do it yourself

I'm accustomed to getting odd reactions when referencing homebirthing or homeschooling. In my little world, neither are uncommon, though they both veer off track of the mainstream. But for every dopey comment some random grocery store checker has given me, for every pointed question an extended family member has posed, for every dropped jaw response from a passing acquaintance, I get all that and even more confused disbelief should I happen to mention home haircuts.

And what I always want to say (but don't because I'm not so confrontational in person), is Lighten Up, People! I take scissors and snip off my hair. I'm not talking a bathroom open heart surgery or some complicated medical procedure here (okay, so sometimes I have successfully closed a gaping cut with regular household super glue and avoided a trip to the emergency room), I'm talking hair. And you know what they say about hair: it'll grow back. What's the big deal?

I've been avoiding this task for months. I admit that making an appointment and having someone else cut my hair would be lots faster; it takes me the better part of an hour, usually, to do it myself. I start at the sides, the parts I can see easily, and just start cutting. I don't wet it first, I just grab and cut, grab and cut. And then I reach behind my head and do the bulk of the back by feel. When it's time for the fine trimming, I use a hand mirror to see what I've missed and do my best to even it all out.

In the last ten years, I've had only a few salon haircuts. Not many but enough to learn this: I am never as satisfied with my haircut as it cost me to have it done. No offense to any hair stylists out there, but I'm never thirty dollars (or forty or fifty, or, add some color and make it a whole hundred) dollars pleased. I usually come home and wince at my reflection, wishing I'd better articulated what I wanted. Or I come home and have to take off a little more, or even up the sides.

But when I do it myself, it can be a work in progress. Whoops, missed a spot. Unless I get a sudden urge to bring back the feminine rat tail, whenever I notice, I just grab the scissors and whack it off. Which is what I'd do if I found a tricky longer lock after a salon cut, but when I do it myself, I just shrug, I don't feel guilty about having paid someone else to do what I have to double check and fix at home.

And then, because I'm not paying someone else to do it, I'm not paying someone else to do it. I won't say that I'm forty dollars richer, because it's not like I'm building a tidy little nest egg out of my unspent haircut budget (which is to say, of all the things money is set aside for at our house, haircuts ain't it). It's a little like spending so much time at the goodwill and then getting sticker shock in a department store. It's hard to pay for brand spankin new retail when you're used to secondhand prices. Because I've cut my own hair for so long, even when I put it off and put it off and think wistfully how quick and convenient it would be to just walk in someplace and have it done for me, I can't do it.

You know that sinking feeling you get when you're sitting in a salon swivel chair, your arms tucked in your lap with that scratchy cape velcro'd around your neck, and you look down and see your hair all over the floor? And you think, what have I done? Do you get that feeling? I always did. But when I'm doing it myself, it's a little triumphant. Like, look at me being so bad ass I take the scissors to my own hair. Ha! Take that you straggley, neglected pieces. You've been weighing me down and aging me a decade with all your straggley, neglected straggley-ness and I've had enough. Snip.

It takes decent scissors (though if I'd been writing about this a few years ago, I'd have told you my tool of choice was the handiest pair of dull craft scissors; it's been fairly recently that I invested in a pair of sharp haircutting shears from the salon supply store), a good chunk of time and a little moxie.

And then, just like that, I feel like my old self again. Only maybe even a little better, because cutting your own hair builds confidence. You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, your hair looks terrific!

(hi.)