The Mullet

Haircut. Ugh, to this day the word makes me cringe. A haircut should be a happy occasion, a fresh start, a new beginning. Unfortunately not all of us are so lucky. When I was in sixth grade a haircut trend started to go around my school.

All the girls were coming in with these cute, layered, "Rachel" esque haircuts. I thought they looked so sophisticated and so put together. Here I was with my long, plain hair. Looking back I had BEAUTIFUL hair -- long, black, straight, virgin hair. But that's just never enough is it? If it were, we wouldn't perm our straight hair, flat iron our curly hair, dye our light hair, and bleach our dark hair.

Needless to say, I HAD to have this haircut. At the time, it was a matter of life or death. So one day I went home from school and told my mom about this life changing haircut I wanted. Now my mom wasn't the typical mom. She wasn't big into hair or makeup. In fact, my dad did my hair most of the time, but I described the haircut as best as I could.

"Shorter on top and longer underneath" were the words I used. I would go on to regret those words. My mom said, "Oh, you mean like feathered?" I had no idea what feathered meant. I don't think anyone born after 1980 knew what it meant, but it sounded right.

Feathered, light, fluffy, yeah that sounded great. So instead of going to a salon that might have picked up on the epic mistake being made, my mom took me to her friend's house, who used to own a salon.

"Used to" being the key phrase here. The woman is about the same age as my mom. My mom tells her, "She wants her hair feathered."

Now my dad was against the haircut from the beginning. He was in love with Cher and the closer my hair was to hers the better. My mom and I came home that night and my dad met us in the front yard. I will never forget the look of anger, sadness and utter disappointment on his face.

See, he thought I chopped all my hair off because from the front I LOOKED LIKE A BOY! The woman had given me a mullet! I had short feathered hair on top and this long layer that hung down past my shoulders in the back. I took all of my hair and put it up in this tiny, misshapen ponytail right on top of my head because that was the only way to put it all up.

Throughout the year the ponytail got a little lower and lower the more my hair grew, but it never came out of that ponytail. To this day I usually cut my own hair because the thought of someone getting near my head with a pair of scissors makes my "fight or flight" kick in, which is pretty dangerous for the stylist and myself with so many pairs of scissors lying around.