Hair Through the Ages

I walked into the swanky Juut Salon in Palo Alto on Saturday, after a fairly lengthy hiatus from the chi-chi salon circuit, and felt a little nervous.  I had received a coupon in the mail to receive a free make-up consultation and lipstick if I came in for any salon service.  I can't resist a coupon featuring conspicuous use of the word "free," so I booked a long-overdue haircut appointment, and hoped for the best.

Like many women, I have a love-hate relationship with my hair.  My hair has either been a source of pride or an unruly monster that needed to be tamed.  As a child, after one disastrous Pixie cut in second grade, where I feigned illness to avoid school for two days, I vowed never to cut my hair again.  I let it grow long and straight until it reached my waist in junior high, and ran away shrieking any time my mother came near me with a pair of scissors. 

In high school, I finally succumbed to the trend of the day, and cut my waist-length hair short, into a Carol Brady/Florence Henderson long shag, and then attempted a Dorothy Hamill wedge, neither of which suited me terribly well.  In college, I went through a big hair perm phase. My Asian, chemical loving hair soaked up the stinky Toni Home Perm and exploded into frizz that would rival Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons. After much trial and more error, I went back to the long, straight hair of my childhood.  I managed to narrowly avoid the Rachel cut in the '90s, which all my single women friends had, even though all of them claimed that they never watched Friends.

In my thirties, I got a short-professional looking haircut at an upscale salon, to go with my professional job and no-longer-single girl lifestyle.  After becoming a mom at 40, my hair was the last thing on my mind, and grew like the untamed weeds in our back yard.  I wore it tied up in a very unflattering ponytail or bound to the back of my head with a toothy clip resembling some kind of ancient Chinese torture device. I wanted it out of my face and out of my way. Whatever it looked like, I was too tired to notice or care.

At 42, I noticed the random single gray strands were starting to make a hostile takeover of my temples, just where I could see it and just where it could annoy me most.  My mom, also known as the Great Sage of Germantown, Ohio, told me in ominous tones, "Put off dying your hair as long as possible.  Once you start, there's no turning back." 

So, I held off on the inevitable date with hair dye destiny until I was 45.  At that point, the "distinguished" looking temple gray started making a concerted march toward the back of my head, like Sherman's march to the sea, taking no prisoners.  I broke down and booked an appointment with a salon with an industrial-chic decor, pounding techno-music, stylists with a lot of attitude and tattoos, and a good write-up in San Francisco magazine.  The colorist took one look and said, "Oh my.  I've got some work to do." 

Four hours later, I had auburn highlights and no hint of gray.   I thought the haircut that went with the coloring was too much of an extravagance, so I found my way to an economy salon, let's call it SuperGreatSnips, where, for $14, where I got a basic trim.  The first few times, it worked out fine, but it was luck of the stylist draw every time I went there.  The last time, I ended up with what has become know as the Very Unfortunate Bob (VUB) that made me look like Moe from the Three Stooges.  For the first time in my life, I considered investing in hats.

The VUB took about nine months to grow into a tangled mass of over-processed, graying locks, which brought me into the chrome-and-beechwood Scandinavian-inspired waiting room at Juut on Saturday.  I sat in the waiting room flipping through Marie Claire and Esquire magazines and sipping mineral water with organic fruit floating in it, waiting for someone with the title "Master Stylist"to come and put my hair out of its current state of misery. 

She called me over finally, and asked what I wanted, did a 360 degree look around my head, and made some suggestions.  She then led me to the hair washing area, where I had to lie down on a slanted table that lead up to the sink.  At this point, I didn't know for sure if I was going to have my hair washed or be water-boarded.  I kept my misgivings to myself, and gamely plunked myself up on the table.  She used some all-natural Aveda products that had a vaguely medicinal yet floral smell, like flowers that had been dried with mothballs. 

After the hair-washing, she led me back to the chair, and she snipped and chatted away.  She seemed like she knew what she was doing, and I liked her.  I figured that if worse came to worse, as my mother, The Great Sage, used to say, "It's only hair.  It'll grow back."

Fortunately, I was pleased with the end result, a simple, no muss-no fuss style that is easy to maintain.  I then had a consultation with the Aveda makeup artist who first tried to make the dark circles under my eyes go away by turning them yellow using something called "tourmeline under-eye cream."  I wasn't sure I wanted to trade the tired look for the jaundiced look, but she fixed the problem pretty quickly with some concealer and an adept hand with foundation.

I left the salon about 3 hours after I arrived, loaded down with Aveda products from a sepia-colored eyebrow pencil to Super Volumizing hairspray to Uplifting Face Serum.  It takes a lot of work, and evidently a lot of money, to look like a million bucks.  I don't think I quite achieved that, but my husband told me when I got home, "Well, I like it.  You look like yourself, only more so."

I have no earthly idea what that means, but I think it's good.  At least, I hope it is.

The author, looking like herself, only more so, after 3 hours in the salon.

When not futzing with her hair, Glennia blogs at The Silent I and is the Co-founder and Managing Editor of MOMocrats.

This is an original post to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.