Live From Charleston: The Inadvertent Bangs!

I have paid an exorbitant amount of money to look like a little French boy. True, it's an improvement over the last haircut I got, which was sort of verging on Lesbian Cruise Ship Director, but still....I wish someone had told the stylist that Frere Jacques wasn't exactly the look I was going for.

It was probably my fault; I sat down in her chair yesterday lunchtime and said, "Eh, you know, just do what you want," and she said "sure, sure, great, let's take an inch or two off, do some layers and some texture, something subtle..." and I said "sounds good, I'll be reading Us Weekly if you need me." And then I shut up and let her do her thing because, you know, it's HER thing, and if I tried to control it like I do every other aspect of my life---"are you doing the layering yet? Is this the layering? Should you really be using the razor? Is it a bit lopsided or is that just me?"---then she'd probably replace the gloss serum with Nair just to make sure I never came back to her again. And I do quite like her, even though she scares the crap out of me, and even though she insults me every time she sees me ("you're doing your color yourself, aren't you? I can tell,") and even though I think it's entirely unfair and incredibly wrong to be THAT skinny and still be allowed to have boobs.

So in addition to going a lot shorter than I'd planned, I also inadvertently got bangs. I'm not sure how that happened because I'm fairly certain that somewhere in between reading about Jessica Simpson's extra-marrital affairs, I issued a disclaimer that there were to be no bangs, on account of the fact that they would surely make me look like a little French boy. But no, there are bangs! Inadvertent bangs! If I ever have a band, we are going to be called The Inadvertent Bangs! That photo above doesn't really show them very well, actually; perhaps you need to see this one. (Do you like my mischievous grin? That's because I've just pushed my little brother Jean-Pierre down a well, and now I'm going to hide his beret behind the Boulangerie.)

The most awkward part of all of this wasn't that moment at the end when they show you the back and you have to say "oh, lovely! Thank you so much! It's the best haircut EVER!" and it wasn't even the part where you have to work out the tip in your head while signing the credit card slip and mentally calculating how many pretentious coffee drinks you won't be able to have this month because of it. No, the most awkward part was the part where I ran into my OLD STYLIST---the one I broke up with for the skinny scary stylist who had just given me a very OBVIOUS hair cut---at the Wilco show last night. And so we had to hug, and I had to say "oh, this old thing! No, my hair's always been like this! I've always had bangs and more layers than a vanilla wafer! This is still the haircut YOU gave me, I swear! It hasn't even grown in a YEAR!"

But anyway, let's stop talking about my hair. Can we? I think we should. DON'T YOU KNOW TRAVIS AND SARAH HAVE BROKEN UP? Look! The bachelor is a bachelor again! I was quite touched by the number of people who e-mailed to tell me about this; I'm so glad that when you all think of cheesy dating shows and their failed unions, YOU THINK OF ME. I'm toying with the idea of writing a strongly-worded letter to Dr. Travis Stork, actually, letting him know how outraged I am that he wasted our time, and telling him that since I could have been watching any number of programs on HGTV on Monday night instead of having to play witness to him gallivanting around Paris pretending to like Boring Sarah, he KIND OF OWES ME SOMETHING. Like maybe the courtesy of staying in his Faux Relationship for more than a month! I'll also use the opportunity to tell him that lime-green might not QUITE be his color, of course, but mostly I'll just scold him for turning Secret Bachelor Tuesdays into nothing more than a sham. Then I will blame him for my bangs. They might as well be someone's fault.