This post was started in 2012, but it's still true!
Back in graduate school, thanks to a curly-haired friend who used a forum on a website then called naturally curly (which seems to have since been bought out) to find amazing hair-cutting people. These people were amazing, even though my hair isn't particularly curly (it does get a wave when it's shorter, but it hides when my hair is longer). I could just say, I'd like something shorter and easy to take care of that will grow out fine and doesn't make my face look fat, and they would give me a new and different haircut each time. It was always really sad when they would disappear (generally moving out of the city someplace cheaper to live).
One day in grad school when I was between stylists, I was sitting in the open and a woman came up to me and said I needed a haircut and she was training to be a haircut person at a fancy salon and my face was perfect for the cut she was learning and did I want a free haircut. And I did, and she was right and I looked great in the bob she was learning, and then in the graduated bob she mastered a few months later. She told me if I was every stuck someplace without someone who knew what they were doing, I should ask for a graduated bob since it's a basic cut people learned.
And so I moved here, and people at the salon would want more instructions than what I gave, or they'd just do a straight cut at the bottom, so I'd ask for a bob or a graduated bob and I would get it and then I'd be bored of that cut, which the NYTimes would eventually derisively label "the mom cut" precisely because it is easy to take care of and grows out.
On my first foray out into a professional salon since the pandemic started, I ended up with a straight cut at the bottom, though I guess completely straight isn't in as the last step was to feather the bottom. (Also 2/3 of my hair (the bottom 2/3) is now completely white. That was not true 4 years ago. I feel like Obama post-presidency.)
I miss hair artists who look at your face and find a cut that's a match for your face. I miss professionals who tell you what they're doing and why. And who tell me things about my own hair, like my natural wave or how I have surprising amount of very thin hair or where the part is. Like the good phlebotomists who always start with a tourniquet and have a stress ball handy, the best hair professionals usually start by figuring out my part rather than asking me.
Anyhow, this is just to say I miss having people cut my hair who think of it as an art and a science rather than just a job, and who look at my lack of direction about the specific cut as an opportunity to experiment rather than an annoyance.
How do you find someone to cut your hair? What kind of instructions do you give them?
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