Haircuts in a foreign country are scary. I have avoided it as long as I could, seeing as the last time I lived in France I went in and said, “Just the split ends,” and the woman hacked off my shoulder-length hair just above my earlobe. This year the big hair trend in Paris is this pseudo-mullet like Carol Brady circa the last season of the Brady Bunch, and I'm not havin’ it. I pledged that if someone even thought the word ”re-looking” during today’s trip to the coiffeuse, I was leaping out of the chair like Michael Jackson in Pepsi commercial (i.e. as though my hair were on fire).

But I had a great experience. I got the best highlights I’ve ever gotten from a technician who hates her life so deeply I felt it in every breath she exhaled (I approached her chair, and she yelled out, “Someone get me a god-damned coffee or I am going to faint!”). After that, the gayest man in all of Paris styled and then cut my hair, in that order. Just the split ends.