Soooooo, the Great Haircut was on the weekend. That’s my old-and-busted hair above. Begone!
The change didn’t turn out to be that dramatic in the end … or so I told myself until I had to wash my hair in the shower and my hands were grabbing nothing but air!
In the most basic terms: my hair was lightened and shortened and got some more layers.
Aesthetically, it’s gone from “long” to what my brain refuses to call “long” but concedes may be mid-long. Those readers with actual short hair may laugh at me as they choose! But it’s a definite change from my old style, and, I was assured many times, a definite “spring” look.
Assuming spring ever arrives in this godforsaken one-day-drizzle-and-fog, next-day-humid-like-whoa city.
My salon of choice is the ever-hip Get Funkd at the top of Lambton Quay, and that was reconfirmed when one of the new staff gave me literally the best scalp massage of my life. I’m getting relaxed just thinking about it. And my stylist is the lovely Katrina, in whose debt I am eternally for finally convincing me that a short-haired stylist can totally appreciate and do magic with longer hair.
Katrina asked to not be photographed, but you can witness her amazing handiwork nevertheless!
At various stages in the process I looked like a Giger painting, a (stylish) Dr Who villain, and … a startled lemur, apparently. Where’d it all go, I beseech the mirror.
But I had faith, especially in the power of ponytails to get me through the regrowth if it somehow did all go horribly wrong.
By the time it was blow-waved out into some nice volume with a bit of curl, I was no longer anxious (and after the aforementioned scalp massage, nothing could truly worry me), and after the straightening and final layering I was well happy.
I’m just going to dwell on these pics for a while, because Katrina, sage hairdresser of the cosmos that she is, did warn me (and I’d already suspected it): taking several inches off the bottom of my hair was probably going to result in a bit of bounce-back.
It’d eventually result in a lot more volume and probably awesome curl, but at first … bounce-back.
The hated word frizz may have been mentioned.
So I treasured this lovely, sleek hair for as long as I could, until the signs of the end times (ends curling up, sleekness turning to greaseness) were too strong to ignore.
Armed with new product (Joico, on special, plus a deep treatment and a Christmas gift of sample-size not-hairspray-but-it-holds-your-style-in-place Wella spray) I sallied forth into the shower. I experienced a momentary disorientation at the lack of weight, the lack of length. I pampered the crap out of it. I waved my fist at the gods (this often happens when I’m in the shower) and declared I would take whatever ridiculousness they would throw at me.
Clearly they heard, and trembled, because to be honest … I so totally rocked the consequent frizzy 80s hugeness.
That’s my “Come at me, bro” face, or as close as I get to one while taking stealth-photos in the work loo. One coworker assumed I’d deliberately curled it, and described it as a Charlie’s Angels look. It may settle down, it may capitalise on the humid awfulness of our current weather and grow even larger until we have to keep extending the barn to house it, who knows? I love it.
