Fringe benefits

The quickest and easiest way to seek change is probably through your hair. It's amazing how you can be completely transformed simply through the act of altering it in some shape or form. Not always for the better though as I regrettably found out yesterday.

So every now and then I am possessed with the idea of tweaking my hair, I never follow these ideas through because I do actually love my hair as it is - I love the length and I love colour. My hair is long and dark, and I am not afraid to say, silky and glossy. It's what I get the most compliments from in life so naturally there is no valid reason to change something that is probably at its crowning best. Now I have a somewhat phobia of hairdressers, I have not, prior to yesterday, visited a hair salon for over a couple of decades. Honest. Hairdressers just have a knack for always getting it wrong, and my hair is my fortune so the possibility that it may be butchered by somebody too enthusiastic with a pair of scissors is a risk too high for me to gamble with. Sorry, I don't mean to incriminate or condescend hairdressers all across the land, I'm sure there are some that are efficiently skilled and talented at their art, but these are few and far between.

My hair, therefore, is maintained by myself, the only person I can really trust with it, and its routine is fairly simple - shampoo, condition and straighten, hair is to be dyed black if it begins to appear rather dull, and if the feathered bits that frame my face start to look too frayed or long then they are to simply be trimmed a little shorter. Nothing too technical for my unqualified self. And it works well as it's a ritual that has been perfected over the years. Anyway, so occasionally I am inundated with thoughts that make me question my hairstyle and attempt to persuade me to
explore hair variety. I have considered having my hair coloured lighter,
sort of like a caramel or honey tone, something like the images just above, it's such a pretty shade but I know it would mean endless hours at the hairdressers, and a hell of a lot of cash, plus my hair grows quite quickly so roots would become visible within a matter of moments, too much effort to conserve and cultivate for somebody impatient and lazy like moi.

I would never play with the length of my hair which kind of restricts me from a lot of the options available. Wavy hair is something I quite like the sound of as well. In fact my hair has a natural wave to it anyway. A few years ago I went all out and purchased a curly hair diffuser, heated rollers and many hair products designed for waves and curls, but much to my disappointment the look that I longed for evaded me. DIY waves are impossible to create. This is all I want dammit, is it too much to ask for:












So for the last week the prospect of a fringe occurred to me. I don't know where exactly from but it just popped into my head, and I couldn't rest until this prospect was executed. A flirty fringe seemed ideal, it's not dramatic enough to radically change my current hairstyle but is prominent enough to jazz it up a little. I browsed the net for fringes that would suit me, fringes that I quite fancied, and I managed to settle upon something quite soft, long and full, maybe even slightly sweeping, like so:

Armed with these images in my head, I ventured into Emma Claire where I tried to explain just exactly what I had in mind, the hairdresser appeared to acknowledge my description but the results that stared back at me from the mirror vastly differed from those that had been infiltrated in my brain. She had quite literally massacred my hair. I kept my head down the entire journey home, and could feel pedestrians staring and laughing at the disastrous excuse for a fringe that sat boldly on my forehead.

I am not even exagerrating, it is absolutely awful, just horrendous, it's of the Lady Gaga mould, not soft and feminine like I had hoped but just hacked at, crooked and pouffy, it reminds me of Monica's Dudley Moore casualty. So what can I do now besides cry, hibernate for all of summer and walk around with a brown paper bag over my head? Absolutely zilch. How exactly do you disguise or conceal something that is so central to your face and hair, something that is painstakingly verging on near enough impossible to grow out? My hair is my shield, what do I have to hide behind now? Looks like hair grips will be my trusty sidekick from here on.

So the moral of the story is that hairdressers are the sum of all evil, satan himself in fact. Now I know why they say 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.