Hair cuts in the time of COVID
Courtesy of Metro Creative
The closing of hair salons and barber shops because of the coronavirus pandemic have left people scrambling to keep up with hair cuts.
Courtesy of Frank Hixenbaugh
Frank Hixenbaugh of Mt. Lebanon, before he cut his own hair.
Courtesty of Frank HIxenbaugh
Frank Hixenbaugh cut his own hair since his barbers shop is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Courtesy of Heather Flanegan
Heather Flanegan elnisted her son, Sean, 11, to help her color her hair.
Courtesy of Heather Flanegan
Heather Flanegan colored her hair with the help of her son. Her salon has been closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hair salons and barber shops have been closed since March because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, but hair hasn’t stopped growing.
Some people are taking matters into their own hands and cutting and coloring their own hair.
Heather Flanegan of Pittsburgh asked her 11-year-old son, Sean, to help her color her hair, which she hadn’t gotten done at her local hair salon since February.
Flanegan ordered a coloring kit online, but when it didn’t come in, her salon provided her with a bottle of root touch-up.
“The back of my head was hard to get to, so I needed my son to help. I told him just to think of it as painting,” said Flanegan, laughing. “It didn’t look horrible for an 11-year-old and a woman who’s never done it before.”
Flanegan’s hair is shoulder-length, so she’s not worried about cutting it.
“There’s no way I can cut my hair,” she said. “It’s not to the point it needs cut, anyway. I’m just putting my hair up and in ponytails.”
Frank Hixenbaugh of Mt. Lebanon said he gets his hair cut every five weeks, and was overdue when he spontaneously decided to trim it with the dog clippers his ex-wife uses for their St. Bernards.
“I was dropping off the kids and she had just cut the dogs’ hair, and I thought, why not?” said Hixenbaugh. “It had gotten pretty unruly.”
Cutting and coloring hair isn’t as easy to do as people might think – as evidenced by the photos of crooked bangs and bad hair cuts that have popped up on social media in recent weeks.
“We are professionally trained,” said Alicia Frazier-DeLuca, owner of Studio 7 in Washington. “We are trained to cut curly hair differently than we do straight hair. With over 25 years under my belt, I have yet to see the exact same hair on another head.”
Frazier said she gets “about 10 calls a day” from clients anxious for the salon to re-open.
Geno Levi, owner of Geno Levi Salon in Peters Township, said hair cutting is best left to the professionals.
The salon noted that for many – people who are on Zoom calls for work, for example – appearance matters.
Pam Widdup Stewart has cut her bangs three times during the shutdown.
“People can get on YouTube and figure a lot of things out,” said Stewart, who was taught by a hair stylist several years ago how to cut bangs. “I cut mine all the time.”
She hasn’t visited a salon for 10 weeks and her hair has grown about two inches, but she doesn’t plan to cut it yet.
“But my roots are growing out though,” she said.