I was reading the “Do You Cut Your Own Hair?” thread and it got me thinking about my childhood, when my mom cut and permed our hair to save money. Oooh, scary stuff, there.
I think the worst result I had from this era was a Toni Home Perm that mom rolled too tight in the back and too loose in the front. It was a poodle-butt effect from behind and just slightly waved in the front.
I also had a mullett and a tail (not at the same time) but it was the mid-80s.
Heh…poodle butt. Sorry, it made me giggle because of another thread.
A mullet? Aw…
One of my old roommates said that when he was younger, he wanted a mullet. Given his ethnicity, a jheri curl would suffice. So I tried to feverishly talk him into it after he brought it up. I even offered to get cornrows to make the dream happen. No dice. What a spoilsport.
Okay. Most of my childhood I had long hair (mid-back length.) When I was in 5th grade, I decided I wanted short hair (my hair is very strait and thick). About this time I also got quite thick glasses. So we went to the salon, where they did as I asked. It was about 3" long and kind of puffy, truly hideous and unflatering. I bawled all the way home, and looked awful for about a year. However, I learned an important lesson early: I look awful w/short hair and have never had hair shorter than about 18" since. It mid-back lenght again now, looks good and takes no time to fix.
The one time (quite a few years ago now) that I had my hair buzz cut.
It just doesn’t work with either my weight or the general shape of my head.
My worst haircut? At age 26, I hadn’t more then trimmed my hair in six years. To surprise a girlfriend, I chopped my hair to a #1 clipper on the sides, scissior short on top. I asked for enough hair on back to keep a braid.
I got a buzz-cut with a “rat-tail.” I went home and cut off the tail. I haven’t had long hair since.
Peace - DESK
I had a horrible poofy mushroom cut when I was ten. Went great with my giant dork glasses. No, you will never, EVER see pictures.
One year, my mother talked me into getting a perm. I have straight, fine hair that has never curled of its own volition. Well, I got a perm, and while it looked pretty good for the first day, it was downhill after that. I looked even worse when it was growing out. I took to wearing a hat. Never again!
I had a sort of fro/mullet in middle school. No, I didn’t have any friends.
Anyone remember banana clips? Yeah, I wore those pretty much every day in 6th grade. I had one in every colour…
I’ve alternated all my life between long long hair, pageboy bobs, and the transitions between the two.
The worst would be either when I was about eight and had shoulder-length hair with weirdo short bangs that my mom curled so they were even shorter, or when I was a bitty little thing and hadn’t ever had a haircut and had a baby mullet.
So I was young, broke, and had just taken a four day trainride to meet my friend who was living in a dark room in Chinatown trying to make her way in NYC.
We got bored one day, and found out about “hair models”. Basically, high end salons will cut your hair for free if you allow them some freedom and don’t mind students looking on.
We found one that specialized in “short hair for girls”. Great. We were girls. We had short hair. It was perfect.
We got there and the place was empty, except for the kind of George Clooney looking hairdress. We asked about hair models and he said “Well…if you let me do what I want, it’s free”.
So we sat down and he started cutting.
At some point, a lady walked in and asked for a haircut. He said no. She said she’d make and appointment for the next day. He said the haircuts were $60.00. She left.
He kept cutting.
And cutting.
And cutting.
Finally, with a grin, he said “You look just like a naughty little boy” and sent us on our way. With no hair. It looked as if I had shaved my head perhaps two days ago. Just the barest peach fuzz.
I could pull it off, but I didn’t want to be pulling it off. It was horrible. I was never so happy to have my hair grow back and never complained about a bad haircut again.
It’s a tie. There was the perm I got in second grade which made it painfully obvious that I looked terrible in an afro. (Some people can pull this look off, but I am not one of them.) And when I was five, my mother had my waist-length hair cut off so short that when I walked into kindergarten on Monday, one of my classmates burst out, “You look like a boy!”
If ever there was was “fashion never-evers” for grade school, my hair on these occasions would have probably been examples one and two.
The last one. I was going for Shawn Colvin and wound up with Laura Bush.
In the late '60s (probably '68 or '69) I had one of those groovy Vidal Sassoon cuts, with the bangs straight across just above your eyeballs. Mind you, I was a Jewish pre-teen with a big nose and big ears. I did not look groovy. I looked like a tiny little Ringo Starr.
Thank goodness, though, I never had Big '80s Hair, a Barbra Streisand Jewfro, Bo Derek beads or Farrah wings . . .
Same here. We had just moved back to the States, and grandma volunteered to take my sister and me to her “beauty parlor” to get our hair cut. Up to that point in our lives, mom had cut our hair at home. (I still remember hair cut night – the chair in the middle of the kitchen floor, the towel wrapped around, all us little chicks lined up for a hair cut – and mom was self-taught, too! Honestly, though, I don’t remember those being bad haircuts.)
So, really, we thought the beauty parlor would be great! We were not asked what we wanted, grandma told the lady how to cut our hair. My sister and I came out with matching poufy mushroom/bowl cuts (except her hair was straight, so it just kind of lay there looking okay, while mine was frizzy, so I looked like a swamp thing). And then, yay! We get to start school in a new country still bearing our dorky accents from the old country. Do you know how hard it is to try to fit in when your hair marks you as weird from a distance, and then as soon as you open your mouth, you become some kind of freak show? Fortunately, I did not acquire my “dork glasses” for another year or so, by which time my bowl cut had grown out and I had re-acquired my American accent.
I would have been okay with that.
I got a poodle perm in 4th grade. I was okay with the curls, except that I lost my bangs – they were all curled up and short. I have a high forehead, and I’ll accept pretty much any haircut as long as I’m left with bangs.
About 10 years ago I tried a new stylist. The haircut was fine, but when she styled it, she poofed me up on top. Way up! People were staring.
Hard to say. It’s either the perm I got when I was 8, or the chin-length short do I had when I was 13 (before I realised my hair is too thick to pull off a short style). Both were professionally done, both I liked at the time, both make me look at old school photos and wonder what the hell I was thinking.
When my hair is long, it’s straight until you get to below my ears then kinky curly. When I was a teen I hated my curls so I thought I’d be clever and get the “boy cut” to get rid of the curl.
Yeah right. Despite everyone from Mom to the stylist warning me I went for it, cutting practically waist-length hair to shaved at the neck, slightly long on the sides and top. With my bone structure I looked like a butch. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what you’re going for but I didn’t want that look personally!
When I left it to dry I had an ugly mop of curls that got kinkier the shorter it got. When I thought again that I’d be clever and blow dry it out, I ended up with tall afro.
Worse yet, I decided to dye my red hair black. It looked so bad I tried to use one of those color removers and ended up with a calico afro. :eek:
I’ve done nothing more than trim it on the ends since then. Twenty years later and I’m almost back to where I want it to be!
My mom sent my dad to get my hair cut when I was little. I have very curly hair, sproingy, too, so it snarled and I cried when we combed it. Still there was no call for what they did. They chopped it into a boycut. I didn’t even have earrings so for a long time I had to deal with “Are you a boy or a girl?” type questions which don’t really feel too good when you’re already stuck with the funny name that everyone makes fun of, and you’re fairly different from the other kids because you spent your first four years out of the country. Fun times!
Rushgeekgirl, any chance you have a picture of your hair looking like that?