Younger or Older?

Yikes.

I cut my hair, bitches. Well, the stylist-lady cut my hair, but still - it was my [asinine] idea. It's... pretty short, and I doubt it will help in the whole "making me look my age" department, but after she finished cutting it to the length I desired, I realized that she was right: you couldn't notice a difference. So I gave her full rein to cut it to the length she thought best.

Heather rides the subway with long, split-ended hair.

Heather's self-portrait of her new teenage hairdo - before grabbing hold of the straightening iron.

I'm happy with it. I suppose. I just wonder how many times I'll have to wash it in order to get the smell of salon products out of my life. I have never enjoyed the products that stylists use in my hair - why do they all have such oppressive odors? Aveda, for example, is a lovely salon with great services, but their shampoos and hairsprays give me a raging migraine.

(If the smell of products doesn't phase you, then I highly, highly recommend Aveda. Check out the Aveda Institute in DC where you can get a great haircut for dirt cheap. Well... as long as you don't mind signing a waiver acknowledging that you understand that students will be cutting your hair and that you might be injured by brushes, curling irons, and the like. Really. Actually, my experience at Aveda warrants a whole post. I'll have to get on that eventually...)

So stylist-lady asked me about my product usage, and I answered simply, "Dove shampoo and conditioner, and... nothing else." Apparently this was the wrong answer. Apparently I should be using mousse. And tons of it. She globbed a dinosaur-sized amount into my hair (while I cringed), and after what seemed like an hour of blow-drying, there was... no difference. I think it should have been obvious that my hair repels all breeds of products. It's so fine that even the lightest application of mousse or hairspray just weighs it down and makes it look dirty and greasy. But they never listen - they never, ever listen!

With the cut finished and with my head all styled like I was ready to go to my Eight Grade Send-Off dance (she curled it under, y'all), she beckoned me over to the Wall O' Products. She says, "Here's the shampoo we used today." I replied that I wasn't interested, but I lived very close to the salon, so I could always scurry up there and grab some. Such bullshit. Like I would ever do that. She then went on the defensive, "It's the same price as the shampoo you use already!" I glanced at the price tag and silently noted to myself that it cost three times as much as my beloved Dove products.

And then it hit me. It was brilliant. It would silence her immediately. It just had to:

"I don't like the smell of that shampoo. It would bother me all day."

It worked! She backed off, I paid, and I booted-scooted out of there. Success!

Yeah, I think that I like it. Though... check back with me in a week.