So here’s the second post by MomBabe that I promised you. Remember when I said that I admire her because she’s funny and a smart aleck? Well, I failed to mention that she has great hair, of which I am jealous. It turns out that she’s had some less-than-stellar moments in her hair history.
I’m a cosmetologist. Which means that, at some point or the other, I had to attend beauty school. Now, beauty school is not all it’s cracked up to be. There are all sorts of theories and sciences that you have to learn. (You know, if you want to actually be successful. But if you aim to work at, oh say, Supercuts, you could probably bypass the whole affair…)
Anyways. When I started beauty school, I had long luscious blonde hair that cascaded into thick waves down my back… You see, my mother is a fan of long hair. All growing up, HER mother made her daughters have short hair, so MY mother made all her daughters have l-o-n-g hair.
I hated it.
I hated shampooing it and blowdrying it and curling it and then blowdrying it more because it curled upt too much in the front. (And don’t tell me I could have put it in a ponytail. “A woman’s hair is her crowning point.” And “smooth and sleek” were rules that were enforced in my house.)
I hated it. Pretty as it was, I am a short hair person. I like my hair to be cute. And long hair is NOT cute. It can be pretty, but not cute. Only short hair is cute. True story.
So one day, I decided that being pale blonde was not enough. I wanted my hair to be white. WHITE white. So I put on a frosting cap and went to town. My friend mixed up some bleach with 40 volume peroxide, and proceeded to apply it on my hair. Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with colors and bleach and peroxide levels, but using 40 volume on hair that was already a level 10 blonde? Stupid.
And not only did I bleach it with the strongest peroxide we had, oh no, THEN, I sat under a hair dryer and promptly FELL ASLEEP.
I was awakened by my instructor shouting that my hair was smoking.
And it was smoking because it had melted off.
Thankfully, because I was wearing a stupid frosting cap, not ALL of my hair was burned off. And it wasn’t quite burned off all the way to the root. (small favors.)
And yet, I was still scared to call my mother and ask if I could get a haircut.
Yes, my dears. I asked, VERY NONSPECIFICALLY, if I could get my hair cut to an inch in length…..She thought I meant an inch off the bottom. That’ll show her to not ask enough questions.
When I got home, my mother was ticked. When I explained that I was lucky to even have this much hair left at all, she was still ticked. Then I made her feel the hair that was left on my head. When she touched it, a few pieces came away with her. She groaned.
“I guess I’ll have to reschedule your senior pictures so your hair can grow back in.”
I smiled. I had won.
And I have never let my hair “grow back in.”
Sneaky! My daughter has long hair because I look back on all my primary school pics and wonder why I had such ugly short hair. But we tie it back and plait it every morning. I love seeing the plait snake around.
Oh my God! I love hair horror stories. When I was little my mom used to dye her hair blonde, and she always used Clairol. Then one day Loreal was on sale, so she bought that, and it turned all of her waist-length hair GREEN! We’d just moved to a new house, and didn’t know anyone, and my mom called my dad in tears and he just said, “I don’t care what you do, just fix it before I get home!” Nice. So she packed me and my little sister into the car, wrapped her head in a towel, and drove over an hour to my aunt’s (she was a cosmetologist too!) and got her to fix it. It didn’t stop me from trying the platinum thing though, but the upkeep was too much to take.
Holy crap! That’s painful.
A year ago, I went to a beauty school in Tyson’s to get my hair permed (straightened) and I swear I haven’t cried so hard in forever. It felt like pins were in my head because they left the lye on too long.
Needless to say, I haven’t been back.
Jeez! You just reminded me of a girl we went to school with throughout much of our 12 years in school.
It seems that Pam had a mother who was some sort of cosmetologist or something (and obviously a really bad one at that). She decided that Pam would look lovely with WHITE hair, and started bleaching it platinum by the time that Pam was probably 9 or 10 years old. Not only that, but they would do this horrendous styling job that I can’t even describe.
By the time Pam was 16, her hair was shot. It was pure white, formed into this roundish-shaped helmet head of hair that was plastered with so much hairspray I swear that rain could not permeate it. It was REALLY bad. The worst. We always felt that what her mother did to her was tantamount to child abuse.
Ugh. I wonder whether Pam has any hair left today?
OMG that’s funny! I especially like the little cartoon. It reminds me of a hair disaster I had once involving a home highlighting kit, too much chardonnay and Tom Cruise.
That’s it, everyone needs to send in pictures of their hair disasters.
There’s something very empowering about asserting your right to chop your hair off.
Is that really your daughter? Gorgeous.
I once dyed my hair the colour of three-day-dead ox-blood, but hardly anyone noticed — is that good or bad?
I love the drawings!!
I think part of the hair long thing was also my bad short-hair experiences. Sorry you had to suffer over it, but hey! Aren’t my pictures from 5th grade on up Hilarious! Especially the wedge cut with a perm. Ey-yi-yi.
This kills me because at one point while in college I reverse-permed, dyed and then went peroxide blonde all within a few months and it still amazes me that my hair didn’t break off at the roots.
Lmao! That’s hilarious. Glad she finally got to have short hair, though.