Confessions of A Naughty Girl

Grooming Week: Hair Cuts and Styles

Hair cuts.
The basic goal of them is to avoid looking like strung-out, coked-up hippies. Here's a hint: there's usually one good one every season. In 1995, it was "the Rachel" (of "Friends" character fame). If you encounter a girl who is currently still sporting the Rachel, please, hand her a fiver and tell her to buy herself a one way ticket to the OOs. Not cool. This season, the good haircut happens to be a Nicole Richie/Jessica Simpson sleek bob, cut just above the shoulders with face-framing layers and long bangs swept to the side. Just a tip.

Hair color.
If you are a female over the age of 18, chances are, you color your hair in some way, shape or form. I'm going to venture a guess that at least 70% of blondes do not have the carpet to match the curtains. Why? Dye! For some, it's an issue of gray hair. For some, boredom. And yet for others, it's an opportunity to express their personal style. (I still have no idea what the f*ck that means, but I'm going with what I've heard.) A good single-process coloring (that means one color all over your head) at a salon usually costs upwards of $50 and needs to be re-touched (that means more dye on the roots of your hair) every 4-6 weeks, unless you're a punk or a bus station skank, in which case it should be retouched when you have finally showered and realized your hair is two different colors, or stopped eating enough crack to have money for a touch-up. Forgetting to touch-up is a crucial, and often unforgiving grooming error in the eyes of other women. If your roots are dark and stand out really badly, you will often become a social pariah, banned from group salon outings and such until your color problem is corrected accordingly.

Highlighting: the "extra credit" of hair coloring
Highlighting, or "painting" lighter strands of color on hair, is the spastic stepchild of hair coloring, and pretty typical these days. Ahhh yes, as if putting peroxide and all sorts of shit on our heads wasn't bad enough, we found a way to make it more complicated. Highlights often give a "sun-kissed" effect, or, in the case of really bad highlights, a "skunking" quality. J. Lo is a great example of one who gets her hair highlighted regularly. J. Lo usually gets a "double process" at the salon - that is, dyeing her whole head with one color, and then "painting" on highlights by hand (a term called "balyage" - bonus points if you can spell it, and if you can pronounce it, you may want to consider whether or not you're attracted to other men). There are three ways to highlight - cap (strands are pulled through a perforated cap for all-over highlights), foils (larger chunks of strand are painted and processed using aluminum foil for a more dramatic effect), and balyage (hand painting highlights where the sun would "kiss" hair for a natural look). Cap highlights are cheap and usually look it, foils are more expensive, and balyage is usually the price of a heavy night of drinking on the tab PLUS three or four DVDs. Okay, here's where it gets confusing - sometimes, for more natural haircolor, a colorist will throw in "lowlights", or darker shades than the current color, to add depth to the color. Got it?

Hair styling
Once you have a solid cut, you have to make it look good. None of this "dzuzzing" shit you see on "Queer Eye". It's just not that simple. There are three main tools for styling: the hair dryer, the curling iron, and the flat iron (sometimes referred to as the "ceramic flat iron"). If she refers to the "ceramic flat iron", do NOT, I repeat, do NOT call it a "flat iron". She will get pissed. Why? Because the difference between a flat iron and a ceramic flat iron is about three levels in prestige and $100 bucks. The hair dryer dries, the curling iron curls and gives volume (or "bounce"), and the flat iron (or "ceramic flat iron") straightens and flattens. Sometimes she'll use just one. Sometimes she'll use three. Don't question why she's mixing and matching, just go with it and be glad you know what they're for.

Hair Products
Okay, here's the hard part. This section could really be a blog in itself, but I'll try to be succinct. The truth is, the only difference between a mousse, a gel mousse, a liquid gel, a pomade, a serum, and a sculpting wax is in texture. Some are oily, some are sticky, and some are just plain bullshit. All I know about this category is that you always finish with a little shine spray (or serum) and hair spray if you need the style to hold. But the takeaway here is that if it makes us feel like we'll be one step closer to supermodel hair by using it, we'll try it once. Or twice. Or in conjunction with a number of other products, with the hopes that if we happen to run into a good hair day (which can be likened to the odds of running into a favorite acquaintance somewhere), we'll take credit for our resourcefulness and hair skill.

Okay, so now it's time for a little quiz, to see how much attention you've paid. Answers are in the comments section of this post. Good luck!

1. "The Rachel" is a:
a. variation of the reverse cowgirl position
b. cool, hip hairstyle that women currently wear
c. an outdated, quasi-mullet, courtesy of Jennifer Aniston, of which any woman who is currently sporting it should be publicly executed

2. Most blonde-haired girls above the age of 18 are __________.

3. The ceramic flat iron is more ____________ than the flat iron.

4. The difference in various styling products is:
a. some make your hair straight
b. some bring you to orgasm (still reading? just checking)
c. not a whole lot, except for texture

5. Women buy lots of hair products because it makes them feel ____________.

Bonus: Really bad highlights that are chunky-looking are referred to as?

posted by KA @ 8:01 PM