The Simone

There’s a special kind of trauma attached to a bad haircut. It can’t be taken off like an ugly shirt or plunged into flames like a pair of genie pants. What’s lopped cannot be unlopped. That monster sutured to your skull is with you for the foreseeable future. Not only that; as soon a picture is snapped, a temporary lapse in appearance is cemented on Facebook for all eternity. In Freja’s case it wasn’t even a bad haircut, it was a bad fringe.

 “I asked for a little off, and this is what he did,” she sighed, pulling at the tatters of her once lusty bangs. For some reason the hairdresser had taken a dislike to it’s centre, gouging it into an inverted ‘v’ shape.  My friends and I sympathised. It was pretty bad— her hair didn’t so much fringe her head as bite into it. “At least it’s not a Simon,” someone offered. We all nodded in agreement.

All bad hair cuts lead to Simon.

Simon is a high school friend and connoisseur of grisly haircuts, specialising in footballer styles (Ie; the fashionable mullet). He’s had mullets long and short, mullets nude and mullets bleached, front mullets (frullets) and side mullets (sidelets?) both long and short. All these lists always wind back to the beginning, and in the beginning there was “The Simone.”

“The Simone” was born in a local salon. It was a typical place: nineties decor, style books pre-dating curling wands, pictures of models with hair like melted plastic: the usual. The hair cut he got could also be considered “the usual” –except not on a boy, and especially not a fifteen -year-old one.  

It’s a boon for history that our town was a small one, and that Simon chose a hairdresser which sat directly behind the main bus station. This was after a school day; a time when we liked to stand around together, dazed and waiting for good TV to start. Thus a large portion of Simon’s friends were there to witness the unveiling of “The Simone.” There, perched atop Simon, was a perm. A glossy fringe swooped out from it, accentuated with blonde highlights. On top, and peaking at the crown, was a lacquered birds nest fit for a tuckshop lady

What made the ‘do so potent was his refusal to accept it was so terribly, elaborately hideous. Not only that, he denied it was a woman’s style. “It’s not a ladies cut,” he’d repeat, in a delivery so flat it suggested coaching—or brainwashing, perhaps via-purple dye. Then he told everyone it only cost “Like, thirty bucks.” “No way!”  Someone challenged, citing the price of his mothers upkeep as evidence. “With that many foils? –it’d be at least eighty.”  Soon the lunch tables were filled with boys stoushing over the economics of tints and highlights. Simon remained aloof, his elegant bubble wobbling as he strutted away. 

Simon’s hairstyles grew more masculine, but they never lost their effect. I ran into him at a  party during his “back, front, and side mullet” stage. I sidled up to a likewise slackjawed friend. Together we observed, drinking deep from our wine. We needed it; spindly strands of greasy black hair were pasted to either side of Simon’s ears; his neck mullet had withered into a rats tail. The whole effect was staggering. It looked like a host of vermin had bitten into his scalp and stayed there. Then, just as I thought that—in the way your mouth can sometimes slip out of your control –I found myself saying it to him. To Simon. And his hair. 

No, not my most shining moment. 

I like Simon, he’s a great guy. It’s just in the face of that hair I felt like an ignorant witness to some kind of follicle genius. I wanted to understand. I needed to know why. Of course it didn’t come out that way. Simon’s face burnt hot, he told me he looked “cool” before whipping his hair-tail in my face.

The worst part of a bad haircut is that you let it happen. You’re an accessory to your own humiliation. Like Freya, who sat whimpering while her pride and joy was hacked to pieces in front of her, most of us put up with it. We nod along, telling ourselves it’ll look better when we wash it: when we put some product in: when we’ve grown into it. It is not a ladies cut. 

Perhaps the saddest part is that I sort of admire Simon. He knows people find his hairstyles ugly, but he doesn’t care. He goes for it. The rest of us sport “sensible” styles, until the turn of time proves us horribly wrong anyway. Remember when ski-jump fringes were in? And quiffs weren’t? 

Or perhaps you’re so fortunate as to have a friend like mine—who stared at me stink-eyed while I waved to her across a bustling market. When she finally realised it was me, she burst into laughter and wheezed; “So sorry, I was thinking to myself who is this forty- year- old woman waving at me? Seriously, that hair!”

 Oh, she stopped laughing—eventually. And eventually I stopped trying to bend my puffy head-nest into something else.  At least she didn’t say it was a Simone.