Bear with me, gents, while us chicklets indulge in some Girl Talk.
wook! See update, below!!!
Over at Out of Debt Again, Mrs. Accountability discovered a cool gadget to allow a woman with long hair to create a DIY bob at home. She tried it, and it turned out looking pretty darned nice.
This led to a rumination on the cost of hair maintenance, something I’ve held forth about, too. For years I wore my hair at shoulder length, partly because SDXB liked long hair, partly because I enjoy the sensuality of long hair, too, and partly because it saves huge wads of money when you don’t have to traipse into a salon once every four to six weeks. But eventually I got it cut short. It looked a lot better, and the effect on strangers, who had been given to taking one look at me and dismissing me as poor white trash, was marked.
When I got laid off, I could no longer afford Shane the Wonder-Stylist, and so he and I parted ways. For a while I was going to a woman in Tempe who did a good job, but that’s a long drive, and besides, just the site of the GDU campus gives me a flinch reflex. Once my work there ended, I started looking for people in town. Have been through four of them; one was very good, and the rest…well…
Last time I went in to the newest stylist, she cut my hair so short you could see my scalp through what remained! Since my hair is very thick, that’s telling. She cut off all the natural curl, so I could no longer scrunch it into a cute style and I had to stand in front of the mirror dorking with a hair dryer to get myself presentable enough to be seen in public. I hate that.
Since then I’ve been trying to let it grow out, figuring when there’s finally something to work with again, I’ll go back to the Tempe stylist. It’s been weeks and my hair is still too short to work with. And it just looks terrible.
The problem is, it’s very hard to describe to a stylist what you want, especially if you want something nonstandard like not having bangs flopping down on your face. “Please cut it short, go with the natural flow of the curls and waves, and don’t leave bangs falling in my eyes” doesn’t seem to register.
However, recently I found this handy site, which reveals the specific stylist-speak names of haircuts and coloring patterns. It’s kind of cool, because…mirabilis! It gives you a way to talk to your hair stylist! The drawings give you a clue to what each style should look like, and the names attached to them apparently are standard names for specific styles.
The site not only gives you the names of popular styles, it suggests what to say to the stylist to communicate what you have in mind: “Keep layers long in back and choppy all around. This cut is all about movement. Add heavy, uneven bangs. They can be tucked behind ears or left in front of face.”
If you google the style names given here, most searches will bring up photos showing what the cut looks like on a real (or nearly real) human being. Google “short bob” hairstyle (with short bob in quote marks), and up come a number of sites with images, some of which suggest my trashed hairstyle may be no worse than anyone else’s…
At any rate, it gives you a starting point for talking to your stylist: at least you can know what the style you think you want is called!
Update:
Mrs. Accountability reports that she did not use the bob-making device to get the cool hairstyle shown on her site. In fact, that style was created by a living, breathing, paid stylist.
Je m’excuse!