H is for Hair

H is for Hair

H is for Hair

H is for Hair

Folkcat, Sixth Grade (1970-71)

I have been blessed with a pretty good head of hair. With Swedish ancestry on my mother's side, and Scottish on my father's, my particular genetic cocktail handed me long, thick, blonde hair.

As a small child, I was a genuine towhead blonde. In my late teens, I was dismayed to realize that my hair had so darkened that I was forced to describe the color as "brown".

Ick.

Today, my natural color is sort of a mousy, dishwater brown. Every now and then, I turn it red with henna, and that color looks pretty darn good on me. Looking back at that sixth grade photo, I realize that there's always been a coppery hint in my hair, so maybe I just missed that color naturally.

The problem with my hair, generally, is that I didn't grow up going to salons to get it cut. In my teens, I didn't have friends who spent time fussing with hair and makeup and the like. So I never learned how to talk to a salon about what I wanted. I never got indoctrinated into salon culture.

For much of my life, that meant that I would let my hair grow long, pulling it back into a ponytail most of the time because it was the easiest thing to do. Looks sort of frumpy that way, though.

Every now and then, I'd venture into a salon, and make an attempt at communicating. Bad experiences include:

> Telling the stylist that I wanted my hair cut short, even showing her where I wanted it to come to, and having to answer her endlessly during the cut as she asked again and again, "Are you sure you want it that short?" Yes, I'm sure! You know, listening to your customer is considered a sign of good service. Why don't you do it?

> After a stylist shampooed my hair, I mentioned that I always had to use the conditioner at home, or my hair would tangle badly. You know how consumer shampoos always have a matching creme rinse/conditioner? That's what I meant. But because I didn't know the proper way to describe what I meant, she thought I was referring to a special conditioner treatment that cost $3 extra, and she applied that without mentioning the extra cost.

> I decided once on a whim to try a perm on my medium long hair. I had a vision of those long, really curly tendrils all over my head. I had a picture from a magazine of a woman with hair like that. My sister had hair like that naturally, and I'd always been fond of the look. I said, "This is what I want."

> First, the stylist had me go into a little room at the back and take off my top, putting on a smock. I presume this was to protect my clothing from the chemicals. She didn't tell me to come out of that room, and there was a styling chair in it, so I waited there for her. Finally, she came looking for me, thinking I'd fallen ill or something. I was embarrassed at not understanding such a simple thing.

> Second, what I wound up with was hair that kind of poofed all over my head, just a fuller version of my own natural hair. Not the curly tendrils I had desired, and had explicitly shown in a picture.

> And finally, I had visited the salon ahead of time to find out what a perm would cost, and had been given a specific price, which is what I had budgeted for. But when this perm was done with, I was told it would cost more because my hair was so thick. Yeah, maybe I should have argued that the perm I got wasn't what I wanted, and refused to pay anything. But I was so disgusted with the whole process that I just wanted to get out of there and never return. I did at least talk them down to the price I was originally quoted.

There are other stories about salons where I was expected to engage in inane small talk about current music and pop culture with the stylists, where I had miscommunications because I didn't know how to speak salon, and couldn't explain myself adequately.

To be fair, there are some good stories, too. Stylists always praised me for how thick and luxurious my hair was. When it's cut short, there's a natural wave to it that I've been told people pay a fortune to try to duplicate. And once, when I had my hair cut at a beauty school in Syracuse, I had students all over the floor behind me picking up snippets of my long, uncolored, untreated hair to use for their color sample homework.

Natural Waves at the Back

Eventually, I figured out that a simple blunt cut, with a slight angle downward from the face towards the back of the neck, gave a fairly good finished result. But even when I was able to convey that message, there was still the girly small talk issue.

I may be a girl, but I'm not girly. And even in the best of crowds, small talk makes me insane. My take on pop culture isn't mainstream, I don't follow current music, and...well, my tastes in pop culture occasionally shock or at least startle, and frequently take some explaining. 'nuff said.

Finally, I simply decided I wasn't going to bother exposing myself to such an annoying experience ever again. My hair grew longer, I got frumpy looking with the ponytails.

One day about 8 or so years ago, I got so disgusted with it that I grabbed a pair of scissors off my desk and started hacking away. Using the bathroom mirror and my sense of touch, I was able to work my hair down to a reasonable facsimile of the angled blunt cut that I had determined worked well for me.

When Gryphon came home from work that day, I asked him to check the back for uneven spots. He couldn't find a one.

I received a lot of praise in public about how my short hair looked, and people were always amazed when I said I cut it myself. I have to admit, I formed some doubts in my head about what it was that I ever paid a salon for, if this was so easy to do! (Mind you, I'm fully aware that hairstyling and cosmetology are highly specialized, trained skills, and I'm not taking them lightly! I have full respect for those who learn and fully understand this art!) I don't claim to have any comfort with the idea of cutting anyone else's head, but I seemed to at least have a knack for getting my own to come out right.

Folkcat Today

Since then, I'm the only person who has cut my hair. Typically, it grows until I decide I can't stand the length anymore, then I hack away with the scissors. I've gotten good enough at it that I don't usually bother with a mirror anymore, cutting the back only by touch.

With the right cut, that natural wave makes it look like I've had my hair expensively styled.

My color, these days, is getting a bit funky, though. What we see in this next picture is traces of a henna job from nearly two years ago near the ends, and my own mousy brown hair elsewhere.

Mottled Color

And if you look carefully, you can see that the part forward of the orange headband is starting to go gray. I'm not one to panic over such a matter, but it does add a third, non-coordinating color into the mix.

I'm happy with my hair styling. I'm not as happy with the current color. I'd do henna more often, but I actually need Gryphon's help applying it, and it takes most of an afternoon to deal with. Which makes it hard to fit into our lives.

And that's the story of Folkcat's Hair. Now I have to go figure out what "I is for..." is going to be!

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