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I went to have my hair trimmed and styled today. It's been a while since I did this, as I have a history of serious Bad Haircut Trauma(*), and I don't tend to trust others with scissors around my locks. In recent years I've just trimmed the split ends myself over the sink.
But it's been looking scraggly lately, as the gray hair comes in a different texture, so I finally decided to Do Something with it.
On a neighbor's recommendation I went to visit Venus at Ciana's Salon in Los Altos. I was relieved to find that she's a curly girl too, so she *understands* how it is to try and simultaneously tame and enliven those mind-of-their-own sproings.
She follows directions well - just enough of a trim to get rid of the split ends and even out the lengths! - and then I asked her if she could show me some styling tips. So she showed me how to get added lift and body with a diffuser (wow!). She also taught me how to concoct a simple updo style that doesn't make me look all severe with my high forehead, which I have a prayer of maybe being able to replicate with some bobby pins at home.
She showed me a mirror to look at the back of my hair and I realized that I am going to need to do something about the gray. I have known that I've had gray hair coming in for a while, and had long been firm on the notion that when the gray came in I'd gracefully let it happen - I think I'll actually look dazzling in silver, with my blue eyes, given that I had light hair as a child.
But the aerial view made me realize that 'gracefully' is not the word for how the gray is coming in - 'unevenly' is more the way of it. Maybe someday when my hair is more fully gray I'll play to the silvery notes - but right now it simply looks like a messy cobweb atop the lower chestnut, and that won't do. Venus said that instead of dyeing all of my hair, what she'll try first is to put in some highlights that are the same color as my natural coppery ones, to mask the gray without dousing it altogether. So we've got an appointment to do that in February.
She sent me home with my purchase of some of the salon hair goops that she used, as well as a package of the Aveda Comforting Tea that they serve to their guests... it has lovely licorice undertones.
(*) The Bad Haircut Trauma began at age 8, when my grandmother made a suggestion to my mother that I'd look cute in short hair. I didn't, and hadn't known that a short haircut was what I was getting until it was done. None of us could make it behave, and it grew back in weirdly, and pretty much changed my physical self-image radically in negative directions along with the onset of glasses that same year. Took quite a number of years for me to view my appearance positively again.
