Category: Mutually Supportive Ranting

It’s really that I’ve gained weight and I’m trying to have fun with SOME part of my appearance, but this is bad, bad, bad.

I went in to get what the Hair Cuttery advertises as a $10 Color Zap. I had my hair colored very nicely there a month ago and it had faded. I had an event to go to in Chicago this weekend, so I went in for my ZAP.

They zapped me with the exact same color they used on my the last time, but it made my hair a dark, dead brown.
“Where’s the red?” I asked. The gal could see I was miserable.

“I think the last time you came in, you had all of those highlights. Now that they’re covered, it just didn’t take the way it should have.”

I’m not buying this AT ALL, but I said, “Well, it’s a dead brown and I’m depressed. Please fix it.”

OHHHHHHHHHHHH, she fixed it alright.

I now have pomegranate red hair. I have screaming raspberry lollipop red hair. I have “You’d Better Not Walk Out the Door Without A Carefully Considered Outfit And Make-Up Or You’ll Look Like A Bloated Old Hooker” Red Hair.

But that’s just my “identified issue,” as a friend helped me see. The real issue is that I am feeling lousy about myself and my appearance, and all of these hair misshaps are just icing on the cake.

THANK YOU SO MUCH to the lovely anonymous person who sent me the book Curly Girl, which has taught me how to deal with my officially formerly-undiagnosed wavy hair. I’m still confused by the whole new concept of not trying to blow dry it into submission, but I’m sort of enjoying the experimentation.

Please, no advice solicited on the low self-esteem and weight and food stuff. They are perrennial and I know what to do. Just sharing and hoping you’ll get something for yourself out of my struggles.

Pigeons.

I tried.
I let it air dry.
I did not brush it.
Sometimes, I brushed it.
I conditioned it. I used curling products.
I used sponge rollers.

It never looked anywhere as decent as it looked in that ONE halfway decent photo I took on the day I had it cut.
I learned a lot about curly hair.
And I learned that the cut I got was just wrong, wrong, wrong for my texture and type of hair.

Live and learn.

I am a professional. My hair has to look groomed, and it was not looking groomed. I had to keep it in a wide headband in order for it not to look like a frizzy, bedraggled mess (except for a few miraculous moments when it wasn’t — but those were rare).

I realized upon close inspection this morning that the hair was quite VERY unevenly, which was, of course, an interesting discovery. Nice to pay someone $50 to cut your hair unevenly!

Given that I live an hour from the salon, I visited my local MasterCuts tonight for a blow-out and decided to ask the stylist there to trim the cut and help redeem the shape from “square” to something more flattering. I swear I am not lying when I tell you that it was looking like Benjamin Franklin hair.

She did. She blew it straight. My heart sank into my feet as I realized I had one of those Suburban Mom cuts. But at least it’s not square anymore, and it’s even, and it’s shiny, and it will grow, and I can make teeny-tiny ponytails still (I would have cried if I couldn’t make my ponies) and I can add some product in the morning before church and give it some oomph.

I Suffer So We Can All Learn.

Day Two of Hair Cut:

I shampood it with straightening shampoo.
I towel dried it.
I put in KMS curly-making goo.
I blew it dry with a thingmajingy (diffuser).
It is straight and floppy and has jaggedy ends.
I added some Cocky by Bedhead to give it some lift and piece-out the ends.

It is just flop. Soft, lank, with a few waves and good body in the back but mostly a big head of nothing.

What I plan to try:
Blowing it out straight and forward with volumizing foam at the roots. I will piece out the ends with a more clay-like product.

(Believe me, I got a whole bathroom cabinet FULL of hair products.)