Hairapy

You know that SunSilk shampoo slogan, “Get Hairapy?” I need it... but not in a bottle.

I have always been fickle with my hair. I change the style and color pretty often, but for the last five years or so I have been in a rut. My stylist, with whom I have a 20 year relationship, has always enjoyed the fact that I like change and as a result of our rapport I have had very few bad hair incidents. Usually bad things happen when I ask her to do something that she tells me my hair won’t do... and I tell her to try anyway.

So on with my story. Last week I decided to change my style and color for spring/summer. I meticulously found pictures of Reese Witherspoon from the movie “Sweet Home Alabama” (it was on TV all this week) online and decided to brighten up my naturally dark brunette hair with chunky gold highlights.

I strolled in bearing my pictures (my stylist has an inch thick stack of my picture requests from the last 20 years) and she started to cut. The cut went well, lopping off a good 4 inches or so in the back. I liked it. Then came the color. The regular highlights in the back and sides were fine, but the chunky ones on top turned... *shudder* orange. Yes, the “O” word. A word no woman wants to hear from her hairdresser’s mouth during coloring. Not Lucy orange, mind you, traffic cone orange. So she reapplied the solution and I sat, eyes watering, under the dryer. When I emerged, the orange had turned white. Not good. My stylist then continued through 4 more procedures, ending with my highlights not only still white, but breaking off in chunks. This led to the other “O” word no woman wants to hear at a salon: Overprocessed. After five hours at the salon, I did not handle this well. I insisted on handing her a check and I left, crying.

I have notoriously low self esteem and my hair is the one thing that I actually like about myself, so this was a real blow. I fretted and sulked and considered my options. I could don a red string bracelet and shave my head a la Britney; Buy some lovely robes, shave my head and declare Hare Krishna in the local airport; Fake cancer (okay, so I couldn’t really sink that low, but it did cross my mind) and lament the side effects of chemo. In the end, I headed to the store and purchased $40 worth of moisturizing and repairing hair products. I knew my problem was well beyond the scope of these mere mortal treatments, but I had to try.

As I sat in my bedroom, my head slathered with “revitalizing damage reversing” goop and ensconced in a lovely plastic shower cap, my stylist called. She was very upset. She apologized profusely, swore she would return my check and offered twice weekly deep conditioning treatments for free. She felt horrible. I, of course, felt worse because the evidence of the incident was currently pasted to my scalp. But we verbally kissed and made up, amidst numerous apologies from her and comforting yet still slightly stunned about my hair remarks from me.

I have spent the last few days conditioning twice daily and perfecting an art of deception that would make "Mata Hairi" proud. I purchased ten pair of decorative bobby pins for swooping the unaffected hair over the stubbly remains of my highlights. A wide headband works wonders for covering that nasty broken area. Thank God for whoever decided that zigzag parts were a good idea...

And when all is said and done, I am facing weeks of continuing counterfeit hairdos, all designed to conceal the shame of the previously orange, overprocessed, remains of my highlights. So, does anyone out there know a good hairapist?

Lucy