A Hairy Dilemma

I like to let my hair grow over Summer. I don’t like the feel of hair on my neck and around my face in the hot weather and with a bit of length on it I can easily put my hair in a ponytail or twist it up in a clip to get it out of the way. Longer hair doesn’t really suit me (neither does really short hair, by the way), but I wear it up so much in Summer that it really doesn’t matter. The only person who ever comments on it is my mum and I stopped really hearing that years ago. When the weather cools I generally get my hair cut and take it back up to around jaw length. At the moment my hair is not quite shoulder length, which is the longest I generally let it get.

Since autumn has arrived with a bang in the last week, I’ve been thinking that it might be time for the big haircut. I’m not planning anything spectacular – just chopping off the bottom inch or two to take it back to a shorter bob, so it’s a simple cut. Coincidentally, though, my hair colour needs doing too. My natural, very dark brown and grey streaked, roots are starting to show and clashing with the lighter brown and blonde streaks. So I am faced with a dilemma. How should I go about doing my cut and colour?

As I see it, I have 2 main options: cheap or expensive. The cheap way involves a trim at the drop-in haircut place and a colour from the supermarket. The expensive way is to get the cut and colour done at the nice hairdressers. If I go the cheap way the cut will be a very basic trim (I wouldn’t do anything more complex at the drop-in place, they don’t spend enough time) and dark brown all over, which will take differently on the blonde bits, giving some variation. It may cost me as much as $50, but will probably be less. If I go for the expensive option the cut will be a bit more complex – probably a bit of layering – and the colour will probably involve getting some new highlights as well as a new base colour. I’d be looking at at least $150 for all that.

I don’t begrudge the additional $100 really. That extra money will get me a more complex cut, a better quality colour, a scalp massage, a treatment, all the magazines I can read and tea and biscuits. But I am trying to be frugal and none of those things are necessities. And yet, I do feel like treating myself, so I’m torn.

In the end I will probably opt for the cheap option, since I’d like to have my hair done before our birthday picnic on the weekend and time is running short to get into the hairdressers. But I do kind of miss the days when I wouldn’t think twice about dropping a couple of hundred dollars on my hair … such carefree, wasteful days …