I Sent My Best Friend to My Hair Stylist and It Was a Disaster
Some things are sacred. Hair is one of them.

I learned something pretty earth-shattering the other day. There IS something worse than suffering your own hair nightmare, and that would be enduring your best friend's hair nightmare—this, because she tried your hair stylist, at your suggestion.
Here's what happened: I decided to send my best friend of 13 years to my new hair girl. In my mind, she'd love her just as much as I do. And initially she did. I saw it go down with my own eyes.
At first blush, she was obsessed with her her new bleach blonde ombré and had even booked her next appointment before leaving the salon. Everything was pretty peachy, in fact, until a few days later when she snapped. Actually snapped. She decided her ends had been destroyed and that her signature tightly-wound curls would never be the same unless she cut off several inches. She did, then deemed her hair "ruined." It soon became clear she wanted me to pick up the pieces.
In the following weeks, my friend and I butted heads. She was angry at me, because I didn't agree that her hair was damaged beyond repair (I thought it looked great, actually) or that it was my hairstylist's fault.
I was frustrated because she was calling and texting me to lament her dye job and disparage my stylist in the process. It got to the point where I felt like she was guilt-tripping me...and I did feel kind of guilty because I'd set this whole thing up in the first place.
But I was torn. On one hand, I believed she'd gotten exactly what she'd asked for. On the other, I felt for her because, honestly, we've all been there. Hair is really sensitive territory! In fact, I can confidently say that if it were me in the same position, one where I felt like my hair identity had been stolen from me, I'd be devastated and, for lack of a better word, crazy.
So please, heed this warning: A friend + your hairstylist = just a bad idea. Keep your personal and beauty lives separate. I had to learn the hard way.
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Lauren Valenti is Vogue’s former senior beauty editor. Her work has also appeared on ELLE.com, MarieClaire.com, and in In Style. She graduated with a liberal arts degree from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, with a concentration on Culture and Media Studies and a minor in Journalism.
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