Taking those bad haircuts in stride

By Annie Piekarczyk

A lot of people say that your hair is your crown molding, a make it or break it sort of thing. I’ve always thought so, at least. There are certain people who can pull off a Mohawk and we all know there are definitely some people that can’t. Yes, that would be me.

So getting your haircut at the right place by the right person is certainly something that can’t be overlooked. I’m sure most of you would agree.

Just last week I began to need a haircut, my first haircut away from home. You would think it’s not too big a deal, right?

Wrong. It’s taken me 18 years to find someone who cut my hair and made it look decent, to say the least. When I was younger, I didn’t have any of those kid fad hairstyles. My mom just had the stylist cut it short. Very short. Short and simple.

In fact, it was so short that when I was nine a lady confused me for a boy. I had been talking to her for a few minutes, just small talk, and when my mom walked up, the woman told her how smart her son was. What a compliment.

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After that, I was dead set on growing out my hair, which a few years later turned out to be a really bad idea followed by my dad cutting my bangs. It was the sixth grade, I was playing second base for my youth center’s softball team, and it was the championships. Part of the uniform was this big blue visor that pressed my bangs down right into my eyes and made it hard to see.

Halfway through the game, I got pretty frustrated and my dad got creative. He grabbed some scissors and cut my bangs.

Let’s not forget this happened while I was wearing the visor. So after the game, I took off my visor and was a little surprised to find my bangs were cut to the shape of the visor. Who would’ve guessed? Needless to say, I wore a hat to school the next week.

After all of those bad hair days at school, I had finally found the perfect haircut, a ‘bob’,a longer version of that short, short hair that I grew up with. So as you can imagine, I was a little nervous about finding a hairstylist here in Champaign that wouldn’t make me look like a boy.

There are a bunch of places on campus to get your hair cut, especially if you want one for five dollars. But to be quite honest with you, I figured if I paid five dollars to get my hair cut, then I’d come out looking like I paid five dollars, which might work wonders for some but not so much for me.

They say “don’t kick it ’til you try it”, right? Well, let me tell you. I’ve tried it, and now I’m kicking it. No more five dollar haircuts for me. I learned long ago it’s better to pay for the quality.

So I looked for the quality. I read reviews online and found a hair salon that was voted the best. The best! Right? So I went in to the salon and met my fate, my stylist, who had sleeves of tattoos. That wasn’t expected. Neither was the countless number of piercings she had all over her face (and who knows where else!).

I was out of place, my polo and sweater vest were out of place. She knew it. I knew it. But I was there for the haircut, a quality haircut. And in the end, it didn’t look all that bad. In fact, it didn’t look like I got a haircut at all. And for forty dollars, what do you expect, right?

Oh yeah, I expected a haircut. But instead of being mad about the check I wrote to her, I just took it as a sign to not go back.

The “best” hair salon (apparently) turned out not to be the best for me.

Annie is a freshman in broadcast journalism and she loves fall.