Post date: April 22, 2022 | Adventure
Here’s Why New Haircuts Always Look Bad (At First)
If you’re like most people, you probably dread getting your haircut because it never really turns out the way you originally envision it. Even if the barber does everything you ask, and even if the hairstyle by itself looks great, oftentimes we simply don’t like the way a new haircut looks. So, today we wanted to answer the question as to why new haircuts almost always look bad at first!
When was the last time you got a haircut that you thought looked great right off the bat? Chances are those precious moments are few and far between, but much more often, people get haircuts that they don’t exactly like at first that they grow to love within only few days. This is generally the normal experience.
This problem isn’t exclusive to men, either. Women, Children, Teenagers, and just about everybody else seems to feel this way. Well, believe it or not there are a few psychological and scientific reasons as to why this happens! And that is what we’ll be covering today!
If you’d rather watch Austin’s video on the subject, click the link below!
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Why You Hate New Haircuts At First
New Haircuts Are Too Perfect
A talented barber knows how and where to cut your hair to achieve the desired look. And because multiple strands of your hair are usually cut at the same time (imagine if the barber cut one hair at a time…yikes) they tend to look almost too uniform and perfectly positioned.
This uniformity can cause a new haircut to look almost unnaturally perfect. The hair hasn’t had enough time to grow out and become a bit ragged and more “natural” looking. Not to mention your hair has had a good amount of time leading up to the haircut to lay naturally and get used to a certain pattern and form. The moment your hair is cut, it loses the weight and hold it originally had, and therefore, falls out of pattern.
Freshly Cut Hair Feels Thicker
As I mentioned earlier, your hair has likely had a decent amount of time to grow out since your last haircut. This causes some changes to the way your hair lays and the way your hair feels. Grown-out hair tends to taper at the ends, meaning the hair gradually loses thickness until it stops to a point.
Perhaps you’ve heard the myth that shaving causes your hair to grow back thicker, but this isn’t exactly true. Shaving, however, will make your hair feel thicker because you lose the taper at the end of your hair. The same thing occurs when you get your hair cut. As a result, the tapered ends of your hair are sheared off, leaving the stocky base of your hair behind, causing your hair to feel thicker and stiffer than usual.
This change in the feeling and the way your hair lays may be unusual and undesirable for some, which brings me to the last point as to why new haircuts often look bad on us. Because we’re the ones who are most used to ourselves.
Haircuts Challenge Your Identity
We all see ourselves in a certain way, and that way becomes our identity. Humans are naturally averse to change for a few reasons. Change usually comes along with the “unknown”. And our brains like to compartmentalize things that are “normal” to us. This helps us create a form of self-identity that’s important to us in defining the world and our place in it.
In this way, the same exact thing occurs if you get a new tattoo as what happens when you get a fresh haircut, albeit to a different extent. When you get a new haircut, what you are doing is essentially forcing a shift in the way you view yourself. Even superficial things like your appearance make a difference in your identity.
Because you are forcing this shift, and because the brain is uncomfortable with change, new haircuts are almost always disliked until a few days after we’ve lived with them and we’ve molded our identities to include that change once again.
Overall, whether you are simply tightening up the haircut you’ve got, or altering your style completely, hopefully this article explains why we often dislike new haircuts and that you should be patient before judging the new cut!
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