How One Writer Overcame a Horrible Haircut

Karlie Kloss looks good with any haircut.

Until recently, I was always prepared to answer in the affirmative if DJ Kool were to ask me, “Let Me Clear My Throat”-style, if I had real hair and real fingernails. While I’m a longtime eyelash extender, I found hair extensions gratuitous, pronouncing them too L.A. for me. I prided myself on eschewing false advertising. In fact, since the day my mom insisted I wear chicken cutlets to the prom lest I be entirely flat, I’ve never even worn so much as a push-up bra.

But, you see, my hair is my thing. And I like it long—going so far as to take a cocktail of three hair supplements a day just to get it to grow beyond the mumsy length at which it so desperately wants to remain. I finally had it at a length I liked when a stylist who shall not be named persuaded me to let him cut it, under the proviso of “just a trim.” For the record, I politely declined his offer three times prior to the shears being broken out, and I agreed only when the term micro-trim was used to describe what would happen. Evidently a micro-trim to said stylist means close to five inches. Nightmare. This would take me a year and change to grow back. I don’t have that kind of patience. Despite my dislike of all things fake, after two weeks of living like a shut-in, mourning the loss of my hard-earned hair length, I decided hair extensions were necessary. In the sage words of TLC: “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.”

The Process (A.K.A. Meeting Gloria)

*My usual stylist, Matt Fugate at Sally Hershberger, has never tried to get me to cut my hair and thus was the only person I trusted to implement my extensions. But first we had to find the faux hair. A salesperson at the Hair Shop helped us choose three blond shades of wavy wefts to mimic my highlights (for the record, I’m fine with fake hair color as long as it doesn’t skew more than a few shades lighter than my natural shade). On a length scale of 1 to Lady Godiva, I settled on Blake Lively. When one resorts to buying her hair, why not get Serena van der Woodsen’s? I named my weave Gloria, as in Gaynor, as in “I Will Survive.” Fitting, right? Fugate taped in Gloria in sections, which took about an hour and felt surprisingly flat against my head, thanks to her slim, undetectable wefts. He then cut her to midback length. The tape-in extensions last about up to two months, no longer, without being taken out and put back in by a trained professional. The same hair is reused, just applied with new adhesive, back in at the root to accommodate your own hair’s growth. *

The author without extensions (left) and the day she got them (right).

The Effects of Gloria

Gloria is about three inches longer than my original, pre-Voldemort-cut length, but she’s much thicker. Gloria’s got gravitas. The first week Gloria and I spent together, we got an unfortunate prom-y blowout with curled ends, less beachy than Barbie. Had this happened to only my own fine, wavy hair, I would’ve had to rewash and style the whole thing. With Gloria, however, there was a quick fix: I dipped my ends in water, and they dried straight. When is that the answer? I don’t know about your hair, but involving water and air-drying is always a bad idea with mine. This outcome was positively Panglossian. That’s when I realized Gloria and I have very different definitions of wavy. I like hers better.

Taking Care of Gloria

A few weeks in, I felt I had misnamed Gloria. She’s more of a Gulliver, as in Gulliver’s Travels. She requires supersized everything. She needs three times the amount of shampoo and conditioner as my own hair. She breaks flimsy barrettes, bobby pins, and hair ties like a follicular Hulk Hogan. After much trial and error, I’ve discovered the only ones she doesn’t destroy are these Ruggeri industrial-size bobby pins and a gigunda clip during styling. Also, while my hair dries within five minutes of blow-drying, I blow-dry Gloria for about 20 minutes and the ends are still soaking wet. So there’s that. The good news is, as we know, Gloria dries straight, like magical unicorn hair.

Styling Gloria

If my mixed mane is a high school, Gloria is Travis from Clueless, and my own hair is Election‘s Tracy Flick. Gloria has a substance-abuse problem in the form of a metric ton of hairspray it needs to keep waves going more than 24 hours. On the other hand, like the rule-following Flick, my semi-curly hair maintains the formation of a braid long after I remove said plait without product intervention. I’ve never had to touch up my own beach waves within 36 hours, unless it’s raining. Gloria’s resistance to curl has reignited my love affair with Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode. I love that it provides hours, even days, of hold, imparts a nice smell, but is always brushable. To curl Gloria, I use a Beachwaver, featuring a long (6.5-inch) barrel around which I can wrap her entire length. A positive side effect of Gloria’s amnestic sensibility is that while she remembers nothing about her recent heat-tool results, she stays clean much longer than my natural hair. So committed to her strand stasis is she, she doesn’t show signs of being dirty for a full four or five days without washing, especially if I use Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo.

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Gloria’s Reception

Soon into my symbiotic relationship with Gloria, a college student asked for my number while I was writing at Starbucks. Coincidence? I think not. Later that week, the suitors got even younger when a guy who must have been in high school stopped me on the street to tell me he thought I was pretty. I am in my thirties, so this was pretty thrilling, if not wildly inappropriate. There was also a second gentleman of an appropriate age who stopped me on the street to ask me to drinks while I was on a run sans makeup. These things simply did not occur BG (before Gloria). She’s proved to be the wingwoman I didn’t know I was missing.

Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t settle for a bad cut and, in the words of Britney Spears, I chose my own [hair] destiny, even if that meant going faux. When Gloria starts to outgrow her current place in my hair in a few months, I’m definitely going back to Fugate to renew her lease—at least until my own hair catches up to where it once was.

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