HOW TO: Cut your hair in quarantine
Dear Raquel,
I need a haircut and a dye job BAD. I am thinking about just winging it and trying to do it myself.
What do you think?
Sincerely,
Dead Ends
Dear Dead Ends,
It was a matter of time before I got this question. Step away from the scissors, I REPEAT: STEP! AWAY!
We tend to do crazy things to our hair in times of desperation. Actually, idk if that’s a universal truth but it feels right. I could write a full book on the highs and lows of my mental health as told through my various hairstyles — it would be long and it wouldn’t be pretty.
Chapter One: Sun Glitzing
In grade four my mom takes me to the local “salon” in my town of 2,000 people and I get subtle blonde highlights that the owner calls “sun glitzing.” I’m young and dumb so I spend the next seven years earnestly calling highlights that like I’m some sort of trust fund kid. They actually look great but I’m in grade four and somehow acutely aware that getting your hair done at that age is a bit gauche. The ‘lights are done via cap (an archaic method where the hairdresser places a swim cap-esque plastic bag on your head and ties it up under your chin before spending an hour stabbing your skull with a pointy hook, pulling strands of hair through the tiny holes and bleaching said strands.
Chapter Two: eMo niTe <//3 *
I’m impossibly obsessed with emo music and MSN and really want that haircut that looks like you’re wearing a helmet all the time, face framed with razor cut layers. As a compromise, my mom lets me box dye my medium brown hair with jet black Nice N’ Easy and it looks so bad but I do it for five more years just to be sure.
Chapter Three: Bangs
An Armenian hairdresser whispers in my ear, “ya wanna look sexy like Kim Kardashian?” And I, 16 and possibly the ugliest I’ve ever been think, “well yeah, sure.” Suddenly, I have the thickest, bluntest bangs covering my greasy forehead. I cry the entire way home from the mall salon.
Chapter Four: Red hair dye
Willingly dying one’s hair red from a box doesn’t require a formal explanation. I was clearly in the midst of a full-fledged mental breakdown.
The point is, we all make mistakes. Christ, I did the bang thing TWICE in high school and spent months clipping them up in a pompadour like it was the 80s. It looked like I was wearing a Bumpit 24/7.
Another time, during my box-dye jet black phase, I took a pair of dull kitchen scissors and hacked my long hair to my shoulders. The haircut itself was passable, but it was the context in which it was done that’s of note. I was feeling desperate, anxious, a little out of control and bored. No time to be wielding scissors at my head and you shouldn’t be either.
For some of you, this is the first real hardship you’ve had to go through — and I’m here to tell you, if you’re biggest concern is your grow-out then you’re doing alright!
Hacking your hair off with kitchen scissors or doing an at-home dye job sounds like a surefire way to assert some control out of a situation that feels anything but. But trust me, it will not work out. You will become a meme. Your friends will tell you it looks great but they’ll exchange worried texts back and forth outside of the group chat. Personally, I will call the police.
In the 70s they just grew their hair out for years and based on the murder documentaries I watch, didn’t own hairbrushes or purple shampoo and yet everyone was impossibly hot. How about we try harnessing some of that biiiiig free love energy, amirite?
My advice: Step away from the scissors and stay the fuck home. You need bangs or at-home highlights about as bad as I need to get married on Instagram Live.
