The Downsized Hairstyle

One of the questions asked most frequently when I worked at WTVH was if we had makeup artists at the station to make us beautiful before the nightly news.  Hardly.  In a city the size of Syracuse, we were lucky when all the lights in the rest room had bulbs so we could apply the makeup ourselves.

My 20 year old hair cutting tools are ready

One perk I did enjoy were the free haircuts we received in exchange for a mention of the salon at the end of the news.  Every five or six weeks I made an appointment at the chosen salon and had my hair colored and cut.  It was so easy.  In fact, because I never paid for a haircut in 26 years, my whacky perspective about haircuts grew faster than the hair could grow on my head.

Scene of many dramas in life: the kitchen table

Until I was dismissed in December of 2007, I had free haircuts for more than half of my life, and I don’t think the first half really counted because my mother provided all the early hairdo’s and when I was in high school and college, no one cut their hair. Hair was straight, unbleached and in a  race to the waist.

Now though, those $100.00 styles really hurt.  They hurt so much that I don’t go every five weeks anymore.  It’s more like every two months but by then, I can actually see the natural color of my hair for the first time since 1981 and trust me, it isn’t pretty.  Picture a mouse in the corner of the kitchen.  On his last legs. Covered in dust.  In dim light.  That’s the color of my hair.

The homemade "foils" are in place.

Enter the do-it-yourself-er from New England where people recite on a daily basis “God helps those who help themselves”.  OK, maybe they’re not referring to hairstyles, but why not?  Today I bought my first box of $9.99 hair dye and announced to my daughter Natalie that I had total faith in her abilities to give me a great dye job and haircut in the kitchen, the same kitchen were my children regretfully received their “kitchen haircuts” from me until they were so big that not even my precision scissors from the beauty supply store could overcome them and I had to start shelling out the cash for their real haircuts.

Amidst the dozens of boxes of brunette filling the shelves, my blonde “highlights” were mostly sold out.  I had two from which to choose;  “really light blonde” and “dark blonde”.  I was hoping for something in between but chose the latter to be safe.

With the operation underway at home, there were a bunch of items in the box I chose not to use, such as the cap with holes in it designed to pull strands of hair for a more natural streaked appearance.  Natalie and I instead took a box of tin foil from the drawer and mimicked what we’ve seen the stylists do with us through the years.

Little by little, Natalie grabbed chunks of hair, “painted” on the bleach solution with an old toothbrush, wrapped the sections in foil and moved to the next section of hair.  It took about an hour.   By the time the project was finished, the earliest sections were really “cooked” and Natalie panicked when she removed the foils.  She thought I went platinum on just one side of my head.  I told her not to worry.  I don’t have to be on TV anymore and the worse thing that would happen would be I’d buy another box of dye for $9.99 and go dark all over to fix it, but I didn’t have to. It worked.

I washed out the bleach, shampooed and conditioned my hair and came down for the piece de resistance, the kitchen table haircut in reverse.   Here Natalie worked like a pro, following the line of my last haircut and removing a half inch all around.   She worked with confidence around my whole head, lifting hair here, pulling hair there.  Snip, snip, snip.  All done.

When she was in high school Natalie was in demand for the various prom nights in the area, as girls who could not afford a salon visit for the big night came to Natalie for a dramatic and fabulous look.

I'm still alive! And not even bald!

You might not think I look particularly new because I’ve worn my hair like this for years and years and that’s what makes it so special.  Natalie nailed it.  And now I can take the money I used to spend on haircuts and apply it to travel to visit Natalie for a weekend when she moves to the New York City area in search of her new career in the summer.

I’ll probably get a professional haircut once or twice a year to establish the “line”, but for now, with a ten dollar box of bleach, some tin foil, my trusty bag of scissors and clips, and confidence in my most talented daughter, I think I’ve found the downsized answer to looking polished after a career on TV.

Pretty good for a mother and daughter who didn't know what they were doing

Tagged as: home hair cuts, revlon, style