To be young, average and white as a young girl in the 1970s was to be preoccupied, traumatized, and eventually victimized by hair and hair products. The styles that our idols displayed and that we all craved looked tossed off and natural, like sunshine in California. Sadly, though, those iconic looks were beyond our reach: Dippity-Do and Sears curling irons were simply no match for the works of hair architecture we beheld on the TV stars as they chatted on the sofa with
Dinah Shore, or framing the faces that grinned at us from DrugFair magazine racks.
Farrah Fawcett's luxuriantly unruly mane may have looked as if a simple toss of the head were the only skill necessary to achieve it, but I learned at an early age that there was no way that Phil at my neighborhood beauty parlor had enough time, chops, or hair product to recreate a signature Hollywood look on an eleven year-old fresh off the street wearing a polyester cowel neck sweater and ill-fitting jeans. When I walked into the strip mall salon with my mom and asked for my first real hairstyle --"wings"-- what I walked out with was not Farrah's shimmering waterfall, but nothing more than my own brown bangs, only fried into into shape by a curling iron and glued to the sides of my head with hairspray.
Even the famous, no-nonsense wedge hairstyle immortalized by Olympic pedestal girl Dorothy Hamill required the same level of precision and timing to execute without tragedy as her trademark Hamill Camel spin.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different from you and me, particularly when it comes to their hair.
What is Seventies Hair Scare Syndrome?
It's no wonder, then, that for most of my life, I have suffered from Seventies Hair Scare Syndrome (SHSS): an aversion to sitting in a beauty salon chair so severe that it makes the thought of a colonoscopy exam sound like a relaxing way to pamper myself.
For those of us who do suffer from SHSS, our symptoms can worsen with time, since as we age we face stressful decision points concerning our hair color.
There is hope.
While there is no known cure for SHSS, for sufferers living in the Washington, DC area there is now a way to manage it: through regular appointments with stylist
Jeremey Paul at PRatParters Salons & Spas'
Metro Center location.
I met JeremeyPaul when I was in the midst of a hair emergency. The only stylist I trusted on earth was half a Beltway away and booked for the next few weeks, and I was about to go to a job interview with unsightly gray that I had suddenly realized was a liability. I called the Metro Center salon, and the only person available on such short notice was the new guy, JeremeyPaul. I was worried about how young he looked in the photo. Did he know what he was doing? Would he make me feel old and massively uncool? My desperation drove me to ignore my fears and just go.
A star in a galaxy of master stylists.
JeremeyPaul put me at ease the moment I met him. He obviously loves what he does, and his enjoyment of the process was irresistible. The confidence and serenity he projected had the same reassuring effect on me as a veteran flight attendant cheerfully going over the emergency landing instructions, as if to say with every sweeping arm gesture, "I wouldn't be on this plane if I thought it would crash. As long as I'm here, everything will be just fine."
JeremeyPaul has several qualities that set him apart as a star in Partners' galaxy of masterful hair and makeup artists: a flawless sense of color; a reassuring and entertaining chairside manner, and the hands of a brain surgeon when it comes to taking blade to hair.
He is also the in-store spokesperson for an innovative hair color product developed by L'Oreal called
Inoa, which uses an oil distribution system instead of ammonia in its permanent hair color. According to JeremeyPaul, in microscopic photos, hair treated with Inoa looks stronger and healthier than "virgin hair' that has never been colored before. "You can think of it as reparative," he said. And that is good news for those of us SHSS sufferers who worry about the harsh chemicals in hair color and the possibility that they will damage our hair or, more likely, give us terminal cancer like Jackie Onassis.
In very little time at all, my hair status had changed from "It's complicated" to "I'm in love." I had the cut of my dreams and a fresh new color that was vibrant and shiny and repairing my hair all the while.
If you've been yearning to have some fun with your hair but have been suffering with SHSS, have no fear. JeremeyPaul is here, and he is ready to love your hair.
Labels: beauty, hair color, hair cut, Hair stylists in DC, Inoa, Jeremey Paul, L'Oreal, Metro Center, PRatPartners, salon, Washington
posted by Lisa #
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