Hairdressers. Why do you do it? Anyone else?

[theworriermum]

I don't know if it's all hairdressers or just my hair type (long, thick, coarse) but unless I'm absolutely prescriptive and borderline stern, they go to town.

Right now, I'm 4 months postpartum, heavier than I usually am and looking tired but my long brunette hair was my saving grace! I walked around with a birds nest in 4th Trimester to give it a break from heat. I straightened it before the cut for the first time and it was gorgeous and healthy. So long, long feathering across my jawline and neck.

I took my eye off the ball not saying 'trim only, no thinning, and please NO dramatic diagonal scissors for feathering'. I did say keep the length and that I liked the existing cut but it wasn't stern enough.

I couldn't see what she was doing at the back but it's clear to me now that she has thinned it without asking. A lot of them do this as I have thick hair but I hate it. At the front I asked for shorter parts to frame my face, which I already had but she has taken it way too far back, I look like a Shetland pony and the most infuriating part.... when she went to feather my hair, rather than trim the existing feathers she angled her scissors away from my face at a drastic angle and before I could say anything she slid them down. I asked her to stop but she said 'it's not even' and kept going, so now between the Shetland pony style side fringe, and OTT angle feathering, my actual hair only starts behind my shoulders. It's so ugly.

I'm devastated tbh. 2.5 weeks on and I still hate it. It's going to take months to grow this out. Last time this happened it took 10 months and I've been growing it and protecting it since.

Why? Why do you do it hairdressers? Anyone else?

I wouldn't mind the Edward scissors hands approach if they knew what they were doing. It's a shame the only person I trust to cut my hair is fully booked for weeks and I only know my window of free time a day or two before being mum of 2.

I find that bringing in photos just makes it worse. Once when I had moved down south I took an actual photo of myself taken shortly after my previous haircut and I got something completely different. A couple of times I've managed to find a decent hairdresser (when I was younger and was motivated to shop around) but these days I can't be bothered so I just keep it long and cut it myself. I've also long ago stopped dyeing it so I now sort of look like Mary Beard only less well put together. If I tried to get my hair cut in a salon these days I think they'd chase me out the door!

Oh my god this literally could have been me typing about 6 months after my first baby was born. I have very long hair, it’s quite fine but I have a lot of it so loads of hairdressers claim it’s thick and insist on cutting in layers. I hate layers. It makes me look like a mushroom.

Went for A TRIM at a new salon as we had moved country. Specifically said NO LAYERS. This absolute goblin of a man made me look like Rachel in early episodes of friends. He cut layers so short at the front I couldn’t even get my hair up into a ponytail. I wept for weeks (to be fair, I also had PPD at the time). It took over a year plus a new pregnancy to grow my hair back.

Thank god we moved back to my home country and in no small part I was relieved to get back to my old stylist!

@theworriermum i absolutely feel your pain. Tie it back as much as possible before it grows back and - pro tip - get knocked up again asap (a 9 month pp accident for me!) and it grows faster 😂

The last disastrous haircut I had I asked for a bob and got a mullet. That took two years to grow out. Two bloody years.

Really sympathise. Thick, coarse hair here too and they loooove a thinning scissors moment. I’m always super clear that thinning is not okay, then they use the normal scissors to do it anyway. I’ve tried to refuse to pay before, but they insist that the only options are to either pay or allow them to try and fix it, and if they’ve already fucked it up and made it too short, I’m not going to allow them to make it worse!

Completely sympathise OP, I cut my own hair for this reason

I have long, thick curly hair that is almost down to my bum. SO many past hair dressers insisted on straightening my hair before cutting it into layers, which just resulted in me looking like a triangle. I hit a point where I specified not to straighten my hair before cutting it because they can't cut it accurately if it's not got its curl. If they said they couldn't do it I asked for a refund and left. Thankfully now I have a good hair dresser who has the same hair type as me so can actually cut it accurately

I asked my hairdresser for a long bob, and highlights redoing, I have very very thin hair, and need the bleach at the root.
It was grown out because I don't get time for myself. I left with orange roots.
Not a hint of orange. Actual orange.
I had yi go somewhere else and in total I spent £300 making it better after she completely fucked it up.

On my four trips to the barbers a year they ask how I would like it cut to which I reply “ quietly “
I ha e resigned myself to the fact they will do what ever they want anyway so don’t get too involved
so pay my £12 and get on with my day

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

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 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 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!

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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🤗

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."

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.

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

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

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.