Why I avoid hair salons like the plague
In spring 2023 (March 8th to be exact – I will never forget that date) I made a huge mistake: I went to a hairdresser to get my hair cut. Yup, that was a HUGE mistake. For 25 years I cut my hair myself or I had my mum cut it, after a hairdresser-disaster when I was thirteen years old. Hairdressers and bad haircuts are my childhood and teenage trauma.
As a child, my parents insisted that I had bob. I hate bobs. From the bob-tom of my heart. It is my personal nightmare-haircut. I do not get the point of a bob. Too short to put in a bun or get a decent braid, no chance to do a nice ponytail but long enough to have hair all over the face. All I ever wanted was long, long Rapunzel hair. Or just simply long hair, like my sister had. However, my parents insisted that a bob would look cute on me and that my hair was too fine and flimsy for long hair. When I was around eleven, I just refused to get my hair cut. I grew some lovely long hair. At the age of thirteen, a few days before a Christmas performance with school that was aired on local TV, I decided to get my split ends trimmed to look nice and cute for this special day. I went to my mom’s hairdresser, back then some sort of celebrity hairstylist. I thought I could trust this guy because he was… uuhmm well, famous? So, he must be good, no? First, he tried to convince me to do all kind of weird stuff, like layers, a perm or colored strands. Keep in mind, this was in 1998. There were many hair crimes committed in 1998. I insisted on just getting 3 cm of split ends off. Instead, the man cut deeply into my lovely long hair. It was at least 15 cm (probably more) he took off! For absolutely no reason. I was an awkward, pimply, hormonal, insecure thirteen-year-old teenager, who only liked one of her body parts: her long hair. Which was gone now. I cried for two weeks.
I never set a foot in a hair salon since that day until March 8th, 2023. Whenever I needed to get my split ends trimmed, I asked my mom. I cut bangs by myself, grew them out, cut layers by myself, grew them out, went back to bangs… Then I had the bad idea of getting a bit of a fancier haircut from an actual hairdresser. My hair needed a trim anyway so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some layers to frame my face. I think it is called a “butterfly haircut”. I felt like my hair was finally long enough to get it cut and still have long hair after the cut. Oh well…
Already in December, I went to the hair salon and revealed my childhood and teenage trauma to the hairdresser. I told her that I would prefer to go to the dentist. She assured that she would never ever cut too much hair. However, she kept bashing me for my terrible hair. Yes, I needed to get my split ends trimmed but that was the main reason I was there! The rest of my hair was totally fine and nice. That day, she just cut some split ends off in the lengths of my hair and asked me to return in a March. Which I did. HUGE mistake. I brought pictures and even videos of haircuts I liked. She either said that it was not possible with the “terribly flimsy” hair I have or that she would have to cut off more hair than I was willing to let go to achieve the look I showed her. In the end, I decided to just trim my ends a bit and get some soft layers at the front. I showed her the maximum of what I was willing to let go. According to her it was not even necessary to cut that much.
Lies. All lies. She ended up butchering my hair completely. She literally chopped my hair in half. It ended in the middle of my shoulder blades. On top of that, she cut straight across instead of soft layers like I had before. Before I looked like some wood elf with my lovely long and wavy hair. She managed to transform me into a swamp witch in less than an hour. I was so angry.
I have wavy hair that gets curly when it is short. Not the nice kind of curly. More the afro-gone-bad kind of curly. My hair is also very slippery on top of being very thin. To get my hair in a decent updo, I need a certain length that it looks nice and that it actually holds and does not slip out. Here I was, struggling to get my hair in a bun for ballet class, unable to do my favorite hairstyle, which is a braid around my head, looking like a sheep wearing my hair down.
“It will grow back”, you might say. Yes, it will. But my hair grows super slowly. If I am lucky and I never cut it, it grows around ten centimeters in a year. Just to go back to the length I had before will take me around three years. She cut that much! It took me around eight months just to get it long enough that I was able to put it again in a decent bun for ballet, 16 months for my braid around my head.
Desperately I was googling how to make my hair grow faster. I adapted my nutrition, I massaged my scalp, I rinsed with ACV, I was doing handstands to get better blood flow in my scalp… Nothing helped. Then I read about castor oil and that it should help with hair growth. I happened to travel to Indonesia shortly after I heard about this miracle oil. While visiting my friend on Lombok, I went to my favorite store in Kuta, Tiga Natural, where I found a bottle of organic castor oil. August 2023, I started to use castor oil on my hair weekly. Did it help to grow my hair faster? Find out by clicking here.