Today’s Prognosis on Amateur Hair Cutters
November 12th, 2006
It seems like everyone I know these days proclaims to be an amateur hair cutter.
If a flip of hair happens to be hanging over your ear or your hair is beginning to look a little bit long, beware the amateur hair cutter. Desperate to use an everyday pair of household scissors or a curved nail-clipper (or even their teeth) the amateur hair clipper is in desperate need of three things: hair, a cutting tool of some kind, and a gullible victim who somehow believes that a person without an official cosmetologist license is perfectly capable of cutting a straight line.
Well, today — we reveal WFME’s prognosis on such demented individuals.
Let’s break this down the way we always do. Let’s first examine similar situations in which you’d never allow an amateur to do the deed. What if you have a cavity? Would you let your best friend’s girlfriend (the amateur dentist) take it out for you? What if you had a crick in your neck? Would you let your next door neighbor’s yoga partner (the amateur chiropracter) adjust your neck? What if you had gangrene in your foot? Would you let your ex-girlfriend’s sister’s husband (the amateur flesh-eating-virus excisor) scoop it out?
No, no, and no.
Sure, drilling a cavity and scooping out gangrene is invasive, but adjusting your neck isn’t. Sure, doing heart surgery and removing a brain tumor requires years of medical training, but packing your parachute in that backpack doesn’t. Yet you’d never let someone adjust your neck or pack your parachute if they were a proclaimed “amateur” who wanted to “practice on you.” And yet the amateur hair cutter has seemingly slipped through the cracks, making it apparently okay for them to offer up style advice, install dreadlocks, dye, cut and dry your hair all while you sit at the kitchen table eating a chicken salad sandwich. It’s a frightening trend that swept the nation in the 90’s, and now is commonplace anywhere someone has hair and a scissor.
Well, we think it’s time it stopped.
Just because you can cut paper, doesn’t mean you can cut hair. Just because you can add food coloring to homemade holiday bisquits doesn’t mean you can give someone highlights. Just because you’ve watched Bravo’s Blow Out for both entire seasons (and you’ve watched them in slo-mo to glean just how the hair cutting business works) doesn’t mean you should be able to open your own hair salon, in your basement, next to the furnace and behind your kid’s Dora the Explorer club house.
No, prognosis on amateur hair cutters is not good.
Does that include cutting pubes? Heh…
Comment by Amy — November 12, 2006 @ 11:46 am
right you are, pauly.
one time in college my friend asked me to “trim” her bangs before we were going out for drinks. as it happened, we had been having cocktails first, which made us late. then she sprung the bang-trim request on me and i thought, “well, sure! how hard can it be?”
but once i took up the scissors i stared at them next to the bangs for a long time, thinking it actually did seem a little complicated. my friend got impatient and snapped, “just trim them already so we can go!”
“fine!” i snapped back, taking a big chunk of hair and cutting the hell out of it. we tried using hair gel to cover the atrocity, but it sorta looked like she had a hair disease. to her credit, she laughed about it all night, but she never let me near scissors again.
Comment by dgm — November 12, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
I had an unfortunate bang situation as well. (ok I just re-read that sentence and there is really no point in continuing)
Have a nice day.
Comment by brooke — November 12, 2006 @ 6:39 pm
Yes, that’s true, but some amateur hair-splitters are better than others, and it’s all relative to the feasibility of the coif in question.
Some acute cowlicks are best shorn short to let the hair pattern reassess
In such a case any amateur can make handy work with the use of electric shears.
It’s hard to appreciate the difference between the cut of a professional and an amateur. Just look around you.
As princes may go blind while beggars have vision, not all professionals live in elitists castles and not all amateurs reside in lowly basements
Hail the Amateur
Comment by Daniel — November 12, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
why do i wonder if you’ve attempted the amateur hair-cutting YOURSELF?
hmmm…
Comment by Sarcomical — November 12, 2006 @ 11:24 pm
Once upon a time, my sister was just starting cosmetology school. She hadn’t learned how to cut hair yet, but she did give a mean scalp massage. Somehow, she hypnotized me during the massage and convinced me that she was capable of cutting my hair. She even had an official pair of haircutting scissors in her kit. I foolishly allowed her to clip away. All I can say is that when I asked my friends how I looked, their response was “Why did you let your sister cut your hair?”
Enough said.
Comment by jacquie — November 27, 2006 @ 6:10 am