What's Sacrifice for a Change?

Yesterday, I went with Alicia, Elie and Sean to answer a L'Oreal call for hair models. The show is on Sunday, and yesterday we were discussing who would model what, and what would be done to whose hair. Today, we'll be going to further discuss and finalize what will be done on the day, and those who need their hair prepped will get it done.

There're two hairstylists in charge who will be doing most of the work of styling and colouring: Lori, who is based on Bedford and will be doing the colouring, and Donna, who is from Toronto and will be doing the cutting.

Suffice to say, Donna and I came to loggerheads very quickly over my hair. She wanted to cut, cut cut cut, and I said I wanted to keep my length. She kept asking me what I was doing there if I didn't want my hair cut, I said I wanted a style with new colours, and curls. The stylists, however, were lacking a proper cutting model, and it naturally fell to me to be one of them since I have an insane amount of hair to deal with. Lori was shocked to see the length of my hair: I had told her I had very long hair, but she wasn't expecting it to be that long.

Donna talks very rapidly, she's very forceful, brisk, bossy, and quick. She asked me if I wanted a boyfriend (at this point Sean moves away from his seat next to me), I said I didn't give a damn, and she told me, "it's just hair. It does nothing for you right now. This length - you don't need it."

Damn straight I do. My hair's been the one defining feature of mine throughout the years when everybody else shifts and tries to blend into the rest of the world because they're too afraid to stand out. My hair's the first thing people are surprised by, my not-so-secret. Brushing my hair's one of the few things that calms me down. There's a lot of history in it, and you can't just cut off history for no good reason.

And Donna just lost it at me. "This," she said, "is a professional event. We are representing L'Oreal International. Investors are watching this event even though it's in a room away from their offices. A hundred people will be in that room watching. We can't let you walk off with the same style you've had. That is not professional. You're here to be a hair model, and you can't do that without some cutting with that length of hair."

Professionalism is of course one of the things I strive for, so if she'd started on that note, I probably would've given in earlier. To be a model, it's not good to have attitude. It's one thing to have attitude on stage, while modelling, because models do have stand out, but in the process of styling, it's not a good thing to be inflexible. I'm disappointed not to be one of the models for the core six styles that are now in season (extremely funkily dressed hairstyles, I must say I love doing that sort of thing, but the bangs around my face prevented me from being one of the models for which I would have been perfect for), but I'm an attention whore and as long as I get prettied up and photographed, I don't mind.

So Donna's going to incorporate my short hairstyle up front into the style, she's going to layer my hair up, and then from there I'll lose about half of everything, since she's cutting it to just over my breasts (my hair is currently long enough that Sean can complain he can't see my ass).

At one point another hairdresser there said, "We can donate it to wig-making for cancer victims if it'll make you feel better."

I replied, "If that really did make me feel better, I would have done it a long time ago."

How much does the pursuit of beauty cost? I didn't have an answer, because I was ready for a little change, but what Donna suggested was crazily drastic, almost as bad as my going from a long-haired look into a seemingly short cut. Is it worth some self-esteem? Is it worth cutting away history?

Lori and Donna began discussing the colours for my hair - reds, oranges and pinks. I told Lori I couldn't do orange: the colour annoys me so. But the reds have to be in, Donna stared into my eyes to determine their colour to decide this.

I was extremely excited when I left, but a while into the evening, I felt scared. This was, after all, one of my last redeeming physical features that, left untouched, looked pretty decent.

I tried to go to the funk show at the Gorsebrook Pub afterwards with Elie and Sean, to calm down and unwind, but none of us managed to do so for various reasons, and we ended up going to Shopper's. I asked Sean to cuddle with me before he went home, which he obliged, and I told him about various things, and I said how scared I was about the haircut that Donna was going to butcher on my hair.

Sean said, "well, it's just hair. You're still you, and I like you better than I like your hair."

Hearing those words made me feel much better. I'm so used to people saying derisively how much I had to cut my hair, as if it was such a sin to have long hair, and it constantly felt like it was a personality defect that I didn't have a haircut, to the point I associated my hair closely to my self. I've probably mentioned before how it felt like since they couldn't change me on the outside, they'd do it on the inside.

The disassociation made me feel much better about the haircut. I'm still scared, of course, but it's for a professional show, done by professional hairstylist, and Donna is, after all, an award-winning stylist and she's come all the way from Toronto.

We'll see what happened with my hair.

More L'Oreal Adventures

It's amazing what a deadline can do to people. It'll make them wake up earlier than they're used to, and get them on the road faster than anything else.

And of course, the idea of something interesting to watch and be a part of means hanging around even though one doesn't have anything to do.

This was our situation when we left at 10.30am to be there by 11am (this is unnaturally bright and early for us), and when we got there, the first three girls who were there by 9am were still being worked on. Donna asked me how I was feeling about getting my hair cut, and we had a little bargain: I wanted curls and hair to cover my nipple. She gave me a long look and said, "okay. Anymore you want?" and I said, "No, that's it."

Sean went first, since his was the easiest to work with (just a plain dye job: lightening his hair even more than it already was, and then putting in a diagonal smokey streak so it could be styled into a faux-hawk on the morrow).

Alicia, apparently, didn't have to be there at all, because hers was virgin hair and they were going to colour it tomorrow with a specific brand to show how well it works. For us and curiousity's sake, though, she stuck around for the entire time we were there.

Elie was next. He had his hair lightened two shades, and platinium streaks, and then his hair, normally thick and curly, was straightened, so that the streaks would come out even more.

So apparently, there was a misunderstanding, and I wasn't going to be a cut model after all, but a collection model. (The cut model is the model who's getting a haircut onstage; the collection model is the one whose hairstyle will be based on the technical manuals that will be distributed at the hair show to local stylists.)

This was after they chopped off half my hair. Donna told me to stand up, and she gathered what she was going to cut, tied it into a braid, and chopped it right off. I felt the strands falling away and falling back into place, a simple, plain straight line the way I've always hated hair to be. It's neat and brings out the shine in hair (you know, Pantene Pro-V hair commercials always have this hairstyle), but it's commonplace and... well, blah. The reactions of others, though, were immediate and positive, because they've seen the before and after.

I felt like an idiot, running my fingers through my hair to comb it the way I normally do only to find a distinct lack of length.

But, Donna said the day before, "Do this, I don't want no fussing, no bullshit, no tears, nothin'."

So I took it like a professional and sucked it up, saying nothing. Maybe a part of me was really distressed. I know it upset me everytime I felt how close the ends were. I know that I can grow it back out, but stilll, it's a shock.

I was one of the last to get her hair dyed. They had to put ephasol (I'm not sure how it's spelled) to remove the remaining dye in my hair from the last time I dyed it - most of it had already been stripped, hence the textured look I had which was a mixed of platinum, dark blonde, brown, red, and orange, but to make sure it was all gone, they had to take it off. I sat there with it for a while, then had it washed off, and had some more chemicals combed into my hair to relax the cuticles, so the dye would apply more evenly. That was washed off too.

Melanie was the hairstylist working on my hair. She works at a salon really close to my place - I've stopped in there before to look at cosmetics. She actually remembered seeing me and my friends before, at least stopping in, and we chatted a little about her work as she washed my hair over and over.

They finished the colouring on my hair, but I couldn't leave until Donna put rollers into my hair, and they're supposed to be there ALL FREAKING NIGHT. This means no sleeping on my back tonight. In fact, I might have to sleep on the couch with my head suspended, or in the papasan chair, somehow to avoid the curlers coming out.

It's gonna be a long, uncomfy night.