Bad Haircut, Great Lipstick?

Pretty much everybody has been frustrated by a hair stylist at one point or another. I didn't have to deal with that sort of frustration for about 10 years because I had very long, one-length hair, so if somebody made a mistake at my yearly trim, it was easily overlooked. They cut too much off? Eh, it's still really long, and it'll grow back. They cut it slightly uneven? Eh, I'll go to someone else and write the extra inch off as a necessary loss.

Then I went crazy and decided to get a "real" haircut. Those of you who've been with me since my YouTube heyday may remember this; I was pretty darn excited, and the results were exactly what I wanted. None of they layers were shorter than my chin, I could still pull my hair back easily, and it looked soft and full.

Unfortunately, I got this haircut when I still lived in North Dakota, and because I was so busy preparing to defend my portfolio and move back to Pennsylvania, I didn't have time to go back. Instead, my sister clipped out a buy-one-get-one haircut coupon for a salon I've never heard of, and I got a truly icky hackjob: the lady cut all of the layers out of my hair and made it quite short. I figured I'd let it grow out, especially since I'm nigh on flat broke, but my mom offered to buy me a quick little cut from her regular stylist, and I decided to try and get my layers back.

Alas, this woman just didn't listen to me. Don't get me wrong, she's a doll of a lady, and I didn't mind her so much when she trimmed my uber-long hair...but even then she didn't listen to me. I'd tell her to take off 2 or 3 inches, she'd take off upwards of 6. I told her not to use hairspray or to tease my hair in to a bouffant, she gave me a big stupid 80s beehive as a "parting gift." In a sense, she's just dense: you can repeat yourself a half dozen times (and believe me, I did), but it just bounces off of her like a she is rubber and I am glue, whatever I say bounces off of her and STICKS IN MY DAMN HAIR.

As you can hopefully see in these pictures, she not only cut my layers uneven, but she also cut them too short. Yes, there are layers that stop at my chin...but there are also layers that barely graze my eyeballs. She practically gave me bangs, and if there's one thing I don't have patience for, it's bangs. When I try to pull my hair back, I get tons of pieces that just dangle out, even if I do an obnoxiously high Gidget poinytail. And the bottom-most layer is so barely-there that, when I manage to get a braid in my hair, it looks like I have a raggedy rat tail.

And of course, she globbed a bunch of garbage in to my hair before I left the salon. My hair is prone to frizzing, and she knows this, so she asked if I wanted her to put any anti-frizzing product on before she used her blowdryer. Polite, yes, and politely declined, because I knew I'd be washing it the next day, and then I could use my own favorite product. So what does she do? She globs product on my hair! To make matters worse, it's an extremely heavy, sticky, shiny, stiff product; as she's rubbing it all over my scalp, she says, "Now, this is the EXTREME hold version, and I think it's just too much and too sticky, so if you wanted to use it, I'd say just get the regular one." ...WHY ARE YOU PUTTING IT IN MY HAIR, THEN?! This garbage just made my hair look like a disgusting 1980s mullet, and it pulled it down so much that it revealed big bald spots all over the top of my head.

When I finally got my glasses back on and looked at the result, I was kind of horrified, but I tried not to show it in front of my mother. "You really cut these layers too short," I said as gently as possible. She just stared at me blankly, so I pulled a tendril straight (it barely touched my nose) and showed it to her. "I actually showed you where I wanted these to hit."

Her excuse? My hair is fine and curly. Apparently, that makes me a unicorn whose opinions and preferences don't matter. And I must be the last unicorn, too, because I find it hard to believe she's never had another customer with fine, curly hair over the past 20-some years.

I was slightly less horrified after I washed my hair and got the gunk out, but it's still not what I wanted. People keep telling me it "looks really nice" and "isn't horrible, Renee, you're overreacting," but that really isn't the point. The point is that, once again, a hair dresser didn't listen to me and what I wanted. If she had some concerns about cutting my hair that way, ie, "I think that will make you look bad," then she should've said something. She didn't. She just didn't listen. And I'm just so tired of dealing with hair dressers and this sort of nonsense.

I have, fortunately, figured out how to  braid it at night. The shorter layers are so short that I can't braid them with the rest of my hair, and they're also too short for me to do the criss-cross braids I like. But I CAN, if I'm careful, braid the longer layers, then gather the shorter ones at the top of my head and do another braid. It feels kind of weird and it's a pain in the arse to do, but at least it keeps my hair from getting tangled at night.

BASE: Missha Perfect Cover BB cream in #13 + MAC Face & Body foundation in N1, Clinique Airbrush Concealer in 01 Fair, Skindinavia setting spray
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EYES: Too Faced Shadow Insurance, La Femme brow pencil in Taupe, Maybelline The Falsies mascara in Very Black, Milani Liquif-Eye eyeliner in Brown, Wet n' Wild eyeshadow in Brulee, MAC eyeshadow in Wedge, ELF Essential liquid eyeliner in Coffee
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CHEEKS: Milani mineralized blush in Luminoso
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LIPS: Vincent Longo Gel-X lipstick in Neu (blotted down), Jack Black lip balm