What's the worst your hair has ever looked? Was it all your fault?

Cheer me up here, girlfriends. I tried an "experiment" today where I used only half the amount of drabber in my dye solution that I usually do, and ended up with marigold roots, and ends in that unlikely Porti di Rossi shade of platinum. I think my error was compounded by the fact that I used the wrong color dye, since L'oreal recently changed the pictures on all their Performing Preference boxes. I don't know whether I usually use "lightest natural blonde", "lightest beige blonde", "lightest ash blonde", or "lightest golden blonde"! I just know what the chick on the box looks like! YOU L'OREAL PEOPLE ARE FUCKING WITH MY SYSTEM!

Alas, it is too hot to wear a hat.

Shampooing has only made matters worse. This is even uglier than the time I used some cheaper haircolor that my friend Hollie had recommended. (Why I take coiffure advice from someone who once sported Grover-blue dreadlocks, I don't know.) Seconds after I rinsed it out, I dialled her number, and when she picked up I immediately hollered "You ORANGED me!"

Have you ever been oranged (or, as my friend Kate was when she tried Perisian Black Henna, greened?) Poodled? di Rossied?

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), July 27, 2000

Answers

I've been lucky. I've never had a horrible perm, cut or dye job.

But, I was responsible for one.

I convinced my bestfriend to dye her shoulder length, bleach blonde hair black.

We didn't do it gradually. We didn't go to brunette and then to black. No, we found a perfect box of Snowwhite Black and went to it.

Her hair turned green, gooey and fell out. All in one afternoon.

Her sister was smart enough to take her to a professional as quickly as possible. She went to bed that night with short-short bleach blonde hair. This was in 1990. She styled a very Roxette look to our senior prom later that week.

I still feel guilty.

-- Jackie (jackie@jackie.nu), July 27, 2000.

I used a metallic based strip-and-dye on my hair in high school, trying to get that whole Cyberpunk silver 'do, and ended up with straw-line grey hair on half of my head, and. . . well, mangy spots. I ended up shaving the side that fell out, and dying the side that was left.

Oh, I was just too cool for myself. Aaargh!!

-- Saundra (headspace@anywherebeyond.com), July 27, 2000.

the worst it's ever looked? hmm, i think that would be this month.

i decided i wanted to change from a single length blunt cut to something "more stylish." oh yes, very good decision.

i was looking for something that would frame my face, but which would be a little longer in the back. something cutesy. something a little trendy.

i went with christine, the asian lady i have come to know at my usual salon. i decided to be spontaneous and not make an appointment with my usual guy, bill. i figured, she knows me. this'll be fine.

oh, those fateful decisions.. like engaging in conversation with the stylist. *grimaces* having already established the chosen length, i described my shortest previous haircut in some detail - speaking in the past tense and thinking nothing of it.

well!

let's just say that when my bangs were reduced by 3/4 of what they had been, i knew i was in for it. i got the strangest cut; i was truly baffled by how it turned out. i just couldn't *fathom* how a) she thought this looked good (layered, longish and gay looking on top, short in the back), and b) how we'd gotten there.

i said, ok... we are going to have to do some experimentation here because this simply isn't going to work. so what did she do? she cut it shorter! in exactly the same style.. no rehaul, no experimentation.. just wavy on top, and short around the back.

i went to consult with a stylist @ a frou frou salon. she thought it was growing out from a previous cut. i said, no no.. this is 2 days old. LMAO

it was my fault for assuming she knew the difference between describing something i'd had and what i wanted now. she never bothered to show me the back before i left the salon. as i drove home, i figured out why: she'd cut my hair into a little point at the bottom, and that explained it *all*. that last short cut i'd had also ended with a point. it was like a little exclamation point to me. *lol* jesus! i will never do that again.

-- Erin L (shamrockprincess@hotmail.com), July 28, 2000.

I was sucked in by Sun-In. It was supposed to put blonde highlights in my hair, using the heat from the sun or a hair dryer.

It would have worked, I suppose, if my hair had been anything close to blonde. It's not, though. It's dark auburn.

My "highlights" were orange. Not neon orange, but orange enough.

What was I thinking?

-- Laura (windmills@diaryland.com), July 28, 2000.

I was 19, just moved down from the country to start my new job in the city, so I thought I'd get my hair permed to celebrate the new me. I did not know at the time there was a great deal of difference between wash and wear, and a spiral perm. I got, on the advice of the hairdresser, the wash and wear. I looked like a startled merino. I also learned why they called it wash and wear; the only time it looked less Holly Hobby and more actually curly was when I had just washed it.

I was 17, in Year 12 in aforesaid small country town. I suffered a lapse of memory, completely forgot that the hairdresser was Not the one you told to cut your hair short. I wanted shoulder length bob from halfway down my back short. She gave me Courtney Cox in that Bruce Springsteen video short. It didn't look too bad, but it was very much "Oh Jo, how Could You!". My mother spent the first hour or so, after smiling politely at the stranger walking up her driveway who turned into her daughter with no hair, murmuring "your Hair...!"

I was 15, and away at boarding school, poor as, having spent all my limited funds on god knows what, so I let one of the girls cut my fringe. (that's bangs to you US'ns) "Ooops. I'll just straighten that out. pause. Ooops, I'll just straighten *that* out". I ended up with a 2 cm long fringe. I spent the next 3 months with a tic, knowingly and unknowingly pulling the front of my fringe down in case I'd magically turned into grow your hair barbie, and it would lengthen down from tonsure length.

Not to Mention the 60's wallflower hair style I initially was given in July 1997 on my wedding day, Kymm, I believe you have the happy snaps of that??

-- Amanda Page (amanda@amandasprecipice.com), July 28, 2000.

The worst thing that I ever did to my hair was when I was sixteen, with my mother's help.

I'm a natural blonde, and I've been dying it red since I was eighteen, but before that I was doing the highlight thing, since it was getting to be a pretty dark blonde.

I have no memory what colour we were going for, something in the blonder-than-my-natural-colour range, but this was the first time that we did it at home, I think, rather than a salon, and we did it once, and the colour was appalling, whatever it was, so we decided to try and fix it, but my hair wouldn't take the dye and it ended up a light blondish/pinkish/orange. It was one of those colours that you see on those old ladies who dye their hair colours not found in nature.

We have a Poloroid of me grinning with my funny hair, but it doesn't show exactly how nightmarish the colour is, you know how dark Poloroids are, and it doesn't show me weeping half an hour later when I realized that I had to go to school the next day looking like that.

-- Kymm Zuckert (kymmz1@yahoo.com), July 28, 2000.

When I was in high school I shaved half my head and dyed the rest of my hair bright blue. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I bleached my hair with the stuff you use for bleaching moustaches and it burned my scalp and turned my hair into straw. You could break it. If you bent a hair in half, it would break. I had to put all those goopy things on it right away and even so it felt horrible and soon turned green.

I don't regret it, though. But I do regret bleaching my eyebrows in an attempt to dye them blue too. The skin still hasn't recovered after eight years. I don't know how that can be true, but it is.

-- Jessie (sorokin@alum.mit.edu), July 28, 2000.

Such a timely question for me, except I have to invert it. What's the best your hair has ever looked? Trust me, this is not a common occurrence for me.

I turned 40 this year, and I start an awesome new job with CNN when I get back from vacation in two weeks, so I decided to get a fancy new 'do from an uptown Buckhead stylist. Many, many years of Great Clips and Fantastic Sam's $9 cuts left me with... crummy looking hair that I decided to ignore and twist up on the back of my head, thinking that if I didn't care, no one else should either. And it was getting progressively less and less blonde.

Is my mother the only one who says, "Do you need to borrow my comb?," upon meeting? (Think of the delicious tautological possibilities in that sentence. She's no dummy, me mum.)

So I went to said fancy-pants Buckhead stylist last night, and before the highlighting began, he brushed out my shoulder-length, frizzy, perm-growing-out hair, twisted it around and cut off a hunk. "No sense in highlighting what we're not going to need," he says cavalierly.

So we highlight, and shampoo, and start cutting and he obviously is taking to heart my brave, "Oh, I trust you, do whatever you think is best." My hair is shorter than it has been in, easily, 20 years, around my ears, with great bangs and one side I tuck behind an ear and the other side is swell and floppy. This was weird: I started to cry when he was blowing my hair dry because, as I told him, "You've made me look pretty." Really, I was very impressed with my self.

OK, to answer the original question, what's the weirdest thing you've ever done to your hair? As I walked out, ready to drive away into the velvet twilight of an Atlanta evening, the receptionist says, "That'll be two hundred even." As we say in the South, I about died. But what can you do? So I added $40 for tip, wrote a check out and sailed away.

Two out of three of the males in my house hate it. I don't care. I love it. It was -- dare I say -- worth it.

-- Heather near Atlanta (BeauMc1956@aol.com), July 28, 2000.

After walking out of the salon and letting the stylist *poof* my hair up.

And I'm talking major height here. Thankfully I never get anything more complex than a slightly layered blunt cut so I have no real horro r ... oh wait.

Take it back.

The worst was when I was 4 years old. I used to get curlers in for parties at school and this generally resulted in soft ringlets. Very pretty.

This one time, something went drastically wrong and I had a 'fro. Four years old and going to a birthday party with a 'fro. And an uneven one at that. Even getting my head wet didn't help.

It was awful.

-- Beth K. (owl@littleowl.com), July 29, 2000.

Things are not looking up.

Poor hair was so traumatized that every time I combed it ends would break off. My friend Hollie is coming into town next week and was going to cut it for me, but I decided I couldn't wait and yesterday I started snipping away at it myself. I rationalized that I just have a straight cut, and it doesn't take barbers more than ten minutes to trim it, so I might as well save a few precious dollars.

Snip... snip... I kept combing it out and noticing that the edge was all jagged, so I'd have to hack off some more to even things up. As the tops of my feet disappeared under a layer of faux platinum locks I heard an actual voice in my head telling me to STOP RIGHT NOW. I ended up walking over to Supercuts with half my damp head shoulder-length and the other half several inches longer. Of course they were busy and I ended up having to sit around for half an hour looking like I ought to be straighjacketed. When I finally got a stylist I went over the whole story, making the mistake of saying "I have a simple cut, and it seemed like it would be easy..."

"You think this is EASY?" she asked edgily. I spent the rest of my time in the swivel chair elaborating on how I hadn't meant that as it sounded, and cosmetology was such a skilled profession and I had no idea what was involved until today when I foolishly took it upon myself to attempt it, about as wise a move as performing my own appendectomy... She was eventually mollified and even let me grab whatever I wanted out of the free sample box before I split (but after I tipped her.)

It's still not curling up like it used to. Every follicle is waving the little white flag of surrender. SIGH.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), August 04, 2000.

Kim, I did the same thing one: peroxided my brown hair orange, decided it would be simple to cut off the damaged ends, gave myself an avant-garde asymmetical cut, and ended up going to SuperCuts to salvage what was left of my hair. The stylist didn't bother muffling her derisive laughter.

I was 15 when I did this, and had previously chalked up the experience to callow youth. Now I recognize it as an early sign of my control-freak tendencies as applied to hair.

-- Lisa Schmeiser (lisa-nospam@schmeiser.com), August 04, 2000.

Yo, I just got the first professional haircut of my life, probably the only time I've ever had truly Short Hair, and guess what?

My hair is curly!! My head looks like when I was three! Except I'm not blond anymore.

I am STOKED.

-- Jessie (sorokin@alum.mit.edu), August 14, 2000.

Hmmm, i think the worst thing i ever did to my hair was i trusted it to my mother. THREE TIMES!

You'd think once would be enough.

I let her cut my bangs at the age of ten. I figured, her mother did them all the time and they looked great, so surely gentics would pass down the ability to cut a straight line. By the time my mother got them straight, my bangs were, uh, "wee". Recall, i was twelve. We're talking about 1984, which is not the year when baby bangs were in style.

I let her give me a home perm a year or so later. Why i would do this after the bang fiasco is beyond me. I must have been under mental stress. She turned me into a poodle. People giggled at my hair for weeks. Sadly, it was long enough to be a big old poofy thing, but short enough that i couldn't put it up in a ponytail.

Two years later, i let her put her barb-wire-style curlers in my damp hair before bed. Proving she is the meanest mother in the world, she would not allow me to stay home from high school the next day when my hair was SO TIGHTLY CURLED that it was a whole 2 inches shorter.

When it came time for me to experiment with hair dyes, i elected to avoid my mother.

-- Sherry (sherina@masc.ca), September 07, 2000.

Sigh.

First i said i was ten, then i said i was twelve, then i mentioned 1984, which puts me back at ten.

For those of you who got confused, i was indeed ten. I don't know where the twelve came from.

I blame everything on "not enough coffee to be posting" at the time.

By the way, for the record, i am currently attempting to grow my hair to about collarbone length. It's currently just a bit above the shoulders (similar to the mention of Grow Your Hair Barbie, i occasionally pull it down, stretching it towards my shoulders, hoping that if i do it just right it will stay that length). Unfortunately it's at a point where, in the world of growing out hair, it turns into little wings. This would be bad enough except one side likes to either stay straight down or curl in, whereas the other side just flips right out from my head. Um, yay.

I put my hair up a lot these days.

-- Sherry (sherina@masc.ca), September 07, 2000.

Huh, this is interesting. I usually don't keep track of when I color my hair so I had no idea that it grew so slowly. Did I really pull this shit six weeks ago? I have perhaps, at the outside, half an inch of regrowth. Worse, the water in my building is heavily chlorinated, and over that six weeks my hair has taken on a distinctly greenish hue, esp. under fluorescent lights.

And for the record, platinum blondes don't have more fun, but they sure get whistled at and catcalled on the street a lot more often. A guy actually made little kissy noises at me as I walked past him in the opposite direction. I thought men stopped doing that around 1965. Perhaps having a bad dye job indicates to the catcalling types that you are a woman with poor judgment, and thus more likely than the average girl to be interested in them.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), September 08, 2000.

Oh, you really have no clue as to how bad it can possibly get! My sister started dyeing my blonde hair blonder when I was eight years old. She was seventeen and thought it was cute. Of course it had to keep being dyed because of the embarrasing roots. I am 27 now and I have had my hair every shade imagineable. Most, like blue and pink, were intentional. Others were not. My Mom decided that my ultra blonde hair needed to be toned down around 12 yrs. She bought a light ASH blonde. Never Ever Ever Use an ash shade if your hair is blonde and you want to go darker! This turned my hair a lovely steel gray. Undaunted she purchased a darker shade of ash and put it on the same day. The result was a pretty violet. I have had my hair blue, purple, green, yellow, orange, and every shade of neon imagineable. I hated them all after the fact. EXCEPT One: Shortly after I got married, I decided I had one last chance to be wild before we decided to have kids. My husband dyed my hair blood red, then he streaked designs in black on the tips of my bangs and the tips of the back of my long hair. Everyone asked me where it was done and a few from work had him color theirs similar.

Hair can always be grown. Have fun with it. Everyone has bad hair days!

-- Wendy Carnell (harlee_quinn@yahoo.com), October 27, 2000.

I have an obsession with scissors and hair, which would explain why I once cut my eyebrows in the middle (imagine that...four little eyebrows instead of two big ones)!

My other hair fiasco was the time I accidentally chopped my hair off in such a way as to resemble Daniel Day-Lewis in 'The Last of the Mohicans'. Basically, I had shaved off my sides, but on top I had a full head of hair. In other places I cut my hair so close to the scalp that I had bald patches and was forced to wear a bandana to conceal them (thus completing the Mohican look).

-- Tammy Neufeld (tammy@ibetcha.com), December 06, 2000.

Oh, NOW I read about not using ashen shades on blonde hair. The coda to this fiasco that started in July was that last week I got tired of having blonde ends and tried to go back to my ordinary golden-brown color. Since the ends were so brassy I decided to use L'oreal Preference's "Dark Ash Blonde" to balance out the bright tones. I ended up lightening my roots slightly and giving myself dark steel-grey ends. I've been washing it frequently and the color is starting to even out, but I still wear a ponytail all the time. Or a hat.

Women don't say anything out of shock and sympathetic embarrassment. Men are surprisingly stupid or perhaps kind about it. They say, "Oh, I like your hair that way," having apparently been trained through numerous female chastizements that when a woman changes her hair, you'd better a) notice and b) make like it looks nice.

I am going to have to ask the local drugstore to pin up a picture of me next to the register with the admonition DO NOT SELL HAIR DYE TO THIS WOMAN.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), December 06, 2000.

Hmm, I think I can add to the horror stories of allowing a mother to die ones hair. Well actaully, the first time I had anything done to it (after vowing never to dye it at the age of 10...ha!) was by my older sister's friend who claimed "she was a pro. she didn't even need to use a cap!"...well ignorant me believed her and ended up with HUGE chunks of orange all over my head. When I would brush my hair pices would fall out that looked like they came from an animal, dark brown orange then dark brown then orange....lovely. Then Stupid me allowed my sister to try and fix it....lets not discuss that. Finally right before junior year homecoming, my mother gave me "blond highlights" that when using a cap...never get the roots completely, so basically my new due had roots from the very first day. After doing this to my poor hair 4 times I have finally decided to grow it out, but am scared to death of the roots. If any of you have any suggestions on how to hide these puppies feel free to e-mail me or post something....anything! Thanks.

-- (Remsleep@aol.com), December 21, 2000.

SOrry guys...my name is REMSLEEP6.....e-mail me there

-- (remsleep6@aol.com), December 21, 2000.

I shouldn't have trusted the stylist since I thought her own hair looked lame...

...and the feeling was confirmed when my husband spotted me and shouted "MUFFIN HEAD!"

I know another woman whose husband reacted to her new haircut with the question "Did you get caught in the lawnmower?"

(I'm obsessing about hair today because mine needs cutting, but I'm not sure yet how I want it lopped. Life was so much simpler when it was waist-lon

-- Peg Duthie (nashchick@ivillage.com), January 06, 2001.

Heeheehee....I'm only 16, and I decided I wanted a different look. So, I went to my hair stylist, and showed her exactly what I wanted. It was cute, it was sort of a 60's-ish hairstyle, long in the front, short in the back, and angled in between. Very hip. Well, not hip enough for me. I decided I wanted something more...punk. So i hacked off the back, and most of the sides, and I left two pieces in the front long. It looked so bad that I've been working on it for about two weeks. The worst came today. I was trying to trim the sides, and I cut one piece way too short. hopefully hair gel will keep it from sticking out!! (and I was also oranged last year. I have naturally strawberry blond hair, and that sun-in stuff oranged me!)

-- Mandy Weston (friskyeve@hotmail.com), January 26, 2001.

MEMO

To: REMSleep

RE: Roots, avoidance of

Are you serious about not fucking with your hair anymore? Here's what worked for me last time: I let my hair grow in for several weeks, enough so that there was a visible inch or so of new growth, then went to, god forbid, a professional. I am seriously avoidant of spending money on anything hair-related, esp. things such as shampoo that end up swirling down the drain immediately after use, but this is different. If you are truly serious about going on the L'oreal wagon, this is going to be the last time you spend money on coloring for, uh, a while, so it's worth it. ("Because I'm worth it!") Professional colorists usually have a selection of swatches -- disembodied locks of hair that resemble furry key fobs -- and they can hold various swatches against your roots until they find a perfect match, then dye only your ends using foil wrap, so that they are, at the conclusion of the process, indistinguishable from your natural color.

This is different than getting your hair done at the salon when you're going to an unnatural shade, because when you do that you're knowingly committing yourself to coming back every month or so to maintain the shade, which is like giving your hair a stack of withdrawal slips linked to your savings account. In this case it's a one-time-only expense.

Until, that is, the urge to hit the Performing Preference boxes strikes again.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), January 30, 2001.

I know that this is nearly a year after the original post, but I can't resist. The worst my hair ever looked was from last November until this very day.

I had a terrific slightly-lower-than-chin-length bob, full of body and shine. It was classic, elegant, and always appropriate. It flattered my face. It was perfect for my recalcitrant fine stick- straight locks. It took no maintenance whatsoever and always looked perfect. Everyone loved it. So why, oh WHY, did I heed the siren song of the magazine models? I didn't even need a trim! I just decided one day that I NEEDED very short, sassy layered hair. It was going to change my life and be wonderful.

Yeah, right. I went to the same guy who had brought about the bob transformation from my mid-back-length tresses. He seemed so skilled, and did a nice job before. I came armed with pictures, discussed what I wanted, talked about how I hate styling products and don't own a hairdryer. I thought he understood. (WHY OH WHY??) I wear glasses, so I can never see what is really going on during a cut. But THIS time, I KNEW. It was awful. I looked like a shorn poodle with a mangey coat. My new hair-do made me look identical to Scott Baio circa 1977, except much MUCH shorter and less flattering. Talk about a nightmare. I started to cry right there in his shop, while he insisted I'd love it tomorrow.

I didn't. And not the day after, or the week after, or the month after, either. I live in a country where covering your hair with a hat or scarf means you're religious and married, so I had no choice but to invest in Serious Mega Hold Gel for months on end, while pretending I Meant It To Look This Crazy. A ton of gel, ribbons, headbands, spray, barrettes, and half a year later, the lowest layer has finally made it down to my ears, and I've been getting it trimmed now and then by another guy. I just hope that by the time I make it to visit my parents this summer it will have regained some sense of normalcy and I won't look like my hair got caught in the blender.

Not that my mom would notice. She gave me layered-cut harsh poodle-perms that fried my dark brown hair into a dishwater blonde afro-poof all through elementary school because she thought my hair "was too flat."

I should add that as long as my hair looks horrendous, I'm letting my roots grow (I had dyed my hair soft black for a number of years). They're not that noticeable, but they will be soon... any suggestions?

-- Loraine Schneider (meital_liron@hotmail.com), April 29, 2001.

Excerpting the Early Adolescent Years, which we're just not going to talk about, the worst I've ever looked was fall of junior year in college. All my friends had gone to black. I have pale skin. My roommate and I figured I'd look all cute-goth.

I did not look all cute-goth.

More recently (ie, Saturday) I tried to henna myself. I think the bathroom floor got more henna on it than my hair did. I now have natural dark brown roots and a red ponytail. Woe.

-- WG (writergirl@diaryland.com), August 06, 2001.

Worst thing I ever did with my hair was to get a perm. Oh yes, the lady with the home-based business had spent 2 years in Beauty school, and all that, but that shorty perm was not me. I was supposed to shower, shake and go with it. It didnt fit my face, my personality, or the rest of my body. I think my favorite do is a french twist, but hubby absolutely HATES long hair.

I do my own hair now. I have gotten many many compliments. It's not exactly easy to layer the back, and get it even at the neckline, but with hubby's help, it turns out ok. The front I comb towards my face to cut from middle of ear frontwards and curve up just high enough to clear the brows, across and back down the other side the same way. Layer on top is easy, just hold straight up.

I do a fast blow-dry, and comb it gently back leaving a gentle height on top, hairspraying lightly, and then arranging it in waves to frame the face. The back is a little wavy too. Rather classical.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), September 18, 2001.

ever since i was 15, sitting on the floor of my bedroom on the telephone with a friend, i've cut my own hair. and i've always, always been satisfied with it. i always seem to get compliments, no matter how i happen to cut it. i've had people ask, where did you get your hair cut? how did you DO that? i cut my father's hair, my brother's hair and on occasion, my sister's hair. i've cut friends' hair. never with the success of my own head, but never to disaster. i trust myself. i know my hair. i know what WORKS and what doesn't work.

so for five years, i shunned salons. the idea of a perfect stranger pulling on my locks, cutting in a fashion completely foreign to me, was terrifying.

the biggest problems with someone else cutting my hair, is that it's awfully thick. and not only is it thick, but it's got a coarseness to it that most people just don't underSTAND. i know my cowlicks, i know how it curls in waves, i know that just because it sits flat dripping wet, does NOT NOT NOT mean it's going to sit anywhere near flat when it's dry. oh no.

but the ONE time. the one time, dear lord. now i'll be the first to say! that my hair looks good short. i've got a system that i created and perfected that day on the telephone. for short hair, i simply wind a clump around my finger - one wind for short-short, two winds for short-ish. and everything outside of the wind? is gone. i do that all over, it's all the exact same length. i'm usually wary about my bangs. i mean that's the most important part! you can completely screw up the back but it's in the BACK. you don't SEE that when you look in the mirror; when you meet people; when you're photographed. you see the front, and front includes bangs. so i go slowly, trying the longest length til i'm satisfied. it works for me. it's a no-brainer. it's simple, pretty, and i could do it if i were drunk.

but. but. last march, i decided against my own judgment. i had a fun new job, at a record store, and a fun new crush: joe, across the street at the skate shop. he liked me, i felt confident talking to him, i felt he was attracted to me physically and mentally. so why do i need to get a haircut? he even DROVE ME THERE! oh, we went for coffee beforehand, it was beautiful and snowing outside, i said, see you tomorrow.. and entered the pit of hell: creative cuts.

i can't BLAME her. her haircut looked worse than mine, even after the fact. her clothes did not match. pink and red, no. just, no. i should have been clued in! someplace!

i raked about in the haircut magazines til i found the winner: a stylish, sleek sixties cut which worked around the bangs. they were brushed to the side, very fashionable, very neat. i asked if she could do that. she studied it and said, sure. there wasn't much to take off - just a little styling, a little creative cutting.

NO. no. there is a DIFFERENCE. when you look in the haircut magazines you MUST be able to distinguish a STYLE from a CUT. a style has been fawned over for like an hour by some eccentric, trendy, rich stylist in los angeles. the lighting is considered. the angle is considered. there's shiner, toner, gels and mousses involved. probably the moment the girl moves her head the style falls off her head. it's been STYLED. it's not the CUT. a haircut is just a haircut. it's the foundation of a good style. it's the base.

she didn't tell me! i didn't know this!

in the end, i cried. i've never cried after a hair cut. NEVER. i cried, in the chair, ammonias and hairsprays assaulting my senses, bright lights and she did WHAT? she cut one side of my bangs approximately one half inch long, and the other half about three inches long. she tried to make it look like it was pushed to the side. the sides were uneven. EVEN I CAN MAKE MY SIDES EVEN!

i cried, but i paid her. and i tipped her. because i was so disconcerted, i felt lopsided. i thought, maybe it'll be better tomorrow. let it dry. sleep on it. the next day i couldn't face the boy. ha haha. i didn't take off my tossled hat, even at work.

i wore a hat for three weeks, then gave in and cut it myself.

short-short.

-- jaime b (uncnditional@diaryland.com), September 20, 2001.

I'm 15 and until yesterday had nice dark-blonde hair with natural golden highlights. I now have ORANGE streaks. During a fit of madness at my friends house at 2:00am in the morning, I let My friend Nicole Highlight my light brown hair. She has barbie-beach-babe natural looking white blonde streaks. I was convinced she could do my hair too. Unfortunately, two hours later I ended up with orangey-yellow roots and white blonde ends. No HIGHLIGHTS or STREAKS.....just a full top layer of hair turned barbie-gone-wrong blonde. I got home and burst into tears....while my mum convinced me that it looked okay, and my little sister said Iooked exactly like Britney Spears. GREAT. Fortunately, Mum said that as soon as the hairdressers opens on tuesday morning, we are there! What do they do? I have no idea how they fix it...I think I'll just ask them to dye it as close back to my natural colour as possible....right now I just have to restrain myself from running out and buying a packet of L'Oreal Golden Brown! :-)

-- Helen (sweetlikechocolate6@hotmail.com), October 01, 2001.

Nothing to add, really, I was just coming back to read the WTC thread and noticed there was new stuff here and wanted to say: the story about the record-shop girl cutting her bangs while on the phone, then going out for coffee with Joe the skater guy? was so fucking cute. It sounds like one of those Xeroxed comics you can buy out of the two-dollar bin at Fallout. I envy Jaime's cute life.

Hey, girls, it's fall. If you want to grow out your mistakes, now's the time. Hat season.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), October 03, 2001.

From the time my mother hacked off my beautiful waist-length strawberry blonde hair in 4th grade through the later half of my senior year in high school, my head was a nightmare. Poodle perms, Sun-In (WHY isn't this crap illegal?), a hair rinse that not only didn't rinse away but turned my hair PINK, fried frizz...just awful. And I've have a few after that too. But for the past 3 years I had been growing my hair out from a pixie & it was finally long & healthy. What happened? I am a jackass. I decided that I absolutely needed a pixie again. I even brought a photo (girls: this does NOT work!). The results? Me in tears, a hack-job around my head & another 3 years to look forward to before my hair looks normal. Someone needs to sit on me when I get the urge & barrage me with photos of my bad haircuts! What I wouldn't give to go back in time to the beginning of August.

-- Bee (bitohunny14@yahoo.com), October 23, 2001.

okay so now i am really scared...tomorrow i am going to get my hair cut and all these little stories are freaking me out because i am going to a new girl at a new place because i want to have my hair cut for a halloween party and she was the only one in town with an opening...so here i am looking for pictures of little short hair cuts and i find this bad hair day page.

All i have to say is please everyone pray for me and also my worst hair day was when i grew my hair out mid-back length so that i could donate it to locks for love...it was a good idea but my hair really looked horrible soooooo flat for like 6 months. Hey but this is really a rewarding experience if any of you want to cut your long locks in to a short bob. Its not hard, just about 10 inches is all they need to make a wig for a child cancer patient.

Well anyways, so here i go again getting my hair cut REALLY short...but hey, its worth it

-- Chandler (chandler29@yahoo.com), October 29, 2001.

The only time -- EVER -- I ever messed with my hair color was shortly after becoming local music columnist for the major urban weekly. A sweet fey keyboardist for a really bad artband convinced me he could dye a strip of it blue. As my shoulder-length hair was black- chestnut, two bleach jobs didn't make a dent in it, and the blue wasn't even discernable. But it was a splendidly gossipy evening. "No ink, no iron, thanks"

-- Sally Cragin (aiolia@worldnet.att.net), November 25, 2001.

without a doubt the 80s were a bad time for my hair, I had mohawks, I had a geri-curl, and it was blue and green a couple times, even had a bule ducktail. eeeeek.

-- Ray Watkins (rayadj67@hotmail.com), January 16, 2002.

well, technically, the worst my hair has ever looked was NOT my fault... but i -did- trust my STEPmom to cut it, and i -knew- that wasn't the same as trusing my mom to do it.

*sigh* i think i was 12 or 13? yes, it was something like that. and it was time for a trim on the old bangs. what do i do? i ask my stepmom to do it while i'm visiting my dad for the weekend. why, WHY couldn't i just -wait- until sunday night and get mommy to do it?? i still haven't figured out the answer to that. so she "trims" my hair and when i look in the mirror i realize that most of my white white forehead is now exposed to the cruel cruel air - she cut my fringe to an inch and a half!! i wanted to stay home from school, i cried and whined, but all i got was a half-hearted "it's not -that- bad" from the adults and a shake of mutual heads. it was bad.

monday morning people i didn't even -know- were whispering things like "oh my god, look at her hair!" and one girl even said (to my FACE) "i like your hair like that, it looks longer or something." god i would have slapped her putrid face if the teacher hadn't been standing right there! i even remember her name: TANYA. grrrrrr!

no one has cut my bangs since then, and i'm 21 now =) but i -am- thinking about highlighting it...

-- alyssa (albean@mail.com), March 28, 2002.

a few months ago i went a dark-browny-reddy colour that looked really good. heaps of people complimented me on my hair, and i had finally got rid of all the split ends from the blechedblonde phase 4 years ago. unfortunately, my hair grew and out came these awful almost grey looking roots. ugh. i decided to lighten my hair, and bought this golden blond dye that promised to lighten hair a few shades. well i used it and ended up with golden blond roots and medium brown ends. surprisingly it didn't look toooo bad, and i was inspired by the pretty goldenblonde of my roots to go blonde again.

BIG MISTAKE

I now have bright orange hair with platinum blonde roots. Dad gave me a weird look. Mum laughed. My brother laughed.

I burst into tears when i realised i have to go to school tomorw. oh dear......

plan of action..... wear scarf go to supermarket at like 7am and cleverly dye hair back to decent shade in time for school.....

wish me luck......

-- Demelza Sowry (golden_guinea_pig@hotmail.com), November 06, 2002.

I see the last post on this thread was quite some time ago, but after reading everyones posts, I had to add mine...

When I was a teenager, I always wanted white hair-not platinum, white. After a few years of attempting and failing to reach this goal, I gave up on coloring my hair.

I am a natural dark blonde/light brown. My hair was fully back to my natural color (had been growing out and being cut for about 6 years or so). I was starting to get a good amount of gray (prematurely), so I decided it was time to try my hand at coloring again...

First, I colored my hair red, Copper Penny red. I didn't like it. Within a week or so, I decided to color it dark brown. I thought that going darker would be cool, I had always had light hair... I didn't like it, either. I decided to lighten it and I got a Born Blonde kit.

By the time I was finished lightening my hair, it was calico. I had patches and streaks of brown, orange, red, yellow and white. My roots were a bright neon yellow. So, I bleached it again and it evened out to a gross yellowish/orange color with the neon roots a bit lighter.

I went ahead and put the red back in and colored my hair increasingly darker shades of red, ever since. The last red I put in was Chocolate Cherry (had that color for the last couple of years).

I'm currently trying to get back to my natural color... I found the shade, Dark Beige Blonde, but I'm having a heck of a time getting the red out, in order to be able to put that shade on... Wish me luck.

-- Jeanne Helfrich (jeannie_bug@excite.com), June 23, 2003.

I guess the worse thing that has ever happened to me was when I was 15 I had long long waist length red hair. I thought it made me look nice but to someone in my class decided that it made me too pretty and decided to do something about it. I will never forget swimming with my hair neatly tucked up into my bathing cap not realising that someone had kindly sprayed hair removing cream into it before I put it on. On returning to the changing rooms I had my first encounter with male pattern baldness. After being in the pool for 45 minutes the hair removing cream had taken all or most of the front part of my hair back to the crown of my head. Screaming and in shock I was taken home only to have a worse experience the following day when my mother took me to her friend salon to have the the rest of my shoulder length hair cropped close to my scalp and what only can be described as the first female comb over ensued. I guess it must be psychological but since then I've always kept my hair closely cropped!

-- Monica Mcmaster (monicaxir@yahoo.co.uk), August 18, 2003.

The worst thing that happened to me was letting a friend trim my hair. I say trim, but it was more of a butcher job. She is a licensed beautician, but you wouldn't have known it after seeing my hair. I had shoulder length blonde hair, but she said it needed to be trimmed up some, so I let her. The first thing she did was pull the back into a ponytail and then cut it all off! I was in shock. I just kind of sat there not knowing what to do. By the time she finished butchering me, my hair was only about 1 inch long all over. I looked like a guy and I haven't spoken to her since. That was a year and a half ago and just now my hair is back to the length it was.

-- Brandi (brandi_alison@hotmail.com), November 15, 2003.

Ok... I had several bad haircuts but i'll tell you about my worst haircut EVER. I still look like a doofus right now, as I type. A doofus is typing this story.

Ok...here's how it happened..

This was totally unexpected. I didn't expect to get a haircut at all. It happened in my sleep. No, somebody did not play a prank on me, lucky for them cuz if they did I'd PULVERIZE them! All I know is that I woke up screaming, on the bathroom floor, clutching a chunk of my lovely gorgeous locks in my fist. Now i may have been groggy and sleepy-eyed, but when you wake up to your own painful screams, it makes you kinda wonder what the hell just happened. My head was in extreme pain, so i stood up and looked in the mirror, still not realizing that I had a large portion of my hair in my hand. I had a huge bloody hole in the top of my head, that looked as if somebody had been trying to pound a really big, really dull nail into my scalp. And this mysterious hole was a quarter inch deep. Not only that, but there was a really big bald spot surrounding this gash. Being fully-aware now, I gasped and tried not to scream. What the hell was i dreaming about? i wondered, and still wonder to this day. It occured to me that I was going to have to go out in public sometime. Because my hair had been short, and a little bit layered at the time, i couldn't cover it up. So i decided to just buzz the rest of my hair really short to match, or at least almost match, most of the right side of my head. Now it's been several months, this gash has healed now, the rest my hair has grown one-and-three-quarter inches---except the spot where my hair got yanked out and my scalp butchered. It doesn't seem to be growing back there. And i have to explain all this to everyone who asks about my hair! I'm lucky it's winter and i can wear my winter hat! I'm gonna bloody well need a wig! SOB, sob sob sob! Pity me! AUGHHHHHHHHH!

-- Leylie (lost4everfound2000@yahoo.ca), December 13, 2003.

Oh dear, that is a tough one. I've always lived by the philosophy that hair is hair and if you don't like what you did to it now, you will later and it all grows/washes out in the end. Of course, I only figured this out 4 years ago. Before that I had long dark blonde/light brown hair down to my elbows. Extremely thick long hair. I made the mistake of getting a perm once, but there was just one problem. The perm I got that was supposed to last 6 months (i seem to recall) ended up lasting barely a month. The problem? My hair was so danged heavy that it just pulled the curls straight. That would also exlplain the sudden disappearance of headaches when I cut it to about 3 inches long less than a year later.

Actually, I'm off to get my hair dyed to go for the calico effect today. Did not want to try this one on my own . So I posed the challenge to my favorite hairdresser and she is really excited about trying this out. If nothing else, I'll just dye it black again.

-- Christal Williamson (roaringdori@yahoo.com), March 11, 2004.