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When You're Dying Inside Over Your Dye
What she got: "That is highlighter orange," says Emily. "One look at the bright, bright color of my hair in contrast with my dark eyebrows and I knew something got lost in translation. I was visibly upset, so the stylist called her manager over. He admitted she could have gone with an ashier tone. She was insisting that I had gotten what I asked for, but it just looked unnatural to me. She told me to think about it for a few days (she didn't want to fix it then because she said it would be too damaging) and that I could come back if I still didn't like it."
How she handled it: I hated it so much that I did go back, and she was able to tone it down a little. It was still sort of orange, but faded over time. I felt bad for her ... she cried and hugged me when I gave her a tip after the second touch-up."
What she should have done: Petroff says that Emily was right to give it a few days. "If you don't like your new color, mention it in the salon, but give it a few days to settle and to get used to it," says Petroff. He recommends looking at it in the sun, since lighting in salons is often terrible. And don't freak out, because Petroff says fresh color is easy to fix. He recommends using some clarifying shampoo to wash out the color at home afterwards. If you're still not happy, revisit it with your stylist. He also says a tip for correcting it is nice (especially if it took more than an hour or involves something you didn't ask for originally, like adding highlights), but not necessary.
"It'll grow back." When you're brimming over with tears at the sight of a new head of hair you didn't ask for, that's the last thing a woman wants to hear. My first bad haircut was at age seven, and I can still recall bursting into tears in the back of my mom's minivan after shyly nodding that, yes, I liked my new bangs, to the stylist moments before. Decades later, and I still haven't learned the art of politely informing a stylist that I hate what she's done to me. When I wondered out loud how to fix a bad haircut, my coworkers had plenty to say. We've all had bad cuts over the years, so we had a hair stylist expert, Chris Petroff (he's done Jared Leto's hair, and we're all jealous of those locks), weigh in on when to speak up and what to say.
