bang trim

i have yet to find a place where i live in Germany which offers free bang trims the way my salon in pittsburgh used to, and I’m currently too poor to shell out €25 to shed a few centimeters of deadweight, so today i decided to take matters into my own hands! although i am in possession of not 1 but 2 different hair cutter combs - the kind with a disposable razor blade between its teeth so that you can lop off large swaths while pulling it through your hair - the last time i used it several months ago, my bangs looked all lumpy and uneven afterwards, as if they had been caught in a mulcher. so i thought i should give a pair of proper hair shears a try, since i just happened to have them on hand, from the time two years ago when we asked Ulrich’s mother (who once worked at a salon) to give us haircuts during COVID lockdown. She was slightly traumatized by the sheer length and quantity of my hair and hinted afterwards that she would prefer not to have to cut it again.

I watched two how-to videos on Youtube in the late afternoon, one of a teenage girl who had decided to fashion her bangs after olivia wilde’s and the other a professional stylist encouraging her clients to learn how to trim their own bangs. listening to her DIY lesson reminded me of all the things i had assumed as a child that i would know how to do by the time i grew up but never actually managed to learn: how to refasten a button with a needle and thread, how to crochet a scarf, how to replace a broken zipper… and how to cut my own bangs.

the main takeaway i got from both youtube videos was that the more vertically i held the scissors, the less likely i was to make my bangs go screwy, because the angle of the scissors would create a feathery, less drastic cut. so i stood, about six inches away from the mirror, with the hair from both sides of my straight-down-the-middle part gathered to the side by bobby pins, and began snip-snip-snipping with upright shears. It took a little while to adjust to the mirror - which way did I need to tilt my hand on the left versus the right side of my face? - and I snipped repeatedly at the air at first because i couldn’t properly gauge the distance between forehead, scissors and hair. and then, eventually, i watched as tiny ebony shavings landed on the paper towels i had strategically set out on the ledge beneath the mirror, forming a darkening pile. i had also strategically decided not to lay paper towels over the sink basin and fixtures, thinking i’d be able to avoid them - a decision which also turned out to be dumb, as i would later find myself using far more paper towels to wipe up the tiny hair particles which clung like static to the porcelain.

in the end my bangs turned out okay, although only marginally better than if i had used one of the combs with the razor blade between its teeth. although they still look a little lumpy, the fringes of the hair are indeed feathered, an effect which makes the unevenness seem almost intentional. after i finished cutting my hair i peered closely in the mirror and realized that my eyes were parched and bloodshot at the corners - had some atomic splinters of hair gotten stuck in my eyeballs without my realizing it? or had i perhaps strained my eyes too hard, trying so desperately to avoid a disastrous cut?

after i was done i took twice as long as I’d spent cutting my bangs to clean up after myself in the bathroom, squandering damp paper towels as i tried to wipe stray hairs from the sides of the sink. i wondered whether the time spent was worth the €25 i saved, but then i realized how good it felt to have done something at all. I can’t imagine the pride I’ll feel once i finally learn how to fix a button with a needle and thread!

Photo by Önder Örtel on Unsplash