Woman Who Hadn't Cut Her Hair In 30 Years Surprises Her Fiancé With A Huge Makeover
Back to school, job interview, mid-life crisis — all roads lead to the hair salon. Nothing makes you feel ready to take charge of your life quite like a fresh haircut. At least, that's how it is for most people.
But not for one Florida woman. She did whatever she could to stay clear of sharp objects that threatened her prized ponytail. She’d spent years with the security blanket of extremely long locks. But when she was about to begin a new phase of her life, she settled into the salon chair and was unprepared for how drastically her life changed.
Holly had really long hair. We’re talking Rapunzel-level tresses down to her waist. It always needed to be twisted, plaited, or piled up for her to function without being caught up in a tangle of unruliness.
Each morning, Holly’s hair routine included brushing and taming her mane, putting on her uniform, and heading to her job as a gate guard. In her job, utility and function were key, and that mind frame seeped over into how she viewed beauty.
For as long as she remembered, she’d had the longest hair around. Holly with the long hair is how everyone knew her. It was part of her identity. The idea of cutting her tresses would be like changing her whole personality.
Fast approaching, though, was her wedding. When she pictured the big day, at the moment her fiance saw her gliding up the aisle, there was a big old question mark as to how she would style her hair.
One morning in the spring of 2017, Holly woke up inspired. Since hunkering down with wedding prep, she was forced to reckon with one hard truth: the girl needed a haircut. After years of avoiding scissors, she was ready to make the chop.
She walked into Avant Garde Salon with a stomach full of knots. They whisked her off to the hot seat as she explained that she was looking for a total transformation. She soon realized she’d chosen the perfect place.
Jeremy Harfield, a stylist at the salon, took one look at Holly’s two-tone yellow blonde locks and was itching to work his magic. Any hairdresser worth their salt loves nothing more than providing a client with a life-altering change. Holly was the ideal canvass.
With a reassuring pat on the shoulder, Jeremy told Holly to say goodbye to the old, gathered her hair into sections, and snipped off over two feet of hair. In seconds, the weight that she carried for years instantly lifted.
Holly looked like a different person, and her haircut had only just begun. When she stared into the mirror at the ends of her hair grazing her shoulders, she admitted something that she’d always clung to about femininity and attractiveness.
Once Jeremy finished cutting, Holly couldn’t stop running her fingers through her cropped modern bob. Getting emotional, she explained that she feared cutting off so much hair would make her look less conventionally beautiful, an insecurity that sounded in her head since childhood.
Next up was color. Stylist Sara Pestella took over, and they shared a heart to heart while she worked. Holly shared that her father had planted the seed of doubt about cutting her hair years before, and she subconsciously held onto it.
In an interview with the magazine Modern Salon, Sarah explained what Holly told her, “She always felt like she needed to keep her hair long because of what her dad said: that a woman must have long hair or she wouldn’t be pretty without it.”
Luckily the team snipped away that idea along with her hair. She had nothing but time to kill in the salon chair so she grew accustomed to the new look. In total, it took from 7 pm until 2 am the following day.
No makeover is complete without a full head-to-toe finish. Once her hair had reached perfection, the salon team moved Holly over into the makeup artist’s chair where she knew the exact colors to reveal her inner bombshell.
At the end of her appointment, no one, including Holly, could recognize the woman who’d first walked in the door. She gaped at herself in the mirror, blown away by her transformation. Soon, she learned her makeover was one for the books.
Before-and-after photos of Holly circled the web, gaining Avant Garde Salon tons of attention. In fact, the makeover was nominated for Transformation Shot of the Year. Her final step in her fairytale was to stomp the runway in front of an audience.
Styled to the nines in a white jumpsuit, Holly grinned on the catwalk as the audience roared. It was no contest; Avant Garde scooped the prize. It gave their team invaluable exposure, so they brainstormed a way to give back to their muse.
The owners of Avant Garde decided that Holly’s makeover was just the beginning of her journey to loving her new look. For the next year, all of her appointments to keep her hair up to its elevated standard would be completely free of charge.
Feeling the effects of her glamorous 'do, Holly quit her job as a gate guard and ended up back at the hub of where it all began — the salon of course! She started working as their receptionist and took another spin in the colorist’s chair.
This time there was no fear, just sheer delight over hair experimentation. Holly opted to turn her platinum bob into a trendy purple one. After a few months, she said farewell and returned to her old job for financial reasons.
Cutting her hair was Holly’s way of starting fresh in the next chapter of her life. Once she spends a few decades as a married woman, she can bust out the makeover card to spice up her relationship. That trick worked wonders for Kevin and Jo.
Ultimately, Kevin decided to go for it, admitting that his beard was definitely getting too long to handle. With both parents in agreement, the children reached out to the show and accepted the offer. Their plan was officially a go!
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