouldn’t have been too bad in all honesty. However, he took some dude who came in behind me. Hacksaw lady was just about to call my name when I bolted out there as fast as I could, telling her I’d come back another time.
I obviously never did.
I Googled around, I made a million appointments and cancelled them again because I realized $100 haircuts were a bit too much. Or sometimes I’d come across one horrible Yelp review that concerned me and decided it just wasn’t worth the risk.
The struggle between vanity and frugality raged within me. Finally, I decided on a compromise; I made an appointment with a beauty school.
Before you think that sounds dangerous, let me explain. This beauty school is for a very elite salon. The folks who graduate here don’t go to normal salons in just any old town. Oh no. These people go to salons in Newport Beach and Beverly Hills where the starting price for a haircut is $200.
The Yelp reviews were excellent, and these people were trained by the best stylists in the state, and if there’s one thing to be said about California, it’s that this state is focused on being beautiful at all costs.
The place was all white with black details. No other color illuminated the building. A girl with her hair pulled back into a large bun atop her head greeted me at the counter and told me to have a seat in one of the leather sofas beside a large black and white mural.
Panic suddenly overtook me. What the Hell was I doing in a place like this? The atmosphere was so chic and glamorous, which made me feel out of place in my Old Navy jeans and t-shirt.
My name was called and it finally hit me that these were students. Students at a very elite beauty school, but still students nonetheless. Brianne, a girl in her early 20’s, led me back to her station. And she was dressed in, as you might guess, all black clothing which seemed to be the uniform around there.
She sat me down in the cold, hard chair and pulled my thick unruly hair from the pontytail clip.
"What kind of cut are you looking for?”
"Just a trim with some layers and maybe some bangs? What do you think?”
"What kind of layers? Straight layers, long layers, square layers...?” She started speaking a language I just didn’t understand. Usually a simple “layers” does the trick.
I gave her a dumfounded look.
Giving me a polite smile, the girl continued without waiting for an answer, "I think you’d look nice with some square layers angled toward the front, accentuating your face.”
That sounded good to me. Heck, it sounded fancy and like she knew what she was talking about. What could go wrong? Though in my head, I already knew the answer to that question. Everything.
She grabbed a marker and drew a head on the mirror. She drew lines coming from the head which I assumed represented hair. Her doodles weren’t perfect the first few times so she erased her drawing and started again. I hoped her handiwork with the scissors could surpass her artistic ability. Because with hair, there are no second chances or a way to glue it back on once it’s cut. But I just sat quietly and watched.
Thankfully, at a beauty school the students can’t even cut one single hair without an instructor’s approval. That helped calm my fears a bit since these instructors looked mighty classy and very stylish.
As we waited, I people watched. I was amazed at the different ways everyone dressed while still maintaining the apparent dress code of wearing nothing but black. Who knew the color could be so versatile? My girl wore black jeans with a simple flowing black top, she was by far the tamest of the crew. But a girl behind me looked like Lady Gaga with her hair coifed in a large beehive like style with pink and green streaks running through it. Her skirt was made of some foreign material, though it met the requirements of being black. Her shirt was fishnet and polyester and I noticed she had skull earrings to complete her gothic attire.
Lanky men in skinny jeans with fauxhawks talked to girls with lithe model figures wearing tank tops that likely cost more than my entire outfit. All in different shades of black. Many were gathered in what appeared to be a class room with doll heads, parting and trimming the hair as carefully as if they were dealing with a real person. I only hoped my stylist was just as attentive to her craft.
Every single person here was beautiful and they knew it. The vanity in the room just made me laugh to myself, it felt very Southern California to me. It was one of those moments when I realized I was not in the Midwest anymore. Not even close. I enjoyed watching the different types of beautiful people, the hipsters, the goths, the preppy nerd types... It was a fascinating experience all around.
Finally, a woman with an off the shoulder black top and jeans sidled up and listened as Brianne described my cut. She put her initials on the mirror and it was good to go. Without so much as a parting word to me, she glided off to another area, leaving me alone with her student and a pair of scissors.
Brianne washed my hair, gave me a complimentary head massage, and off we were to the cutting part. She worked slowly but surely, pinning parts up and letting them down again, trying to get the sections just right. It reminded me of her not-so-artistically-beautiful drawing on the mirror earlier and my stomach started tightening in fear.
She snipped away, and I noticed the chunks on the floor weren’t huge or very long at all. Which was a good thing for my nerves. When it came time for the bangs, the instructor returned. I was unsure of what I specifically wanted, I just wanted bangs. So they worked on me a bit before settling on a style they thought would suit me. Brianne trimmed but the instructor took over at times to make sure it was absolutely perfect.
After a quick blowdry with a round brush, she flipped me around to see. And Wow.
I had Zooey Deschanel hair. Which is my way of saying... I looked freaking fantastic.
I’d gotten a bargain and I knew it. I paid, left a very generous tip and headed for the door. As I stepped outside into the California sunshine, across the street from what I refer to as Snooty Coast Plaza, a very high end shopping mall that offers valet parking and instead of the typical Foot Locker, this place only features shoes from the likes of Christian Louboutin and Gucci (do they do shoes? See I don’t even know).
As soon as I stepped out onto the palm tree lined sidewalk, a man on a bike stopped next to me.
"What’s your name?” He asked with a smile.
He seemed friendly enough, so I answered rather sheepishly, "Kristen”.
"Well Kristen, you're very beautiful.”
He rode off, leaving me to blush to myself and wonder if the salon didn’t pay men to compliment the women as they walked out the door. Think about it. That would be one fine gimmick to get repeat customers. It sure as heck made me feel good.
Maybe a little vanity isn’t so bad after all. And I only had to pay twenty bucks for it.
(The above photo is of the famous haircut. Though it wasn't taken right afterward and the style flattened a bit by the time this photo was taken.)
(This is my second entry for Week 32 of therealljidol. They don't need to be read together since they aren't intersected in any way. Please feel free to head over to the group and read some of the other awesome takes on the topic. Thank you for reading.)