new thread
There have been many posts on this board about hairdressers who did not do what the customer wanted and ended up messing up their long hair. My experience is the reverse.
I went last week to get my annual maintenance trim. My hair was midback length (would have been waist-length if not for the waves). I sat down and asked the (male) hairdresser to trim the ends and take off a couple of inches. He held a mirror and indicated the point at which he would trim it. I thought I could afford another couple of inches, and asked him to raise his cutting level accordingly. He protested vehemently saying, no, it will be too short. However, I insisted, and was quite happy with the trim until he finished and I stood up. Oh dear! My hair now just reached my shoulders! I had misjudged the length since I was seated, and I had also forgotten that the longer hair weighted down my hair to a certain length, whereas when it was cut the natural wave (which I would dearly love to get rid of) brought the point I indicated higher.
So I wish I had listened to my hairdresser, and I hope you guys out there will learn something from this as well.
Rudy
I am still very negative towards hair care professionals. Most of
my experiences have been bad.....too many 'hair care professionals'
think they are God and dictate what they think your hair should look
like. I've found postitive experiences with hair care professionals
are few and far between.
Maybe hair care professional should have the experience of
getting their hair done opposite of what they want.
I'm sorry to hear that your experiences haven't been very good.
For the record, it's sometimes hard for professionals to be
(1) technically competent (2) artistically up to date and (3)
mind-readers.
Why mind-readers? I'm not saying YOU were this way, but a
large percentage (maybe not a majority, but a large percentage)
of our male clients just don't articulate what it is that they
want - or are so non-specific that we could interpret it any way.
(For example, when going shorter, I almost always take out a
ruler and mark off how much length to let the client "see" what
"about an inch" means.)
The other thing is that many (not all) guys just aren't realistic
about longer hair. Some want to do no maintenance and still have
it look like they just stepped out of an ad. If they did the same
research for a haircut that they invest in the average purchase
of say, motor oil or power saws, (which nicely bracket the price
range in question) their results would be much better.
I'm not asking that you become "hair experts" but if we can't
have it explained, BRING A PICTURE - if you don't have a picture
of your favorite hero wearing your look - find the closest cut
in one of the amply provided style books for women - if I get a
better idea, it's always easy to adapt it - we just cut hair, not
reproductive plumbing. Most professionals don't want you to be
unhappy with us - it's bad for our business. If you're uncomfortable
or unhappy, it's work for us, both to fix things and to deal with
the bad press. Bad for business. Bad for client. Bad for
cutter. Bad all around.
And in defense of us, I don't know a hairdresser that HASN'T had
a hair tragedy or two in the course of school or their first year
or two out - we experience them at a horrible rate ourselves, but
we have two advantages: (1) We KNOW it will grow out and (2) we
typically are more adept at covering up our blunders quickly -
simply because we will take the risk of fixing things or adapting
to the new situation. I could tell you things about mistakes I
made and mistakes made on me in the course of my training that
would send you running - but my hair survived and so did I.
I'm not trying to defend the profession, (and I've seen my share
of imperious "artistes" and highly strung cutters - colourists
are worse, IMHO) but I do pass along these basic tips to that you can get better results when you have to use us.
A lot of people on this HyperBoard wish that their hair would be that long enough to be weighed down!