Lost in Suburbia: Cutting your own hair? Shearly you jest!

When I was a little girl, I had this great doll called Crissy. I didn’t name her – that was the name she came with - so everyone who had a Crissy doll called their doll Crissy which made for some pretty confusing playdates, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, the great thing about Crissy was she had this cute, short ponytail, but if you pulled on it, it grew longer and longer until it was down to her waist. Then, if you pushed a button on her back, the hair would be sucked back into her head.

Trust me, for a 6-year-old girl, this doll was Da Bomb!

I didn’t just love Crissy, I wanted to be her. Sadly, however, there was no such thing as real life Crissy hair, which was a shame because it would have come in handy when my mother decided to cut my hair… herself. I have always had fine, super straight hair, which, one would think, would be easy to cut. But the truth is, it’s not. No sooner do you get one side of the head even then you realize that the other side is just a wee bit longer. So then you trim the longer side to match it up with the shorter side. But since you are NOT a professional hair stylist, you cut too much and then the longer side is shorter than the shorter side so you have to cut that side again, too. Before you know it, you have gone back and forth so many times that your trim is no longer a trim but a full blown haircut and your daughter, who previously had long hair, now looks like Billy Idol.

Having endured this unique form of parental torture myself, I swore that when I was a mother, I would never subject my daughter to this kind of hair humiliation.

And I didn’t. Instead, I did it to myself.

I actually have a great stylist and I go to her exclusively for my haircuts. But when she got pregnant and went on maternity leave, I was forced to either find another stylist or wait until she got back from having her baby. I decided I would wait and let my hair grow out for four months just to see what it looked like in the interim.

What it looked like was one of the Beatles circa 1964.

At this point I was ready to tear my hair out, which would have been an improvement on my current look, but restrained myself knowing my stylist would be back in the saddle in two weeks.

But then I snapped. One day I looked in the mirror and decided I could not look like Ringo Starr for one minute more and I pulled out the scissors and started snipping away.

The good is, if you already have short hair and you are going shorter, it’s pretty hard to mess it up. The bad news is, this is not a completely fool proof theory and it is, I learned, much easier to see a bald spot in short hair than in long hair.

Having been down this home haircut road twice now, I do feel a bit wiser and did at least learn two important things from this experience.

1. No matter how skilled you are with scissors, don’t cut your own hair

2. If you do cut your own hair, make sure you own a good hat.

Follow Tracy on Twittter at @TracyinSuburbia.