How to Cut Your Own Hair

As a college student, I don't have a lot of money to spend on lavish haircuts at the local salon. So from my own personal experience, here is how to effectively cut your hair.

My sophomore year of college, I woke up one morning in the spring and since it had been getting warmer, I was starting to get sick of my long hair. After a shower, I decided to drastically shorten my hair. It was on a total whim and I obviously didn't have any of the proper tools. I parted my hair down the middle and grabbed a chunk from behind my left ear and cut. With about 5 inches of hair in my hand, I looked in the mirror in shock. I immediately put it up and ran to my friend's apartment so she could finish cutting it.

The problem was that cutting the sides to match on your own is not that hard. If your hair is sufficiently wet and you comb it over your ears you can measure length under your chin. You just pull two pieces from either side and hold it in one hand. Then cut with the other. The real problem came when I was going to do the back. A mirror can only help out so much because even then your hands are twisted in an unnatural way and your dexterity will suffer. You won't be able to cut as well and evenly straight as when you have hair in front of you.

One way that you can do this is to lift the hair up and cut it evenly at the top. I would not consider this wise since it's nearly impossible to tell if you're pulling your hair up straight enough. Another option, which only works if your hair is long enough is to flip that hair from the back over your head so it cascades on your face. With this method, again, you must be sure the hair is pulled tautly enough to be cut evenly from the front.

If you want to do something more than a simple cut, like bangs or layers, you'll have to put a little more effort into it. For layers you have to part the hair into all different sections. Picture how your hairstylist would do it and do the same thing. Clip different layers of hair and cut them one by one at varying lengths. If you want bangs, it should be fairly simple since bangs are in the front and are easier to access. I know a lot of people who trim their own bangs in between haircuts and it looks flawless.

While these are all good suggestions, my best advice would be that if you need to cut your own hair, bring a friend to help you. You might be able to cut the front of your hair just fine, but it couldn't hurt to have a helping hand for those parts you can't easily see. Your friend can just do the back or simply they help you even it out and cut off the imperfect strands once you've done it yourself.

So how do you cut your own hair? There's only one answer to that and it is: courageously.