There has been a Tragic Flobie Accident ...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or, at least, that’s what my head looks like. I have about a quarter of the hair I had when I went in there. I have about half the hair I wanted to have left. This is why I haven’t gotten my hair cut professionally in more than four years. I came very close to bursting into tears while attempting to style myself up this morning.

I look like I should be driving around in a minivan with a bunch of kids in soccer uniforms. What’s even worse, I look like my mother.

Someone please make me feel better. Tell me your horrible haircut stories.

2

Always remember this. Hair Grows. No matter how bad it looks, it will grow out. Make it your mantra as you struggle with the remains… Hair Grows… Hair Grows…

Worst Hair Story: In college, I was going on tour with our madrigal singers and went to a hair salon in a department store (mistake number 1). Chosen at random (mistake number 2). I told the butcher… um, stylist that I wanted an easy to manage hair style. She turned me away from the mirror (mistake number 3). When turned back to the mirror, I burst into tears. My shoulder length hair was now 1/2 inch long. And badly done at that. She’s trying to make me feel better about it, “Look how it swirls around your head”, and pointing out that I never said I didn’t want it short. This was beyond short - this was prickly! So I went home and bleached it, spiked it, and tried to act like it was planned. It was horrible. I didn’t get my haircut again until I graduated, 3 years later.

3

When I was about 17 I decided I was going to cut my boyfriends hair. I couldn’t believe he let me. I started cutting and when I got done it looked like I had put a round tupperware bowl over his head and just cut around it. It looked horrible and he was furious. He ended up going to the barber to have him straighten it out. All in all 6 months later it grew back. I haven’t cut hair since (I’m 33). Sorry to hear about your haircut. It will grow back. I know that doesn’t help now, but just focus on the part that it won’t stay that way forever.

4

Try having the right side about 6" longer than the left side. By then I was out of my punk stage, so no, it was not a requested length. I will say, though, she did style it well enough to cover the “oops”. I realized it when I washed my hair the following morning.

Then I cried.

After many years of having LONG hair, I have been keeping short for the last few years. This has caused more than a few bad haircuts. No, I do NOT want that typical mushroom head poofy hair cut that 30-something PTA moms have. It took about 4 weeks for that cut to grow out enough where I could do something un-PTAmom with it.

I have asked for something akin to this (sans scary face, of course), and ended up with a buzz cut.

Something you can often hear me say to the stylist: “Because it curls up so much, please don’t cut it too snip…short.”

I’m still trying to find a decent stylist. I had the best stylist in the world, but sadly he passed about 5 years ago. It’s been downhill ever since.

5

MissTake, I’m pretty sure that both your links lead to the same model with the same haircut, just styled two different ways. She’s here, too.

Not that that makes your old haircuts any better. I’ve been there. I had the buzz cut.

6

I’m unfamiliar with the term “Flobie”. Please 'splain.

7

It’s a vacuum cleaner that cuts hair.

What, you say? I’m sorry; I could repeat that, but it won’t make any more sense the second time round.

8

I’ll give you two - how’s that? :slight_smile:

One summer when I was doing field work for my thesis, I became frustrated with my hair. It had been growing out for close to 3 months at that point, and since I had a short hair style in those days, I was looking pretty shaggy. My bangs in particular had become a real pain, because they kept getting in my eyes. So at the first opportunity, I ducked into a Super-Cuts kind of place to get a trim.

There was NO ONE else in the place, but the “stylist” couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. No shampoo for me, just a spritzing with a spray bottle. She then told me that since my hair was so grown out, she couldn’t tell how it had been cut originally, so she was just going to cut it in whatever way it wanted to lie on my head. Five minutes later I was done.

At first I was just relieved to not have hair in my eyes any more. Then, later in the day, I ran my fingers through my hair (a habit I have) and discovered that my hair now seemed to be… unevenly distributed, so to speak. Generally longer on the right side than on the left, but so randomly snipped I swear a child could have done better. Once I got home, about 2 weeks later, I went to my regular hair stylist to get a proper cut. His first reaction was, “What the FUCK did you do to your hair?!?” He then gave me some tips on how to do my own trimming in a pinch, but my favorite is still “how to trim your bangs so you won’t look like Mamie Eisenhower.”
My second story is actually a cut-and-perm tale. At that time, my hair had gotten somewhat long (about shoulder-length), and when it gets that long it has a tendency to hang rather straight in the back. Wave perms were pretty popular then, so I thought I would try one, just to give my hair a bit of a lift (something on the order of Britney’s hair in the left-hand pic).

I had just gotten a recommendation for a new hair stylist (the one mentioned above), but he was booked solid the day I went, so his then-partner took me for the perm. He told me he would have to trim my hair first, so that the perm would come out properly… well okay, but I asked to him to keep the trimming to a minimum. I started to feel uneasy when I noticed how much hair was ending up on the floor. I felt even more uneasy when I saw the teeny-tiny curlers he was planning to use. REALLY bad feelings came when the timer for the perm solution went off, and he came back and re-set it for another 20 minutes. When he finally took the curlers out, I nearly passed out in shock - my hair looked like Barbra’s hair in her “afro” days, only the curls were tighter yet. Seeing my look of horror, the stylist promptly blew my hair out to look straighter, but the damage was already done - literally.

When I went home, I desperately washed out my hair repeatedly since he had told me not to (in order to let the perm set). I ended up with an enormously tangled and matted head of hair. Weeping in frustration, I ran my fingers through my hair in a vain attempt to untangle it somewhat… and discovered that there were several rows of stubble going across the top of my head, where the perm solution had apparently burned my hair so badly that it had broken off. :eek: Thankfully, although my hair is very fine I have a lot of it, so it wasn’t really noticeable as it grew out… but you can be damn sure I never let that guy touch my hair again.

BTW, after nearly a month and a half, the perm finally relaxed to the point I wanted to achieve in the first place. I haven’t permed my hair since.
Just keep remembering, this too shall pass.

9

My hair renders all but the best haircuts aggressively mediocre, so this will be beard hair.

One night I couldn’t get to sleep all night, and I had a very early appointment. So I’m completely catatonic while shaving. I’m trimming, and suddenly CHUNK – off goes a big wodge out of the front of my beard.

Gah.

So I’m trying to fix that, and the remaining beard is dwindling, and I can’t get it even, and it’s looking more and more, ahh, Hitleresque. So finally I just bag it and shave off the whole thing. It wasn’t an improvement, and I basically went into hiding until it grew back.

10

Er, I always thought that was just a joke in Wayne’s World…

“It sucks… as it cuts”

Bzzzzzzttttt…

“It certainly does suck”

11

A few years ago my daughter was applying to be a Rotarian Student Ambassador and we had an initial meeting scheduled with a group of Rotarians. Let me explain how important this meeting was…Our town’s Rotarians had never sent a (high) school student abroad. We’re inner city, and well, there are a myriad of factors which aren’t condusive to foreign exchange, however, my daughter saw this opportunity and decided to take it. Keep in mind we had absolutely no money whatsoever for her to participate with this, so if she were chosen to go, it would be largely by the financial good graces of the Rotarians and their fund raising. This meeting was very, very, very important to my daughter.

Thinking of how much we needed to impress during this meeting (and wanting to really put my best foot forward), I decide to get my hair cut a few days beforehand. At this point it was about down to my shoulders, and somewhat scraggly, and I was thinking a trim would make it more “classy”, so I go into a place which usually cuts my hair. The regular stylest who usually cut my hair isn’t there (was actually on vacation “until next week”), and in my desperation, I allow another stylest to take a wack at it. And that’s what she did. A “trim” obviously translated somewhere on down the line into “Take it close to the scalp as you can possibly get it, and make sure the skin is showing in obvious places.” I looked like Demi Moore in GI Jane (only not as buff). It was horrible. I cried. My daughter cried.

And then, I went out and bought a wig, which I wore during the interview.

All was good in the end–we made a good impression during the meeting (although my scalp itched like I had body lice), my daughter spent the following year as a Student Rotarian Ambassador, and my hair grew back.

The wig is in it’s box in the top of my closet.

12

My first would be a relaxing treatment that left me looking like I was wearing one of those plastic helmet-wigs they used to sell for kids in the 1960s – with scalp burns underneath.

The second would be… well, when I was about 16 – the day the hairdresser started cutting my hair, got about halfway through cutting four or five inches off, then passed out on the floor. He’d apparently been carousing too late the night before.

I wound up being walked – still wearing the plastic poncho thing, with half my hair cut – two blocks to a local barber, who gave me a quick and efficient cut. But my mother went back to Mr. On-the-Floor until he died, some ten years or so later.

13

(insert picture of shocked “me” – hands upturned in claw fashion – saying “Are you shitting me???”)

14

How 'bout another bad perm story? Generally, I’m pretty laid back about my hair because I can aways just wear a ponytail until it grows back out again, or something…

At the time, I had really long hair, below my bra strap in back, darn close to my waist. It hangs dead straight when it’s that long because there’s a lot of it and it’s heavy. Cut short, with layers and it curls up in back, just like that Britney photo linked above. (But not in front – that’s dead straight no matter what.)

So I go to a rather pricey stylist, being new in town and not having a regular stylist. When your hair is that long, it means you haven’t had a cut in a couple years. I explained I wanted the spiral perm, to achieve the Britney look (linked above, on the left), and I knew that my hair was so heavy, it won’t take a perm without using special rolling techniques. One such technique is called a piggy back, where they roll half the strand in one roller and then grab another roller to finish that strand. If you layer too much hair on one roller, the perm solution doesn’t soak down through all that mess evenly… and your perm doesn’t take. There’s a couple other ways to specially roll long hair for a perm – and it costs about $20 extra usually. This particular stylist insisted that she knew what she was doing and would roll my hair properly.

And then she promptly began to roll my hair like it was four inches long – the same way she rolls everyone else’s hair. When she checked my hair – unrolled one to see if it was curling – she checked in the back, where the hair is already sort of curly. So she thought she’d been successful, rinsed and unrolled me. It was nothing but a frizzy mess. I’m thinking of Roseanne Rosannadana frizzy! No curl really to speak of. She sprayed it, scrunched it and did everything she could in styling to fool me into believing the perm took.

I paid the $100 freaking dollars for the bad perm and went home. I washed my hair – rinsed out all the “product,” and burst into tears. This was the only time in my life I have ever cried over my hair and that includes when I got a monstrous tangle from gum when I was 11 and they had to give me a “pixie” cut which made me look like a boy. I called the shop and she promised to do it again but I refused, knowing she’d burn the crap out of my hair trying to perm it again so soon. So I called the credit card company to stop payment but they insisted I had to let the salon give it another shot before they’d issue a chargeback.

I threw up my hands in disgust and have not attempted to get another perm ever since. This was about 8 years ago.

15

“It’s sucking my will to live. . .”

Remarkably, the Flowbee is completely real. They used to run infomercials for it. Hilarious.

16

Thank you all for your support. :slight_smile: I know it’ll grow back, but I still want to cry every time I look in the mirror. sigh Everyone at work thinks it’s adorable. I think it looks like I have a perfectly round head. I am the Fisher Price plastic mom with a round peg instead of legs and the little painted on face.

It will grow … it will grow … it will grow …

17

I haven’t had a bad haircut, per se, but I did have an unfortunate hairstyle brought on by puberty and a thyroid hormone deficiency.

When I was 12 or 13, I got my hair cut in it’s normal “short short in the back, little bit on top” cut. This caused me enough grief, because God knows, a seventh grade girl just DID NOT get her hair cut short. Like this, but shorter on the sides

My body betrayed me. My lovely short straight hair (with the little Hugh Grant cowlick at the front) turned curly literally overnight. I ended up looking like this.

It became straight again just as fast when I got through most of college and discovered my thyroid problem.

18

My whole life has been one bad haircut after another, interspersed with bad perms. I have a genetic inability to communicate with hairstylists of any gender or price range. (Passed down from my mom to me and my sister) It could be because I never have enough money to afford a really good salon. But even the times I’ve gone to the same stylist who cuts a friends hair fabulously, I get a bad cut.

Let’s start with my first salon perm, in 1977. My mom sends me to her salon, which specializes in old lady bubble cuts, standing appointments and women who get comb-outs. Never having had a perm before, I don’t know the procedures, so when the stylist forgets about me (back in a corner, while she deals with two other customers) and over-processes my perm, she blames me for not letting her know that I’d been there too long. Not only was it too curly, but when it started growing out a few weeks later, it broke off at the roots around the part on top of my head. Fortunately it was the 70’s and I was in college, so I could wear a bandana pretty much al the time.

From then through the eighties (ignoring the too-short cut right before my wedding from a stylist who had given me three decent cuts before then) it was pretty much a saga of no layers when I ask for layers, chin length when I ask for collar length, poodle perms when I want a body wave, and best of all, giving me a classic prom-style up-do when I asked specifically for a French twist on the day of a formal ball. ( I went straight home and washed it out.)

The nineties were BestCuts fiascoes, capped off by the Hair Butcher from Hell in 2000 who cut the top layer longer than the bottom, uneven, chunks cut out in back…then sprayed it into some semblance of order so I didn’t see the worst of it til I washed it the next day. That was the first time I went back and demanded that my hair be fixed (I had a first date coming up) Even my friends said Oh. My. God. when they saw my hair. And so did the stylist when I went back in…even called the salon owner out to show her the horror of it all. I believe the exact words were, “Darlene has done it again. This is what I’ve been telling you about. She has got to go. Ma’am, we are so sorry, and we’ll fix you right up.”

I had one great cut from a very pricey salon that had a coupon for a free cut for new clients, but it was too expensive to go back. My last cut was from Mastercuts, and even though it was shorter than I wanted, no layers around the front and she missed some long dangly bits my daughter cut later, it isn’t a bad cut, as my cuts go.

Next time I’m saving up and going to a co-worker’s sister’s salon. She says she knows just what I need, and my co-worker’s hair looks great. Wish me luck.

19

Time: July Third, Nineteen Seventyfive.

Place: Parris Island, South Carolina.

Nuff said. Could not even recognise myself.
It grew back. :slight_smile:

20

I feel for ya, kittenblue, I’ve had my share of bad haircuts and the only thing you can do is wait till the sheep shearing grows out. This may sound underhanded, but have you considered getting another haircut at the expensive salon, only this time have someone take pictures of the cut and showing those pictures to a les expensive hairdresser? Just a thought.