No Layers

Ok. So I got my haircut. New salon. New stylist. All fine. I like the shape. A good cut results in movement. Check. Check. Check.

The other ladies in the salon were very interested in me being from Estados Unidos. They seemed invested in my hair from the outset. No ingles in sight, which was fine by me. I had a photo. Super straightforward. She did the initial cut wet. Then dried it. She had actually achieved the perfect cut. Straight away. I was smiling under my mask. Then she went to cut my bangs. Perfect. Then she got out the texturing shears and went to town screwing up her otherwise perfect A-line bob by putting in layers. Why?!?! Just Why?!?

I have baby fine hair. Like my Dad. Touch it and it’s like silk. And it is stick straight. My Mom hated my hair as a child. She curled, braided, permed it. Nothing worked. Brushing it after a bath was torture as she ripped the comb through it’s always tangled mess.

But… since moving to Spain I have struggled to communicate NO LAYERS. Under no circumstances. NO LAYERS. Ugh. I have said it in ingles and español. I have typed it out. I have mimed it and drawn pictures. Provided photos of what NOT to do. I can not ever rock layers. It just makes me look like I have thin whispy hair. When it was super short, like the singer Pink, this didn’t matter. But even with a short bob, it does. Just cut it into a simple style and it’s got weight and fullness. That’s all that is required. Don’t get fancy. And never, ever, cut the length with layers. Its a rule. She broke the rule.

I have spent the past 7+ months growing out the abomination that was the 80’s weird hair blob of last May. The one where I looked like I’d been in a fight with a big dog with the mange. And the mange won. I just wanted a simple A-line bob. I had a photo, for god sake.

No, this cut is not horrible. The shape is still great. It’s just that she took all the weight out of it. And, for me, the weight it essential to the bob laying correctly. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. Is it that Spanish people have thicker hair that requires layering with extreme prejudice? I don’t really know. It took me three haircuts with Rubin in Valencia to impress upon him that I never wanted a layer anywhere on my head. And perhaps this girl will get it eventually.

This afternoon, Jeff says I look more like myself. Which wasn’t hard to do. Although even he wondered why my hair looks so much thinner. At least I don’t appear to have the mange. Just a very thin bob. Which is progress of a fashion. I am not an extremely vain person. I rarely wear makeup these days. But it should be level one in the training course of a hairdresser. No layers mean no layers. In any language.