Bad hair days don’t usually bother me like they did when I was younger. While I want to feel good about how I look on the outside, I realize that hair grows — if I have a bad cut or just a bad styling day, it’s certainly not the end of the world. Having said that, however, I’ve had some really weird things go on with my hair while living in China.
A couple of years ago I had spells where, for several weeks at a time, my scalp and hair became a strange combination of waxy and greasy, leaving an undesirable look that was masked only by sprinkling baby powder on my hair and combing it through (thank goodness I have light hair already). As quickly as that “ailment” arrived, it disappeared not long after never to appear again. Mind you, I had to try all kinds of home remedies I found out about online, including rinsing my hair in Listerine — yowza!
I visited a salon to talk about hair issues last fall and blogged about my findings (click here) because many of my friends also had issues ranging from thinning hair, to brittle hair, to just aging hair. We’ve heard of people with horrendous color treatments and really bad haircuts. It does affect us for sure, we want to look good, but it will grow back. A friend of mine shared that her barber dad used to say, “The only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about six weeks.”
Personally, I’ve salon-hopped while here like never before. In the states I was a loyal client, but here you sometimes have to shop around before finding someone you can sort of trust. I’ve tried one for cuts…another for color…switched again, all in the hopes of finding something consistent. I had it pretty much down, and then something made me mess with what works.
I just needed a trim to hold me over until my final cut/color prior to summer vacation. While some people will wait to return to their home country before getting their hair done, I figure it’s cheaper here and if I’ve found something I like well enough, I may as well go back home looking nice to start with. However, it was my regular hair stylist’s day off when I had the time to go in. Rather than wait until another time, I decided the more senior stylist – whom many of my friends go to and really like – would be fine to do it this once. Wow, was I wrong. I won’t print her name because she has a good reputation and I’m sure she usually does fine hair. But on me, it looked like a kindergartner who got loose with some scissors. The uneven chunks of hair lopped off the back when I asked for a long layered bob were shocking to me, a hatchet job I did not expect. It’s been over two weeks and I’m still working on how to style it so that it can grow out before being re-done – perhaps back home, this time.
As for the bad haircut/good haircut difference? Two weeks down, four to go…
Photo by debeer.jonathan of flickr.
