When salons reopened in my hometown this past summer, I decided to finally get a haircut. At that point, I had been putting it off for a year because I had finally accepted my long hair after I spent months feeling insecure about my previous haircut that left my hair short … even though that’s what I wanted. 

The eternal struggle: do I want my hair to be short or long? This question bounced around my head as I walked up to the door of the salon. While waiting to be called by my stylist, I decided that I wanted to cut about three inches of hair off, layer my hair and add soft curtain bangs. I thought cutting my hair to a medium length would be a good compromise for my indecisiveness. 

However, when I told my stylist what I wanted, she immediately told me it wouldn’t look good on me. I was honestly shocked that she was so unflinchingly blunt with me. Feeling defeated, I sat down and she trimmed my dead ends and gave me a very unflattering fringe instead of framing my face like I asked. 

Not only did my wallet cry when I paid $75 for a 30-minute haircut that left my hair looking worse than it did when I walked in, but I did too. I came home and cried to my mom about feeling ugly and of course, she told me that it didn’t look that bad. My hair probably looked okay, but I was more upset about being ignored than anything else. 

This is not the first time I’ve had an experience like this in the salon where I’ve been clear with what I wanted and walked out with something completely different, feeling insecure and defeated. 

These multiple unsatisfactory experiences in hair salons leave me conflicted when my hair is practically touching my butt and I need to decide which style I want done. Should I keep it long where I’m comfortable and safe from a bad haircut or do I take the risk and cut six inches off? It shouldn’t be that deep or existential of a conflict, but as someone who is still trying to find a style that looks good on them, it’s kind of a big deal to me. 

Maybe I’ll learn how to cut hair and just do it myself from now on. This experience has only pushed me closer to my faith in the aphorism “if you want something done right, you better learn how to do it yourself.”