I gave myself a haircut

I got myself a better camera on my phone, after breaking my old one washing it...

It is ridiculous how much it costs for women to get their hair cut. I was yelping around for hair salons a few weeks back, and all the “cheap” salons were like $40 minimum for a haircut (minus the stores in Chinatown). That compounded with the fact that almost every single place got bad reviews made me super anxious about getting my hair cut. When you have short hair (or at least when I have short hair) by the time it hits three months or so, I’m just itching to get it cut. Any longer and it looks like you’re starting to grow a helmet.

So I was thinking, I trust myself a lot, I trust myself to alter my own clothes, why not trust myself to cut my own hair? Plus, if it turned out bad, then at least I didn’t blow $40 and I only had myself to blame. So I decided to jump on Amazon to buy some clippers.

Before cutting my own hair I’ve only really had three other experiences on my CV. Before I came to college I decided to take a pair of scissors and do a straight chop on my bangs, while I was in Japan I briefly did my own side shave (which by any means did not look very good because I was so timid about it), and earlier this summer I cut my brother’s hair (he said it was choppy but he’s picky and no one ended up making fun of him).

I care a fair amount about my hair (like my urge to get it cut when it gets “too long”), but I’m of the camp that hair grows back, in fact it grows back way too quickly which gets me in the bind where I need to cut it every few months or so. Because hair grows back, I decided I could’ve live with myself if it turned out badly, plus the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is usually how you decide to own it.

I actually had a camera jerry-rigged, but I ended up taking too long so the batteries died way before I ever finished cutting. The thing about cutting your own hair is that you’ll always cut it way shorter than you planned, because you’re a perfectionist. I went over that fade in the back a bajillion times, and each time it got shorter and shorter and still looked wrong. Thank god I eventually was happy with the result, I would hate to imagine what the back of my head would look like otherwise.

So I’m locked inside this tiny bathroom, and it's 90 out and humid, so naturally I’m sweating all over the place. The tiny hairs that fell off my head would stick to my skin and prick me as I maneuvered my arms behind my head like a clumsy T-Rex. I don’t think my hand-eye coordination has ever been this bad, I was working by looking at a mirror, at a mirror, and I couldn’t tell what orientation was what anymore. Using the scissors was the worst. I ended up nicking the back of my hand once cause I couldn’t tell exactly where the scissors were spacially.

Am I pleased with my haircut? I would say so. And I can only get better and better at cutting my own hair. While we're on the topic of hair I have another story I want to tell.

So over the past year or so I’ve been experimenting with not shampooing my hair, there’s actually an entire neo-hippy movement called “no-poo” which despite its constipation connotations is actually short for “no shampoo.” It ranges from people using apple cider vinegar & baking soda to wash their hair, to people forgoing shampoo entirely and just using water. What people usually end up reporting back is that their hair is healthier and they can go more days without washing without looking like someone dipped them headfirst into a grease tank.

So I how I ended up doing the whole no-poo thing was actually due to pure laziness. Last summer before my internship I was staying at home for two weeks or so, and because I’m never there my shampoo was running dangerously low. I did what any other lazy person would do and just filled it up with some water, shook it up, and continued using the watered down version instead of going downstairs and asking my mom for a new bottle of shampoo. That worked out fine for two weeks and when I got to Tucson I was still rather shampooless, so instead of going out and buying shampoo I decided to forgo it.

Now I didn’t just go “screw it” and not use shampoo, I did do some research, and because my hair was used to using weak shampoo, transitioning to no shampoo wouldn’t cause it to freak out and produce more oil than usual. That summer was pretty amazing for my hair, I remember not having to wash my hair for up to five days and it wouldn’t feel oily, this is coming from someone who used to wash her hair every other day to fend off the grease monster.

Unfortunately this honeymoon stage didn’t last too long, while my hair didn’t feel oily or itchy for the next couple of months, it was starting to develop a waxy texture. And because it was so waxy, dandruff and dust would just stick to my hair and not come out. I bought a very fine tooth comb (some might argue it could be a nitcomb) and tried to comb out all the specks but it never worked, and it was proof that my hair was trapping dust.

This entire time my parents called me every week to beg me to wash my hair with shampoo and I would refuse. I didn’t want to admit that my waxy hair was a disaster and I didn’t want to go back to having to shampoo every other day. Eventually I got sick of my dust trap too and at the beginning of this summer my parents convinced me that I had to do something about it. But rather than go back to the silicon based shampoos that most people are addicted to, I decided to look for other alternatives and eventually settled on a natural silicon & sulfate free shampoo bar.

So I’m now three months on this shampoo bar, and my hair no longer feels waxy, is no longer a dandruff trap, and I can still go up to four days without feeling gross.