What's the ULTIMATE blooper???

I'm curious who here can offer the worst hair blooper ever--not just trying to dye your brown hair blond and getting orange....we've all done that or something similar. I'm talking really, really bad. What's the worst change (cut, texture, style, color, etc) you've ever experienced or have seen on someone else?

Mine: This didn't happen to me (thankfully) but to a college classmate. I knew this beautiful gal--was a catalogue model, even did some live work I think--with the most gorgeous straight, shiny blond hair. She wore it long (bra strap length) and all one length. It was the kind of hair I could l only dream about. Very pretty.

Anyway, after I had known her for several years this girl came into class one day with the most complete hair transformation I'd ever seen. Where to start? First, her hair was brown. Not even a nice rich chestnut but a grayish, dishwater brunette shade. Secondly, it was chin-length and layered with big chunks hanging down around her neck. She also had bangs that fell just to her eyes--as if she was in that awkward growing-out stage. Finally.....she'd had some sort of "texture" put in. Good grief. It was sort of a frizzy wavy texture that was probably intended to add body but succeeded only in adding to my disbelief. Really, the before and after effect would blow your mind.

Anyway, I think S. knew that this just wasn't the look for her. The last time I saw her she'd grown her hair out to just above the shoulders, but it was all one length, straight and dark blond. It was such a radical change...from one extreme to the other.

What's your story?

OK ..Ill confess my absalute worst blooper....you drug it out of me Lyris....I was finaly a real butician after all the work it seems to take to become a beautician ...it was a saterday the most busy day for me a new hairdresser trying to buld clintail ....and two ladys came in needing perms and it was my lucky day all the other stylests of many years were very busy and it was my chance to show i could do it! so....two perms at once mother befor daughter both older got rapped and applyed the timmer tickin ...did my test curles evrything lookin good mothers done first ...beautiful resaults daughter dings shampoo girl rinsing her ...calls me over when she began unrappin the rods the ladys hair was doing what we would never expect in any of our stylest night mairs braking off with the rods ! I freaked screamed for the boss ! I was crying shaking new I did everything I was traiened to do down to reading the derections just to be sure ! I was quiting hairdressing how awfull a stylest I am I killed her hair !!!!........to find out It was not my fault when I asked if she used any preveous product she dident know "SUN-IN" counted and had put it on the night befor and slept in it!!!! she ended up with a stylish short haircut (she loved) there is a God! and guss what she is still my custemer today and all her mother sayed was : I told ya your hair would fall out some day if ya cept using crap in all the time, you allmost made the poor girl quit ! lol and ten years later that is still the worst hairday ever in my life!!!lol

I've posted this before. About 1975, my mother (who now has long hair) went to get her
hair permed into an afro - this was evidently popular at the time and I'm not sure if it was
just fashion or one of mom's friends who got her to do this. The stylist left the perm on
too long or something and her hair came out fried. Mom didn't like the results and though
you're not supposed to wash your hair right after a perm, went ahead and washed at home.
She soon found that some hairs were breaking off. She looked bad for 6 months and then
got her hair cut. It was short, but at least the perm part was reduced to a minimum and
I think she liked it. B.T.W. this was a few years before I was born and there are no pictures
I know of so I can only imagine how bad this was. Must have been an awful experience. As
I always say, the person who invented perming deserved the award for the most useless
invention of the year...

The really sad thing about it all is that the way the stylist cut her hair just before was such
that mom loved it a lot; she thought she looked great and afterward, she really regretted
not having simply told him to stop with the cut.

Ugggghhhh.....
OK, I've got two tales of hair horror for ya....

1) This happened only a few months ago...my bestest friend Jennie (I wrote a poem about her in the poetry board) had the most beautiful hair that I've ever seen outside of TV or movies. It was kind of a golden-brown, straight, shiny, and about halfway down her back. Not too thick, but not at all wispy or frizzy...it looked like the girls in the Thermasilk commercials. Mainly, it was just really long and flowed down her back like a river. Anyhoo, Jennie gets lots of attention from boys cuz she's very pretty and frankly, cuz of her great hair (and her wonderful soul :) ). Her mom (who is not a nice person at all) thought she was getting TOO much attention, and decided that Jennie's hair had to go. Jennie argued and fought but, being a sweetie who loves her mom depite her many flaws, eventually caved in...her mom dragged her to a salon and barked orders to the stylist, demanding that her hair be cut short. Thus, Jennie's glorious tresses were chopped into a very plain, very tame bob above her chin. Not that it looked bad or anything, but the loss of all of that pretty hair was a tragedy. Needless to say, there was much weeping and sorrow, altho to get her mom back she dyed her hair bright red a few weeks later. Her mom wasn't too happy about that, and she yelled at both of us for it. Shucks to her, tho... Jen's growing it out again, and she's kept the red color, which is actually quite flattering.

2)On a lighter note (in hindsight at least)- has anyone ever heard of a 'bi-level' cut? Well, when I was 10, I was a very active little brat with a mess of curly hair that was difficult to tame. My mom got tired of watching me trying to shove this tangled mass out of my eyes all the time, and all manner of clips and headbands and barettes were used, to little avail. So she said I had to get it cut...I trusted my mom, so I said OK, since I wasn't really enjoying having crazy hair anyway. Off to Supercuts we went, where my mother and the stylist had a little private conference over one of those style books that they had, with a lot of glancing over at me and nodding and such. What had been decided on was the dreaded bi-level haircut...bane of young girls everywhere. Its basically a glorified mullet, designed to keep the length behind the ears and give the feel of long hair, while the front and sides are shorter, in my case just across the ears on the sides, with wretched short bangs in the front. On a little girl with straight hair it might have looked cute, but on this girl it looked like a horrible mullet, all poofy from my ears forward, and kinda lank and wavy in the back, cut bluntly to just above my shoulder. The bangs were really short, and since my hair's curly, they just kinda stuck straight forward and out, and there wasn't a thing I could do with them. And my mom wonders how I got to be so obsessive about my hair! Anyway, there was again much weeping and sorrow, and any time I see an old picture of myself during that dark time, I cringe. That was the last time my mom decided on my hair for me...I took the reins after that. She had since apologized for it, and I have forgiven her, but if any of you have a daughter (or one comes along in the future), stay away from the bi-level cut!!!!!!

Geez, I didn't realize how long this was. Thanks to anybody who had the patience to read these. :)

Cheers!
Inga

PS-for anybody that cares, the poem about Jennie is 'Firebird'...its on the Poetry board if you're interested.

Inga that's horrible! Both stories. And wow....sometimes I think MY mother is being wretched, but when it comes to hair she can't hold a candle to yours or Jen's experiences. I strongly believe that the only person who should make drastic decisions about a head of hair is the one wearing it! Yikes!

LOL Ingrid.......I had the same god awful cut with a frizzy home perm in the back and bangs that were straightand poky short ! ahhhhhhh I cant beleve they did these things to us!!!! my aunt was a wanna be hair dresser & me try any thing well...not afer that! hahahaha ...Live & lern

Sheesh, some of these mothers sure do have issues. Seriously, I
think that grownups sometimes tend to enjoy seeing bad haircuts
as something cute on little children. I get sick every time I see a
little girl with the hair about shoulder-length in the back and
more or less short-fuzzy-banged at the front, sort of like a mullet.
These styles may be more practical than cute.

OK...I don't know that you could exactly call it a blooper but after weeks and weeks and weeks of suggestions and hints (pressure) I finally gave in to my mom and got a spiral perm. I really didn't want one but just got tired of all the whinning. LOL After a few weeks I got use to it and even came to appreciate it at times. Then just before Christmas after about 7 months I cut my hair to chin length. (That was another scene).
Well my hair has been on the grow over a year now. Finally below the shoulders and still growing!

Booie- my sympathies. At least I know I'm not the only one :)

In defense of my mom, she didn't mean to traumatize me with that haircut. It was supposed to be practical...so that her little girl could still have long hair without it hanging in her eyes all day long. It wasn't in any way a power thing or an attempt to stifle me. Actually, I get on wonderfully with my mom (altho she HATES my hair short, like it is now). She's really my best friend, except for poor, unfortunate Jennie. Now HER mom on the other hand...yeah, 'issues' is putting it lightly. God help the woman.

Oh Duke, your Mom must be about my age. I too went for an "afro" perm in the seventies. My hair is very fine and on the thin side. The perm didn't curl it the way I wanted it to. So, I went back and the stylist did another perm on top of that one!! The result was that most of my hair broke off and I had to get it cut very short. It took about a year, a lot of conditioning treatments, and a lot of haircuts to grow it back to anything resembling normal.

Hi Demodoll,

Great topic. My only problem is thinking of the worst blooper and then I remember mine and well, you know how it goes. It is easiest to remember our own hair traumas.

When I was a young girl my Aunt Margie and my mom conspired to put my hair into a Shirley Temple perm that seemed to take 1000 years to grow out and left my hair frizzed to the max. Then there was the time in high school when I wanted to impress Tom Brennan...who only liked redheads...by dying my hair red. Unfortunately I used a red home hair color that clashed with my naturally blonde hair and turned it bright neon orange. My HS buddies laughed their asses off at my hair but Tom got the brunt of it because everyone blamed him for my hair nightmare. Yes...I did tell everyone that I colored it for him. :-)

Then there was the time my hair got caught in a tree at a bookstore about 5 years ago and I had to drag the tree to the front desk to be untangled. Oh yes, and the time a stylist turned my bra length hair into a huge head of ringlet hair. I alternated between laughing and crying.

So many bloopers, so many laughs. Of course I get literally hundreds of emails from people who have done everything from pour prune juice on their heads (to try and darken the color) to people who have conditioned with molasses and vasline, that will not come out. I had my own tangles with a jar of castor oil that I posted on a different board here at HB.com.

Thanks for the topic. Such a great one.

Karen

LOL!

hehehehe...Karen that brings new meaning to the phrase "tree-hugging!" :-)

LOL. Yes. One of those moments that I am grateful was not part of a reality TV show.

LOL.

I learned the hard way about shop gossip. I was telling a client about another client that was driving me bonkers. I went into great detail about all the things she did that drove me crazy. When I got all done she said, " she is my aunt." Luckily, she felt the same way about her! I learned to never discuss a client with another client!

LOL ...Know what i did one time sayed to a clint so I heer your brothers gettin married ! ( i smiling all happy for the guy s brother) ....the clint gets this realy weard look says ..MY BROTHER?...HES ALLREADY MARRIED ! WATE TILL HIS WIFE FINDS OUT! .....i was so confused ! ....I saied he wasent tryin to hide it or nothin ....how weard ...to find out I had two clints confused ...I thaught this guy and the other guy were brothers the whole time both had mom's with the same name and brothers with the same name's ......what is the chances of that????? lol

Hi Lyris. I had a blast reading all of the hair bloopers here and I was very impressed that each and everyone handled their situation with a bit of humor I have a zillion hair bloopers that I can share with you but only 2 REALLY still brings back horriable nightmares and laughter.

#1 Blooper - I was pregnant and looking for a haircut that would be short and neat. I went to a "NEW" hairdresser who had just opened her own salon. I looked through books and magazines trying to find a haircut that I would like. I found a radical haircut (this was the 80ties) It was a "AceSemetrical"?! What I found strange as the hairdresser was cutting my hair was...she NEVER looked down at my hair...she kept looking in the big mirrior. When she was finished...she swung my chair around and the look on her face made me knit my eyebrows together. It was then that I noticed HER hair...it was FRIED from hair dyes and perms. I knew I made a big mistake then! I swung the chair back around and wanted to laugh and scream at the same time. On the right side of my head...my hair hung to chin length with 1/4" little bangs...on the left side my hair was cut about 1/2" all over and I had a whisp of bangs that hung to my chin. I left feeling that maybe pregnancy made one stupid because I paid the woman and never complained.

#2 Blooper - A Friend/Hairdresser suggested that for my little "fly-a-ways" I consider a hair straightener. She went to a beauty supply store and picked 1 up for me. It was for African/Americans and contained lye but she assured me that I should just leave it on ONLY 10 minutes and it would be alright. I took to mixing the various bottles and jars of thick goo's and readily applied it to my almost waist length hair. A little got on my forehead and it felt like fire. I then noticed my hair starting to do weird things...like kinky curl up. When I touched my hair...it broke off in my hands. I pratically dove in my shower...closed my eyes...praying that this would be alright. I felt water up to my knees and wondered what was clogging the drain. I opened my eyes and to my horror it was my hair!!!! Nearly all of it had broken off and layed in the water. I jumped out of the shower, called and went immediantly to another Friend/Hairdresser...she deep conditioned my hair and cut it REALLY short. What hair I did have left was ruined beyond words. A few days later I completely buzzed my head and went for a few months hearing nothing but bald jokes. Moral to this hair blooper: some Hairdressers don't make Good Friends!

Hi, this is my first post ever to this site. I just had to respond to this funny question although my ultimate blooper still embarrasses me.

It was July 1, 1981 (I'll never forget the date), and I was almost 21. I had spent the spring semester studying in Italy and then I backpacked around Europe for 6 weeks after that. During that whole time I never trimmed my hair. At the start of the semester, it was around bra-strap length (though I did not use that term at the time) or a little longer. Stick straight and honey blonde. By the time I came home at the end of June, it was probably 4 or 5 inches longer (my hair grew fast back then), getting near waist-length. It needed a trim really bad - there were lots of split ends and dryness.

Maybe because it looked so ratty at the ends, or maybe because I was about to turn 21, I decided to get a major change. I went to the only hairstylist I had ever been to, a woman named Sara, who had trimmed my hair a few times since I was in high school.

I told Sara I was ready for something different, planning to get her suggestions. She said, "How about I cut it like Olivia Newton-John?" Here's the embarrassing blooper part... In my mind I saw Olivia Newton-John in the movie Grease, which was a couple of years old by then. Remember her hair in Grease, blunt bangs, around shoulder length and flipped up in back? Kind of a cute schoolgirl look. Well, that would have been a radical change enough, like a foot shorter, and I did not have bangs. So I thought about it a while and said, "Okay, go for it!" Sara asked, "Do you want to watch?" I said (another blooper here), "No, I can't bear to watch." So she turned the chair so I would not see myself in the mirror during the cut.

Well, she was not thinking of Olivia's hair in Grease. She was thinking of her hair in "Physical!" I ended up with short layers all over! Which took forever to grow out.

Hi Cornsilk,

Welcoem to the Hairboutique boards!

Quite a story! I remember well the stages of Olivia Newton John's hair in those days (late 70s and/vs early 80's). Bummer about the misunderstanding!! I guess that's why it's a good idea to have a picture of what you want when you go to the salon. I remember how popular those short poodle perms were with the young women at the time (bleah).

Oh man.. I have one to end all blooper stories. Thankfully it didn't happen to me, but it did happen to one of my best friends, recently actually. My friend is a very beautiful girl, the product of a filipino, mexican and white mix and she was is absolutely gorgeous. When we first started out, she had about shoulder length medium brown hair that she straightened every other day with a straightening iron. Yeah, I know what you think, damage city, but it wasn't that bad. She ended up getting highlights and her hair was a dirty blonde color that was VERY pretty on her. Then, for God only knows why, she wanted black streaks in her hair which didn't work out too well so she dyed her beautiful hair completely pitch black -- it didn't look bad on her, in fact, she still looked very pretty and even more exotic with dark hair. But then, a few months later she wanted reddish black hair -- and dyed the drugstore box dye over her already dyed black hair. She got sick of it a few months after that, and dyed it pitch black again. Then, she got in some real hot water with her parents(we're talking months of grounding) and they forced her to go to a cheap salon and get her hair STRIPPED. Her hair was already damaged from her cheap products(pantene!!!) and every other day straightening, and this dumbass "hair stylist" lifted her hair to an ORANGE BLONDE. She HATED it and it looked awful on her. I finally got her some salon products after that and she began, once again, to dye her hair to a light blonde to get rid of the orange.. the end product looked as coarse and dry as a twig about to be snapped. And she continued to straighten it. Well, during spring break her angel of a grandmother took her to an expensive salon and the guy there refused to do anything to her hair except deeply condition it and cut it almost all off. She agreed and now sports a still somewhat damaged(she still goes to him for weekly conditioning treatments.. he's an angel and has personally cut my own hair and we all love him.) short cut. Thankfully, she's beautiful and she can wear extremely short hair, but good lord...

ok well im sure mines not as bad as some of the others...its kinda a half year long disaster. in november of 03 i bleached my hair from brown to light red (i actaully meant to lol). then i had strep in december which gave me ocd tendencies, so i would compulsively "trim" my hair. this left it "uneven" to me so i kept cutting it to make it "even". finally i got fed up and went to "mastercuts" so they would even it out. well i asked for a trim in the back, well the lady was flirting with her boyfriend while she was cutting my hair. she ended up making it worse then when i started, and she cut about an inch off the back, so i had a fullet-ish haircut. (longer in the front then in the back), but im a boy so it looked very weird. so i got my regular haircut lady to fix it thank god. then in january i dyed my hair black. not a very good choice. it made me look so pale. when i showed my mom i think she screamed if i remeber. so i tried dying my hair brown, but it wasnt showing up over the black dye. so i bleached my hair and it turned a dark red which i was convinced was so ugly. it was like the tacky fake color that old ladies dye their hair. everyone but me liked it which made it worse. it faded out to the color i originally had it in november though. ironic. now im growing my natural hair color back. the end. pheew.

Lol, ok I'm very daring with my hair and it really bites me in the butt sometimes...

My first big whoops was when I went to get my naturally lightish-medium brown hair dyed dark brown with dark red highlights. I wanted the red to be just as dark as the brown so it would just kind of give it a redish tint, I had seen it done and it looked good, I even brought a picture. When they were done... it was very dark brown almost black, like I wanted but the red was a cherry red color that looked faded and didn't start til about an inch down from the roots... it was really ugly

The second was when I wanted CARAMEL highlights, like a light brown honey color... The lady decided to put bleach in it... lol BIG mistake. The whole thing was blonde, and i do NOT look good as a blonde. So she put a toner in it but it turned orange, ugly orange, and then they tried to some brown back in it but it was so messed up... and fried. It's still in really bad condition thanks to her and that was about a year ago

Then yesterday I dyed the whole thing burgundy, but then I decided I didn't like it... So right now I am waited for my 25 min. so I can rinse out the dark brown dye I bought to fix this.
That one was my fault, cause I'm dumb... lol, but the first two were because of stylists, so thinking you are safer with a professional isn't always a sure thing. I say just stick with natural unless you really really trust your stylist or you are willing to take BIG BIG BIG risks

I have a horrible hair blooper. About a year ago, I decided to highlight my hair with an at home kit. I left it on the front too long, and ended up with two white blotches on the front of my hair. They actually looked pale white. Then, I tried to dye it to get it to turn a pretty blonde, and they ended up turning this gray color, or something that wasn't even a color at all. Then, we died it again with with a darker blonde, and it finally looked normal, all except for this purple streak next to my ear. The purple streak finally came out, but let me tell you, I almost had white hair there for a while! It was scary.

Hi mtcruiser12, welcome to the boards! You were lucky. Have you tried that at home kit again, or should I even be asking?

My daughter had been putting streaks in her hair using cream bleach to lighten it first. I bought her a box of proper hair bleach, and she did the whole top of her head without thinking too hard about it.

When she saw that there was a huge white circle in her hair, she went to the bathroom shelf and grabbed a box of Loving Care redwood color - dark reddish brown, that I kept to touch up my gray. Without reading the warning that said Not to be used on lightened hair she applied it.

When I came home, she had a blotch on top of her head that was brilliant copper penny colored. Took forever to grow out, she ended up coloring it black.

I didn't know anything about hair color at the time, so I couldn't help her.