Lockdown Hair Disasters
By Andrea Quinn
For the last year or two, I’ve prided myself on one thing in particular: short hair suits me. My shoulder-length cut and my glasses have been my defining traits for a while now, and up until lockdown I’d managed to keep it that way. I’ve always been happy with my hair and never strayed much from growing it out and chopping it up again.
Sure, I would kill to have my mom’s perm from the eighties, I mean, who wouldn’t? And yes, I was one of the unfortunate souls that hopped on the dip-dye trend, circa 2014, that ultimately ended up a very unflattering ginger colour. Other than that, I’ve been happy with my hair.
Zoe, Lily, Andrea & Kayla showing us their lockdown hair <33
That is, until my hair grew that inch or two too long and drove me crazy. My brother sported a buzzcut until he was 10 which meant there has always been a set of clippers in my house. After the buzzcut phase, he went through the perfectly gelling his hair and having a combover phase. A phase that brought on notions of only letting one specific hair dresser in one specific barber shop cut his hair. Over lockdown though, he had to settle for mom and the old clippers to avoid entering a bad emo hair phase. In her defence, she did a good job and so she got me thinking, maybe she could rid me of the inch or two too long that was driving me mental. She agreed to cut it for me during the week and I’d never been so excited for a haircut.
Zoe’s hair was grey and after one too many bleaches it burnt :(
Kayla dyed her hair in strips of bleach & it turned out orange!!
As the week went on and I waited, my patience began to fade. I came home from work and grabbed the kitchen scissors, silently sneaking off to my room. Bear in mind, my hair wasn’t that long so there wasn’t much to chop off. I’d remembered seeing somewhere that if you put your hair in plaits, and cut said plaits off, it would give you nice layers. I didn’t, however, remember that I’d seen it done on long hair. And so I plaited my hair and hacked it off. To say I butchered it would be an under-exaggeration. I’d avoided the temptation of TikTok girl pink streaks, mullets, and becoming Draco Malfoy over most of the lockdown, but I had finally cracked. It was absolutely awful, and even more so because it was SO short, I could no longer make fun of my boyfriend’s Bieber hair or my brother’s buzzcut with a fringe. It was as if someone had cut my hair in a zig-zag pattern and I’ll be forever grateful of my mother’s attempts to fix it for me. Almost everyone has a lockdown hair horror story to tell, and while it might be funny now, it was a nightmare at the time! Although it was awful, I think I made a lucky escape from looking like a knock-off version of Charli d’Amelio/Draco Malfoy.
