UKCasual

Remember if someone makes a gi Jane joke try not to smack them upside the head.

I've been cutting my own hair for nearly 20 years at this point. I've seen everything from unintentional chunks ripped out to weirdly blunt shelf-like layers to one side somehow ending up about four inches longer than other to the worst offender of all...that time I thought I might suit a fringe.

But you know what, I look back on photos from those times and laugh at the memories. It's hair, it grows back, and not many women ever even find out whether we can pull off a buzzcut so congrats to your wife because the Ripley look is cool af.

I think deciding to cut your own hair and really messing it up, even accidentally, is a basically a rite of passage.

Segue into haircut.

I went and got a spiral perm thinking it would be the perfect curly I've been looking for..... It wasn't. My hair was over processed. I knew how to deal with that from my kids bleaching their hair. I dealt with it for almost two years.

I went to a beautician and told her to cut the perm out. I was over it and the damage.

I left work with hair that when straightened went to the middle of my back. I returned the next day with hair just below my earlobe.

Turns out that my hair follicles had changed and now....... Well I will never need another perm the rest of my life.

Hair grows and changes. She has the chance to rock a Mohawk (if this is no longer what is called I apologize). Or dye it the rainbow! It's short so it'll grow out quickly!!

Now if the time to have some fun!

No cheer up story, sorry. Only condolences to your wife, I lose it when the hairdresser chops off way more than ‘just the tips, please’.

Time for a lovely new sunhat?

My wife tried to cut my hair during lock down and I ended up looking like beaker from the muppets. Thankfully didn't have to enter the public areas so left it for awhile until I buzzed it all before going back to work.

The closest I've gotten to hair horror stories is trying to cut my own hair and getting the scissors tangled in them. I had to get another pair of sissors to cut them out.

Your poor wife! Maybe a nice hat, headscarf or a lacefront wig might work for her. The latter tends to look quite nice and natural when applied correctly. Her scalp might be a little bit sensitive to all of the sun we're having so beware!

Once, when I was living in lovely Leamington Spa, I went for a haircut at a new (to me) place. No exaggeration, the guy looked like Abu Hamza's twin... fortunately for me, he had actual hands instead of hooks. Unfortunately for me, he (like Mr. Hamza) was obviously blind in one eye. This lead to several shenanigens like: "Sorry, could you just get this bit of hair at the front you missed?" then him carefully snipping a different bit of hair.

After a few attempts getting him to correct missed snips only resulted in further mishap, I gave up and submitted to what I was sure would be less of a hairdo, and more of a hairdon't. The funniest part for me was, after I paid and he went to drop my change into my palm... completely missing my hand, confirming he had no depth perception at all.

Not even the worst haircut I've had, either!

Cutting my own hair, I've screwed it up a few times now. My favorite was when I was just going to give it a little trim, but the guard popped off of the clippers mid-stroke and took a huge chunk out of the side/top of my head. So I was rocking a buzzcut for the first time in 15+ years. Turned out I liked it once I got over the shock, so I've been doing it intentionally ever since

It's just hair, it'll grow back eventually.

Pics or it didn’t happen

First time I cut my own hair I just ended up terrible. I had to go to the barber and get a buzz cut to bury my terrible mistakes

My sister was a hairdresser and she once thought she was using her thinning scissors and took a big chunk out of a client's hair. Another time, she stopped to contemplate and accidentally stabbed herself under the chin with the very sharp scissors. Bled all over the client's collar before she realised. I think it was pretty much a blessing when she developed an allergy to some of the colour/perm chemicals and had to give it up.

The one time I tried shaving my head, I slipped and shaved off a small chunk of eyebrow. Luckily, the haircut was so uneven that few people even noticed the eyebrow :P

When I first decided I wanted short hair, I wanted it to be easy to maintain. I wanted to be able to just "buzz" it, but not down to buzzcut length. I wanted to be left with a little over an inch in length all over. As it turns out, the easiest way to do that was with a dog trimmer!

I've got one for your Wife of a man trying to grow his hair, so the complete opposite of your wife's problem

I always wanted longer hair. I'm a bloke nearing my 40s so there wasn't long left to actually grow it before it all falls out when Covid hit and the barbers all closed.

Now what stopped me in the past is this phase where it's too long to be neat or tidy, but too short to gather in a ponytail. But Covid was an excuse! Thing is, I hate the hair at the sides of my head, it's all curly and makes me look a right dick, so I kept the sides short with a set of Clippers, basically a growing out a short back and sides until it becomes an undercut.

That was a mistake and one I'm still paying for.

So I made my wife trim it in the first time, and she did a great job for an amateur, but it was just very slightly trimmed in too deep on one side.

This meant that as it grew I would get these short hairs on one side of my widows peak, but not the other, requiring me to retrim it every time I shaved the sides. It because the reason I shaved the sides, this bit of hair that I couldn't get into a ponytail.

Not only that, but nobody told me that an undercut is the worst of both worlds. Long hair you have to brush every day, and wash and style and all the rest. And a shaved head that looks shit when it's not shaved.

I waited until my hair was long enough that I can tie back a center parting instead of straight back, so I could hide the fact I'm growing out the sides, and I've been growing that out for a year and a bit now.

So there it is. My grown out undercut is shoulder length now and the undercut itself is just about all in the ponytail, nearly. One mistake, years to correct.

I'm afraid I don't have any soothing stories but there are quite a few Aliens pulse rifle 3d replicas out there that are pretty reasonable if you're willing to do the gluing and finishing yourself :)

As a side note, there are lots of famous people who have done this and looked incredibly badass doing it. Aside from the GI Jane comparisons the first one that comes to mind is Karen Gillan got a buzz cut for the first Guardians movie and ended up looking more badass somehow