The Joys of Cutting Your Own Hair
Plus, a few practical tips.
This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
I hate getting my hair cut. There is nowhere I feel worse about myself and how I look than when I’m sitting in a salon chair after the only good part of the whole experience (head-massage-while-you’re-getting-shampooed heaven). I am a pretty positive and confident person, but seeing wet hair all around my ruddy face in full daylight is harrowing. I’d rather try on jeans in a poorly lit dressing room, which is really saying something.
For a while, I had a hairstylist who made the process tolerable enough, even somewhat pleasant. I genuinely liked chitchatting with her through a cut and blow dry, distracting me from the fact of my face. She knew exactly what I liked in terms of cut and style. The whole experience was worth it.
And then, I moved from New York to Northern England. Without the comfort of a familiar stylist, the whole process became a nightmare, one you might have experienced too: trying to convey what you want to this new person, them sort of pushing back and not really listening, having to make painful small talk, then parting with your well-earned cash for a cut that you might not even like that much.
How much money have I spent throughout my life on haircuts? Thousands? In New York a typical cut would run me at least $100, plus tip. Stylists are cheaper here in England—a cut and blow dry is more like 40–50 pounds a pop. Still, I hate paying money to stare at my sopping wet hair, only to leave feeling disappointed in the end result.
So I took to YouTube and watched a few minutes of a bunch of tutorials on cutting your own hair. Social media’s suggestions are simple: gather your dry hair into sections, tie it up, and let little pieces of each section out one bit at a time, starting at the back of your head. And then … snip! The hair that is already down and cut will provide a guide for where to cut each next little bit of hair. I used my dog’s grooming scissors, hoping they’d give me a bit of an intentionally choppy look, then used real scissors to clean up the tips by holding them vertically and snipping randomly across the bottom quarter-inch of my hair (otherwise, the haircut would be super blunt).
In less than 10 minutes I’d given myself a cute easy-breezy cut, and I couldn’t quite believe how simple it had been. I’m not the world’s most coordinated person, by any means, but to my unprofessional eye I’d achieved what could pass—at least among people who are not hair stylists—for a professional look.
Would I have similar success with a real cut, though, rather than just a trim? Thinking back to the time an English hairstylist convinced me that going shorter than my chin “wouldn’t suit” my round facial features, I decided to just try the DIY haircut of my dreams. I plopped down in the bathroom in front of my phone camera and made a TikTok of my spur-of-the-moment self-chop: It’s kind of a French bob, but without the bangs, a little bit longer at the front of my face, just grazing the corners of my lips. I’m obsessed. I’ve never felt more like myself.
If you want to try cutting your own hair but want more guidance, Defector’s Alex Sujong Laughlin has sung the praises of taking an online course, which will run you the price of a haircut or two. Taking control of my own hair has been a fun creative outlet, and I’ve been empowered to remember that I’m capable of so much more than I might initially believe. We all are! A world in which you’re no longer shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for basic haircuts is possible. You can do it, I promise. I believe in you.
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