I’ll never forget when I was working my first job out of college and living in Washington, DC.
At least half my take-home pay went towards my share of a cockroach-infested Connecticut Avenue apartment.
The rest had to cover groceries (what groceries? the fridge never contained more than a wheel of brie and a cheap box of Chablis)… meals out (generally I mooched off my male co-workers for lunch–men were more “chivalrous” back then and we gals let them be)… bar tabs… gas… and other necessities.
One of those “necessities” I decided I could skimp on was a haircut. Instead of forking over $30 or more, I scouted out some cheaper options.
Way back then $30 was a princely sum for a haircut and blow dry — the equivalent of a whopping $83 in today’s highly-inflated dollars (yikes!) So I decided to give the local “Supercuts” in nearby Woodley Park a try.
At “Supercuts” it only cost $15 for a haircut and blow dry and they took walk-ins. I show up and the hairdresser brings me over to the washbowl to shampoo my hair.
While she’s shampooing my hair, she asks me, “You want long or short?”
I immediately started to panic… only two options? Really? I was expecting a conversation more along the lines of “more layering?”, “bangs?”, or otherwise stylistically-focused.
At this point, she had lost any trust I had in her and I questioned my decision to walk into that “Supercuts” and basically second-guessed my entire existence.
I told her I just needed a VERY slight trim and during the entire haircut I barely let her cut anything off my head. Then I scheduled an appointment at the boujie Georgetown salon I was going to go to originally, and plunked down my $30.
So much for saving money! Lesson learned… sometimes it’s worth paying more in the first place.
Anyway, I thought of that “long vs. short” dichotomy when I decided to break down two very different hair regrowth promotions that came across my desk.
You guessed it… one’s very long…and the other is very short. So short, it’s as if some nervous, coked-up lawyer took a machete to it and gave it a serious haircut.
The first one we’ll look at is the very LONG one. It’s a newspaper advertorial an elderly relative sent me in the mail. She wrote me a letter talking about her problems with hair loss and her desire to make it thicker and easier to manage.
This ad had convinced her the product could be a good solution for her, but she sent it to me to get my opinion on it. It’s not one I’m familiar with, but I know the company that makes it. I’ve seen many of their advertorials in other publications.
This particular ad is longer than the typical 1,000-word limit. Let’s take a look… (note: you don’t have to read the whole thing unless you want to. Just read the main headline and scan the rest!)
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