Louisa Simmonds

I went to the hairdressers to get Jen Aniston’s new haircut today.

Unlike the majority of women, going to the hairdresser’s is not a favourite pastime of mine. Firstly, it involves me leaving the house and secondly, having to make small talk with someone I don’t know, nor particularly want to know, is not what I call ‘relaxing’.

Then there is the anxiety of leaving the salon looking far worse than when I went in. And I do find it increasingly hard to sit still for two hours.

And the head massage is just plain awkward.

Making the decision to dye my hair for the first time all those years ago is probably up there with cigarette-smoking and eating Green and Black chocolate in terms of bad decisions. It was far easier to give up the cigarettes.

I did try and revert back to my natural shade of common ‘mouse’ a couple of years ago, but the old man, (who wouldn’t notice if I lost both legs), said he didn’t like it, so I’ve been back to bottle-blonde ever since.

But how fucking tedious is it watching someone put foils in your hair? There must be a special clause in health insurance policies to cover hairdressers for mental scarring caused by the sheer monotony of their occupation. 

I rarely get my hair cut these days because I spend all of my hair budget (as well as the old man’s, because fortunately he doesn’t need it) on the dyeing process, so my everyday hairstyle tends to be the messy bun. But because this week I’m PMS-ing, which makes me a little bit impulsive and a lot more demanding (amongst other things), I decided to do something really radical and spice up my hair. And before I knew it, I found myself on Pinterest doing my due diligence when I found out that Jen has recently changed her hairstyle.

Now, I’ve been working ‘the Rachel’ hairstyle very successfully for quite a few years now, but if Jen can cope with change, so can I. (I thought). So I decided to go for Jen’s new bob – which is kind of long at the front and short at the back and a bit choppy. 

WHATEVS – I KNEW WHAT I MEANT!

Got to the hairdressers, VERY excited at the prospect of re-inventing myself and I explained exactly what I wanted to my hairdresser (see above).

But they can never do it, can they? They can never translate the concept in your head, onto your head.

They go too short or they don’t cut off enough and you come out $200 lighter with nothing to show for it – and that is exactly what happened to me today. ALMOST. Because not one to sit quietly back and accept crippling disappointment, I waited until after she’d finished the blow dry and then asked her to do what I’d asked for in the first place to take another inch off – all the way around. Cue awkward silence as all small talk ceased and you could have heard a Kirby grip hit the floor. I stuck my nose in the trashy mags and settled in for lunch and afternoon tea, while my hairdresser started snipping all over again.

The end result – my new cut looks a lot like the style worn by Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. It wouldn’t look out of place on a librarian (Not you, M) or in a pre-school photo in the days when the mums thought that using bowls would be good for cutting their kids hair.

The old man said I looked ‘distinguished’ (FML) and then tried ‘vaguely attractive’ and finally stammered ‘HOW MUCH?’ and had to lie down.

I still look nothing like Jennifer Aniston, but perhaps it’s got nothing to do with the haircut.

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