6 Reasons Why You Should Ruin Your Hair In Quarantine

Consider your tipping point officially reached

Before I begin I gotta say, if “Shelter In Place” were a high school yearbook, I would absolutely be voted “most likely to give herself a weird haircut 3 weeks in”.

Before the pandemic, I was like you– looking up shades of “dark ash” on Google and trying to nail down one, or several of the hairstylists I call friends to trim up my bob. Or… did I want to grow out my bob and just trim my bangs? Maybe I wanted to grow out my bangs and my bob, and I needed some complex layering done that would look chic when worn with the collection of 1970’s pant suits that are hanging on a rack in my apartment currently.

And then, in an instant, my salon-quality hairdo dreams went right out the window, along with my fantasies of purchasing more than 1 package of toilet paper at a time. Pre-pandemic Stella was ready to begin a costly salon habit. Post-pandemic Stella is throwing caution to the wind with a pair of rusty scissors.

Post-pandemic Stella is here to support your regrettable decisions.

Admittedly, I’m a bit biased. I’ve been bleaching, dyeing, and trimming at my own hair in a variety of tiny NYC apartment bathrooms for the better part of my adult life. I’m the living epitome of what hairstylists warn NOT to do at home. I touch up my roots, I mix my own dye shades, I toss chemical toners onto saturated colors just to see what happens– all with a well-worn pair of rubber gloves and a questionable mirror set-up. If you’re a devotee of the techniques you dutifully learned in Beauty School, you can consider me your worst enemy.

Keeping all this in mind, it should come as no surprise that last week I grew so tired of my grown-out hair color that I grabbed a tub of bleach and a few bottles of Manic Panic from my stash, plus a pair of kitchen scissors, and went to town. A few hours later I was delighted to see I didn’t really ruin my hair at all. I went from a greenish-black grown out mess, to an auburn-brown baby bob, and while I’m afraid to look at the choppy job I did on the back, I’ve got that refreshed feeling that only a new ‘do can provide.

I was also delighted to find I was not the only one to go ham on my head last week. Dozens of pals on my Facebook timeline have been turning up with amateur layering and new short styles, as well as a few shaved heads. How did we all manage to collectively pull off this bad idea? “The secret to cutting your hair at home is to pick 1 thing you don’t want in a hairstyle and then, do everything else but that,”says Riley Christensen, my guest expert for this article, based entirely on the fact that he currently holds expired cosmetology licenses in three states, and that he happened to call me in the middle of drafting this. I guess clarity is key, even when you have no idea what the hell you’re actually doing.

Back in high school my friend Jayne and I made a lifestyle out of fucking up our hair together. Roughly cut bobs and splotchy pink and green dye jobs that were sometimes done in the school bathroom sink at lunch. “Who cares! It’s just hair.”, Jayne used to say, and while Jayne said a lot of regrettable things back then, amazingly this was not one of them. To this day, I still think of saying that every time I get a whim to do something drastic to my mop (green mullet, anyone?).

So, in the spirit of “It’s just hair”, here are 6 reasons why you have my absolute permission to ruin your hair this month, and blame it on the pandemic.

It’ll grow back.

Hair, for most of the population, operates exactly like the mildew on my bathroom tiles: No matter how much of it I scrape off or saturate with bleach, it just keeps on growing back. This means, that you can shave a swear word into your hair right now, or dye half your head blue and, at the pace we’re currently moving, you’ll have your regular hair back by time quarantine ends.

It looks bad already, what have you got to lose?

Admit it– your grown-out roots and faded color is killing you right now. Wrapping your hair in a scarf can only sustain you so long (I made it through about 1 month of artfully tied turbans before succumbing). If your choices are currently between “bad ombre” and the great unknown, you can’t entirely go wrong.

It will cure your boredom.

I don’t need to pull up a statistical report to in order to prove that chopping up your hair is a healthier use of your energy than refreshing the news for the 63rd time today. One of these activities is much more likely to upset you and it’s not the one that involves scissors.

You might learn a thing or two.

After spending 3 months working at the front desk of a hair salon a while back, my visual learning skills kicked in, and I got a feel for how to fuck with my hair like a pro. Notice I said “like” a pro. Cause I’m not a pro, but I’m “like” one, with my two arms and handling of sharp instruments and all. I learned that haircuts are usually done in sections to prevent confusion. I learned that the hair roots are colored separately from the hair ends because the roots absorb faster. I learned about that fancy-looking technique where the hairstylist holds the ends of the hair in a long line between their index and middle finger, and snips dutifully at the little tips– though I’m still unsure what the benefit of this is. The point is, you can go on Youtube and watch some haircut tutorials right now and then if you really fuck up, you can blame them, not this irresponsible article.

Bad haircuts are essential to all dystopian scenarios.

Hello? Haven’t you ever seen Mad Max? Blade Runner?? I’ve been mentally walking that thin line between “this is fine” and “the apocalypse is here” for weeks, and it’s in these moments that I personally find solace in a funny hairdo because I can’t possibly achieve my dream of joining a rebel army and becoming a future pirate with a serious haircut. Let’s all thank Britney Spears for making a buzz cutter the official accessory of a nervous breakdown.

If you really fuck up, staying home will be even easier.

When I was 11 I tried to trim my own hair and ended up taking 4 whole inches off one side. I skipped three days of school out of pure pubescent shame, and relegated myself to wearing a big barrette over the missing chunk for the next 6 months so I could still go out in public without feeling like a bigger freak than I already did. Lucky for you, puberty is over and home is the only destination you’re expected to be found in.

Snip snip!