And that is a brilliant idea! I’m going to talk to my barber and his family who works with him. Gato, I trust you will have no problem with what I’m about to do here.
SDMBers, this is a challenge. I’ll start it here and carry it into another thread specifically designed for the topic. We can do it, and we can make a change in this world. Let’s do a donation drive for this cause. It is (literally) painless and makes a world of difference for chemo or allopecia patients.
Gatopescado, you may have unwittingly started a good thing here. I’ll grow my hair to 6" or more for this cause if others will pledge to do so.
I did the LoL haircut thing a month or two ago. Somewhere out there is three feet of my hair, looking for its next head. I’m still not accustomed to this short stuff clinging to my neck. I’d worn it up for years.
The braid looked like a snake curled up on the counter at the beauty shop. And I almost gave myself whiplash from not being accustomed to so little weight on my head.
Good for you Gato!! I always keep donation info with me at work, a lot of the guys I work with have long hair and the trend is to cut it off when there’s an upcoming court date. Most of them are happy to donate it when I explain the program.
I’m generally too lazy to bother cutting my hair at all, so I grow it for a year or two then chop it all off. The first time I did it I was really really poor and actually sold it to a wig shop, for a pathetic twenty-five bucks. Then someone told me about LoL and I’ve been donating every few years since.
Zenster I’ll take you up on that challenge, I need just a couple of months more to ensure good donation length. Yeah, I know they can sell the shorter amounts but I’ve got quite thick hair and it grows pretty quickly, I’d prefer to give it until the end of summer then it’ll probably be enough to make nearly an entire wig for someone.
Btw, for anyone interested in organizing a donate-a-thon, elementary and middle schools are great places to advertise. Long hair on little girls has been extra popular lately, my god-daughter’s softball team had a group cut-to-donate two years ago and it was quite successful. Many of the kids hated having to mess with long hair, but their parents liked them to wear it long. They were able to use LoL as an excuse and guilt the parents into letting them cut it.
I own a hair salon in northern Indiana and I will accept the challange!!!
Anyone who wants to donate to LoL will get a free haircut…and I bet I could talk our massage therapist into offering a 10 min chair massage to help ease the “pain” of cutting it all off!! I will work out the details early this coming week and we can go from there!!!
What a wounderful cause! I always admired those who donated (we’ve done several such cuts but I never thought of offering and incentive to have them do it!)
I will keep you posted and if you have any ideas of how to promote it (low budget) let me know.
Find a kid, any kid, with cancer or alopecia (LoL does more alopecia that cancer kids).
Get that kids Mom to make contact with the local newspaper or TV station about the LoL program, and the fact that there is a local shop that does LoL cuts, and offers a free ____ (whatever the incentive is).
The people that cut mine don’t do a free cut; they charged extra for having to braid it before cutting, and they didn’t feel in the least hesitant to call a little local newspaper to make a big deal about the fact that they were cutting off that much hair for Locks of Love. I DID stop the publication of the article and photo, as they did not deserve publicity for charging to do something that other salons do for free, and NO WAY was I having my picture in the paper for their benefit. (Not even with the “Cancer Victim Donates Hair” headline they promised. ESPECIALLY not with that headline. I’m NOT just my illness.)
If you can’t find a kid, issue a press release with the information, and someone will take it up as a human interest story. Possibly the LOL people could do a press release for you. It would benefit them so much more than you, as it would get your potential customer base informed, but of a ‘free’ (costing you, but free to the customer) service. Publicity is necessary, and the extra publicity for the salon is incidental in this case.
Well, I got all my hair lopped off today! I didn’t get a free haircut (it actually cost me $50!), but I didn’t mind paying for it. The woman fit me into a very busy Saturday schedule without an appointment (I was turned away by about 7 or 8 other salons), because I said I was doing it for Locks of Love.
About a year and a half ago Locks of Love got 16 inches of my hair (I confess - I insisted on keeping my “remains” just past shoulder length, otherwise it might have been 20)
I am now in the process of growing it out again. My next haircut will be when my braids reach my butt again and the proceeds will, again, be donated.
I didn’t get a free cut, but then I walked in off the street with no warning, and did ask for the shampoo to go with it.
Um… the person with the salon in N. Indiana, offering free cuts and possibly massage… where are you located?
The only strange thing was that the woman who did the cut seemed surprised I didn’t get all worked up about it. Said a fair number of women cry when getting the hair cut. Well, if I didn’t want it cut I wouldn’t have stopped in her shop, I guess it’s that simple to me. And I knew that, instead of being thrown away, the hair would go to help someone who was suffering. With that in mind I wasn’t sad at all, I was happy.
Lwaxana, would a good way to pitch the idea to hairdressers be by pointing out that the person they do for free will probably be a return customer more often since shorter styles require upkeep, or am I way off base with that? Seems like it would be a good way for people to convince their local stylists to jump in on the idea.
In my town at least, Cost Cutters does an annual “hair drive” for Locks of Love where donors get free haircuts. I think if you call ahead to arrange it they’ll give you a free cut at any time if you’re donating. Other chains probably do the same thing.
I used to always keep my hair short, but stopped cutting it before my first round of neurosurgery/radiation because I figured it would probably have to be shaved or would all fall out anyway. That turned out not to be the case (I did lose some, but I have a heck of a lot of hair), so I decided to just keep growing it out for donation. I’ve been following that plan for several years now; I grow it as long as I can stand it, then chop it off for LoL and let it start growing again.
The last time I donated, there was a 13 year old girl there who’d never had her hair cut in her life. She donated 24 inches and still had hair longer than mine was going in!