Hairdressers. Why do you do it? Anyone else?

I can't bear going to the scissor happy fuckers!

I now get my DH to cut the bottom off my hair when it's wet and tie it up mostly.

I have only been able to find one stylist that can give me a good result because I have various cow licks and shizz going on. She has now retired. I started going to another and she had it just right and then kept cutting until I looked like the Mohicans had ridden through. I can't stand the mindlessness of it so I don't go anymore. They don't concentrate on what they are doing enough for me.

Yes, it's funny isn't it, my hair looks better embracing the wavy texture and I even take photos to show this, quite bohemian looks I suppose and I still end up with straightened hair which I fluff up on leaving! I always make a joke about knowing that the photo is of a model but if the model has a similar face shape to me then that's the best likeness you can get when looking for hair images!

I'm going to a new hairdresser for a trim this Saturday and sort of wish I hadn't read this thread now! My old one was quite good but she put her prices up - £90 for a wash and cut and sometimes I was only in there for about 40 minutes. This new one is £30 cheaper but will I look like a Lego man afterwards??

My hairdresser of 20 plus years is brilliant,gets it right every time 😂

Oh lord this is why I haven't been to a hairdresser for 5 years, I don't know what it is about my hair that makes hairdressers think the thinning shears have to come out but every time they sneak them in. Is my hair extremely long, wavy and thick? Yes. Do I like it that way? Yes! Yet for some reason all they ever want to do is thin it, feather it, layer it and then iron it poker straight which looks awful on me.

It's kitchen scissors for me until I can find a stylist who will do what I want, not what they'd do if my hair was on their head.

Find a better hair stylist!

It's a scary business, I feel for you OP and hope it grows out more quickly than you think.

My worst events:

1. Caught the hairdresser combing down the top portion of hair suspiciously and asked what she was doing. "I'm just cutting you a fringe", "Nooooooo, STOP!!!"
2. Asked for a bob long at the front and short at the back, got a bob short at the front and long at the back. As with a PP by the time I'd caught on, it had to be made even. I remember sitting sadly saying "why did you do this?" and being cheerily told out looked nice. It did not.

I have also had some awful experiences like this over the years. At least twice I’ve resorted to cutting a bob because the ridiculous layers and thinning looked so bad. Of course it then takes years to grow long again and I have to go through the cycle of trying to find a hairdresser who listens and cuts well. Drives me mad.

Dry trim, always. Especially if you have thin hair.

My theory is that hairdressers feel they haven't got a chance to shine if you want your length and thickness kept, and also think you want your money's worth for £50 or whatever it is now.

I have the hairdressers today. I hate going because my hair takes a decade to grow an inch and she always cuts way more off than is necessary. My DP asks why I keep going back but I like the way she colours it and we live in a small village so I bump into her a lot. I’m stuck for life and live in the hope that she’ll move to another area lol

This is why I cut my own. They never listen. During the pandemic I learned from YouTube videos.

The reference to layers too far back was what happened to me in the mid 00s, it was so bad once that in my first proper office job, my colleagues nicknamed me, 'Jon Bon Jovi'!

I have fairly thick hair that has a very slight wave to it although that sounds better than it is. It isn't good at being flat and I don't suit poker straight hair anyway but if I have a blow dry this is as always done to me. I like a curtain fringe as it suits my texture hair and i like he face framing a bit as it don't like tucking hair behind my ears. they're never ambitious enough with that and the side 'bangs' are too long. Anyway, I get a cut for evenness and my hairdresser is good at that but I do the side bangs myself. I get complimented on them at work, my MIl who hardly ever compliments me, my husband thought the hairdresser had done them last time and my teenage DD who is very on trend and knows hee stuff.

My favourite ever hairdresser was also male, and had a proper mullet himself (as well as a huge number of tattoos and piercings and a face full of makeup).

I sometimes wonder whether female hairdressers are more likely to do what they think they would want if it were their own hair, whereas a male hairdresser who has no desire to look like you and knows that you have no desire to look like him is more likely to listen and do what you actually want.

I also had a similar reflection about make gynaecologists. I know not every woman is comfortable with a male gynaecologist, and I would have chosen a woman if I could have found one who specialised in the problem I had. But the male gynaecologist I ended up seeing was fantastic. And I did wonder whether a man who is discussing your menstrual cycle when he's never had one himself, or poking around in body parts he doesn't personally have, might be more likely to listen when you tell him how it is/feels, rather than impose his own experience on you and think, "That's not how the menstrual cycle works", or, "I know this doesn't hurt, I've experienced it myself, she's just being a wuss."

Not my experience at all. Have had the same hairdresser for over ten years now and she does my hair perfectly. She spends a while talking before cutting about what I would like done. I must be lucky!

OP it will grow back🤗

I have really thick long hair and have had far too many disasters at the hairdressers where they do awful layering when I specifically say I want it all one length with no layers. I used to have hair down to my bum and a hairdresser completely destroyed it with awful layers. 😪

I started cutting my hair myself a few years ago as well as colouring it. Also irritates me how they like to charge double if you have long/thick hair.

Oh, and I find the small talk excruciating. I know it's normal and I grit my teeth but itnis so stressful and is a large part of the reason I don't go.

But thanks for this thread, it inspired to to Google pictures and I have discovered what I want is called a U cut! And apparently I was before my time as google informs me it has been super trendy around the last couple of years.
Maybe I will be brave enough to go back sometime.....

I 100% agree op. This is literally the reason I stopped going to the salon and started cutting my own hair (and saving a bloody fortune in the process, no doubt!) and it looks fine and even if I don't love it at least I haven't paid for it.

I also have thick long hair and it ALWAYS got thinned to the point of non existence. I don't get it, every one knows thick hair is the thing everyone wants, why would they thin it out so it looks lank and basically like you've got a load of split ends? I used to think they did it so it would be quicker to dry and get you out the door quicker but then they never properly dried it either so it would go frizzy as soon as I got outside.

Like you say, I would love a hairdresser to come here and tell us why they or their colleagues do this, despite being asked not to.

I trained as a hairdresser and some of the idiots they passed just to make their figures look good was astonishing

I wouldn't have trusted some of these people to pick up scissors,let alone use them on someone

I once had my hair done-'please trim around the bottom,no layers and a trim on my fringe as I need to tie it up for work'

She chopped layers in,one an inch long which spent a year flapping in my eyes
I have my father's hair-poker straight at the roots,a wave in the middle and it's pube-like at the bottom

I once asked for a pixie cut (back in the 90's) and she gave me a Jay from the inbetweeners cut

I'm in tears with my mother screaming at me that the hairdresser did as I asked as 'she knows how to do MY hair!'

Yes mother,yours poker straight,is an inch all over,fine and you have it permed

Mine is nothing like that

Now I have to insist no layers as I hate them and my hair won't take them-the pubes just stick out in all angles

Everytime I find a salon I like,I get 3/4 cuts in and they seem to close down or can't squeeze me in

Do says I'm a curse

I've taken pictures of the cut I want from pictures I've taken immediately after haircuts in the past. I always take pictures from all sides of good cuts.

I've still had hairdressers query if I really want it like that, or cut it too long.

I trust absolutely no one to touch my hair anymore after the disaster of March 2013.
I have proper scissors and trim it myself. I'll never have an exciting cut, but I'm ok with that.
I'm not paying money to make myself look worse and have to wear my hair in a bun for the most part of a year while I grow it out.

Yep I’m growing out what was great cut when it had been blowed dried and straightened and had a fuckton of product in it at the salon. But he knows I don’t have time for that every day and I need to be able to tie it back and I’m left with a stupid little stumpy ponytail and bits sticking out of the sides all the time. 😬

I have only been to hairdressers a handful of of times. About 15 years ago I asked someone for a trim and some shaping, ie a little shorter around the side than the back. I have long, thick and frizzy hair. The thing I always emphasise the most is that I need it to be long enough to tie back always but at a pinch can grip the front back. Other people had always cut the front normally, this guy (think he was in training tbh) did the thing where he scraped the scissors down at a diagonal, starting at about 1inch from my scalp. I dont know if this is ok for some hair types but for frizzy/curly hair it was dreadful! Had to let him do the other to match, and of course said thank you and paid 😆. But after that I just gave up and now I cut my own. I don't always get it right but it's no worse than the cuts I have paid for. I did try another hairdresser a couple years ago, it was really long, I told her I wasn't picky re lengh, was happy with it shorter if needed but needed to keep it tied back. Asked for some long layers, as my hair curls better when it has some layers and is shorter. She snipped away thinning it out and was so pleased telling me how she had taken so much of the weight out of it. It felt thin and straggly and weird.i was working myself up to asking for some highlights/lowlights next time but I reverted to home cuts and haven't been back!
I appreciate I don't know enough to know what to ask for probably, but it's like they have this image of what 'everybody' would want and they can't believe you would want different. Why would I want thin hair.??? At least these days curly is 'in', whenever I went between about 2002/2010 every single one would ask me if I'd ever thought of straightening it. And, 'it's lovely hair, it would look lovely straight'. Looked taken aback when I said no, it looks dull and weird straight, I like it curly.

If you have thick and wavy/curly hair then you can get away with a lot with a home cut!

I have lovely hair. The rest of me is a bit of a mess but I have lovely, thick, glossy, wavy brunette hair. It looks a lot like Kelly Brook’s. After the birth of my first child I decided to treat myself and went to an eye wateringly expensive salon in my city centre for some highlights and a shape. I hadn’t had it cut since I got pregnant snd it was down past my bra strap so it needed a good trim. I brought Kelly Brook type hair photos and thought I’d explained it clearly. 5 hours later I left the salon with what looked like a yellow blonde Lego helmet head. When I got home my DH gulped and said, ‘I wasn’t expecting that’. It took me over a year to get it back to a state I was vaguely happy with, and I haven’t been back since - 19 years ago. Now I just cut it myself and occasionally put a color on. It looks absolutely fine.

I find my hair looks like a triangle whether it has layers or not. I hate the razoring scissors and the general message seems to be that they destroy your hair so I’m not sure why they insist on using them. I think there are only really a few haircuts in existence, essentially they try to fit you into one of these types, depending on how thick your hair is. The emphasis in many salons seems to be about putting waves in, styling and some complicated colouring thing so they almost seem surprised when I just want it cutting without it being straightened or any other stuff. At least they’ve stopped asking about putting in a £20 treatment as well.

I had an awful experience recently too. Asked for honey blonde, did a colour test, said it was possible. Came out greyish! Nightmare