Mention "home haircut" to a group of people and someone is bound to make some crack about getting a Bowl Cut. The Bowl Cut is ubiquitous; my Chinese friends and I figured some witty fool added "rice" in front of the phrase and suddenly it took on the Asian meaning- but, seriously, Bowl Haircuts can cross all cultural and ethnic boundaries. The Beatles had something akin to it. That creepy kid in The Shining (redrum....) looked like he had a bowl cut. Some of my coworkers call it the Peter Pan haircut. It's even on friggin wikipedia.org.
The simple theory is that you slap a bowl onto some poor victim's head, then use the edges as guide for your scissors/trimmers. This is assuming you have blurry vision, have really trembling hands, or are perpetually drunk and/or otherwise incapable of judging whether you took off one inch of hair from one side of the head vs three from the other.
My sister and I thankfully never had to wear bowls on our head. Our mom did cut our hair for us, shaped it into the standard "bob" style. Sometimes it looked fine; other times, one portion of our hair ended up curling in, another curled out. My sister and I have discussed this thoroughly and concluded that the inconsistent results were not due to the fact our mom was a horrible hairstylist, but that a) she cut our hair when it was DRY, not even slightly wet, and b) she used the same shears, it turns out, as those she used to cut fabric, yarn, paper bags (the utility scissors).
The bottom line is, home hair cuts are not "bad." I started cutting my own hair back during my starving student period when I was pursuing my graduate degree and world domination and all those idealistic dreams (heh). I haven't stepped into a salon in four years and thank you, my hair looks fine, nobody has laughed at me-yet- and my coworkers say my hair looks healthy and ask where I get it done (surprise!).
Here's my advice. If all you need is a maintenance trim, then there's no reason why you can't do the 1/4-1/2 inch trim yourself. DO buy haircutting scissors and use them ONLY for haircuts. DO wash your hair first, squeeze out the excess, then cut the damp hair. DO work in front of a mirror (duh). DO frequently comb hair out straight to catch any hair you may have missed. Also in the case of DIY haircuts, less is more. You can always decide to cut off more, but you can't repaste hair back onto your head.
If, however, you have short hair, I'd advise you go to a salon, as mistakes are MUCH more noticeable in short hair. In my words, you don't have much "starting material" to work with, so why risk any messups? If you want professional work done- highlights, coloring, perms, or a fresh, new style- then a visit to the salon is in order. In a future episode, I'll write about ethnic salons: yay or nay?
DIY haircuts- Bring out your bowls!
September 16th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
September 17th, 2006 at 02:54 am 1158458094
September 17th, 2006 at 04:12 pm 1158505939
Then there was the "instant shag" in the seventies. Bend over, comb long hair over the top of your head; form a pony tail and trim 3-4-5 inches above your scalp. Instant shag!
I wish I could cut my own hair, but it's short and very layered. Works best for my slightly wavy hair.
September 19th, 2006 at 08:31 am 1158651065
September 29th, 2006 at 01:55 pm 1159534525