Hairdressers

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Just come back from having my hair done, and forgot what an exhaustive experience it is. I felt under so much pressure to come up with small talk and after a while felt like the girl must be thinking I'm such a boring pathetic person and wishing she had a more lively client to deal with. Also hate having to stare myself in the mirror for so long looking at my blank and ugly expression and reminding myself what a freak I am.

Anyone else have a problem with hairdressers?

I have always found going to the hairdresser to be a particularly stressful experience. In fact, I generally only go to get a haircut when I return home for a visit (once or twice a year), because the people at the place I go to there are used to me and my silent ways. Unfortunately, that's become impractical, as I've moved farther from home, and I haven't had a haircut in over a year. :/ Good thing I had short hair to begin with, I suppose. Still, it's a trial I have to face soon myself, and have been dreading.

My advice: It helps if you don't look in the mirror. Try looking at the floor next time.

I have cut my own hair for nearly two decades now because I found the hairdressing experience so literally terrifying on so many occasions. I have had three good experiences at hairdressers, one having hair clippered at a barbers, ( when I was shaving it a lot etc ), another when had super "clean cut" bob ( perfect alignment of hair ) in South Molton Street in London, and the other at a tiny hairdressers in St Ives Cornwall, with an ex-London hairdresser with great technical expertise, who bleached and cut my hair in super chic-short-cut; the the last two really understood/were passionate about hair, and concentrated on that, and the barber just clippered, in a businesslike way. All other experiences, thankfully a long time ago now, were horrendous. My mother had cut our hair when children, and I began to do so aged 11, and so I didn't ever get into a habit of hairdressers anyway.

PS. And now I think about it all the good experiences were with male-hairdressers; it was the women hairdressers who were absolutely ghastly, cutting hair sloppily/fussily with little idea about how to make it really "work", and imposing social pressure, etc.
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Once upon a time when dinosaurs and benign space aliens roamed the earth, my mother cut my hair and I hated it because the hand clippers pulled on my scvalp.

Later, during the heyday of the Roman Empire, I was sent to the barber where I had to perch on a riser I KNEW was going to collapse while the barber came THIS close to sticking scissors in my eye and turned me out with a crewcut that was NOT my style.

During the Civil War, I got to sit in the chair, but the barber still came too near my eyes and tried to pour pots of stinking oil on my head, making me reek till one time I HAD to do a shower [which I hate] because a bath would not scrub enough guck off my head.

These days, I go, I manage. I say what I hope the barber will do, I close my eyes [better if I don't see the scissors] and withdraw to avoid conversation and watching the mirror.

If you CAN "go to sleep" during the experience it helps. Some hair practitioners will talk anyway, but you don't really need to listen or respond.

Apparently the people at SportCuts (I don't know where you live, but they are in Maryland and surely elsewhere) rarely talk. It's geared toward men but I'm sure anyone can go. They actually point you towards the TV, which generally has sports playing, and barely talk to you at all. My boyfriend loves it. Even if you don't like sports, it's better than having to talk to them.

I got my hair cut at a "real" salon a few weeks ago - as opposed to one of those places in the mall - and the lady kept trying to talk to me. Thankfully my friend came with me, and she already knew her, so they talked more. But the lady was rude, and kept pushing my head around, and then didn't even cut my hair straight. The style is awesome, but I'm annoyed that I put up with that only to get an asymmetrical cut, when that wasn't what I wanted. And then she told me how my hair was uneven in the back.. I don't care! I'm there to get it cut now, no need to tell me how I probably looked like crap for months before because the last person I went to was terrible at it.

I don't trust hairdressers. I cut my hair myself.

Haven't had someone else cut my hair since I was a kid.

I dislike going to hairdressers so much that I cut my own.

I bring my mom with me so she can deal with the nosy broad cutting my hair.

For the past year I have been going to a training salon where trainee hairdressers cut and dye my hair under supervision. It does take a bit longer, but they speak very little as they are concentrating on what they are doing. In fact, the last time I was there the girl who was cutting my hair was quite chatty and the trainer came up and told her to focus on what she was doing and not to talk to me.

At first I was worried that I might end up with a terrible haircut, but actually they are really good. Because they are training they have to make sure they know how you want your hair cut and then cut it that way. One of the trainers shows them what to do, then they do a little bit, get it checked then are shown the next bit and so on. More than half the time the trainer has done my entire haircut while the trainee looked on.

I'd definately recommend it. It's substantially cheaper as well, and I now have a better haircut, which is the way I want it, than when I paid more to a hairdresser who ignored what I asked for.

Quite funny reading this, because I haven't thought about this for a long time.

I have been going to the same hairdresser for around 3 years. It's actually run by immigrants.

Most of them only speak a few words in Norwegian, so they never talk much to me. However they speak a lot to each other in Arabic.

And the best thing is that I never have to explain how I want my hair, I just have to nod when they ask "same as last time?"

But before I started going to this place, I had bad experiences with hairdressers. Especially with women. I particularly remember this blonde squeezing her boobs towards my head all the time. She also cut me a bad and painful haircut...