Fabulous Hair for Less

I've had quite the range of hair cut experiences.  from cutting my own or going to Steve's barber, all the way up to my last cut at the hands of Sam "Ed Scissorhands" Wong. Today, I ventured into the world of the beauty school.  It's my dirty little secret that I'd kind of love to be a hairdresser, but couldn't handle people flipping out on me.  So I was kind of psyched to visit The Temple, a Paul Mitchell beauty school.  It's in the old Masonic Lodge in downtown Frederick.  (Steve and I used to imagine how cool it would be to buy it and live in it.  It has something like 100k sq ft.  We decided that less than 2k is so much cozier.)  I'd had a couple of friends get cut there with good results and it's only 12 bucks, so hey!  It's only hair, right?  eek.

When I first arrived, I had to sign a release stating that I realize that this is a school, that the stylists are students.  They'll fix what goes wrong if they can, but you won't just get free color if you aren't happy.  So I signed away.  At the same time I was there, there was a mom and dad and 4 kids, two of them identical twin boys.  The oldest was a girl, about 7, 8 at the most.  She was discussing with her mom whether she could get color AND highlights or just highlights.  "No, we did that last time," said mom, "you have a good natural color now, so just do highlights."  oooookay.  And these weren't pageant parents, these were tattooed-and-pierced-and Harley be-buckled parents.  She was chomping her gum with her mouth open and swinging her feet and discussing her hair color.  It was cheezing me off.

Amanda came and rescued me and took me to her station.  She asked what I wanted in a cut and suggested I could get a partial highlight just to touch up my roots.  I agreed b/c it's only $27!  Then Thiery, her "learning leader" ("that's what they make us call teachers," she told me with an eyeroll) came over to see what her plan was. At first I thought, "Hooray!  a professional!" but by the end, I wanted to shoo Thiery away when he came by.   Leave my Amanda alone. They talked color and lifted my hair and matched it with stuff in a book and carried on.  I totally lovedfeeling like a wigstand on Shear Genius (bring it back, Bravo!!).  while she was foiling me (curses!), I was checking out the scene.

There was a clump of students around an older woman who had just come back from some classes in Florida about up-dos.  ("I've got to go to Florida next week.  Up-do classes."  fabulous)  She was using a student to demonstrate and nearly ripping the hair from her head.  I was reminded of those times on the band bus when the black girls would offer to french braid our hair.  They pulled like CRAZY and then told us that white girls were a bunch of babies.  Reparations have been met, my friends.  We paid in white girl scalp.  I commented to Amanda and she said, "Yeah, up-dos hurt.  If it's a good one, anyway.  If you want it to stay up all night, it has to hurt."  So consider yourselves warned.  In another corner, some girls were watching a student giving another student a hand massage.  Some others were practicing make-up.  It looked so FUN.  And knowing that there was surely lingo and in-jokes was just making my grad student senses tingle.  I need to infiltrate their culture!  Study and learn!  And pull hair!

Next to me was a black girl of about 10 who was getting her hair straightened.  It took forEVER.  And it looked better natural.  I wanted to sit her down and empower her, steer her from the Tyra path.  Beauty School Liberator!  Clearly, I'd gotten giddy.  When my 45 min processing was over, Amanda started my cut.  She didn't cut each hair individually, but neither did she karate chop my skull, so I consider that a wash.  And yes, I see the irony of telling the black child not to straighten and then turning right around and having my hair dyed a different color.  So stop being so damned smug.  You just wish YOU could pull off blonde, so neener.   While she was cutting, I grilled Amanda on the experience.   I thought that people who'd come to a school would likely be laid back about their hair, but NO, no, they flip out and get annoyed and then act surprised to learn that a student was cutting.  You sign a damned release, people.  Did you do that at MasterCuts?   She said that the management has had to toss people out.  Which cemented my decision not to suddenly go to beauty school.  Because I was darned close.  ANYway, the color looked great, the cut was very nice, the overall experience fun if lengthy.  I was there 2 hours and 45 min. Cost $39, no tipping allowed.  Woo!