This all started when 19-year-old me looked in the mirror and realized that my lovely shade of mousy brown had somehow transformed into mousy gray. I was 19, and, in most light, I had a full head of gray hair. I've been blessed to have the best stylist EVER at my beckon call, so shortly after working through the expected existential crisis, I was in his chair, watching my hair transform into a lovely shade of auburn.
He created a monster.
I quickly learned that red hair is the hardest color to keep up with, so, thanks to my never remembering what shade I used, my touch-ups turned into (not so) subtle color changes. Unfortunately, I was on a student's salary, so my dye jobs were typically done in a friend's kitchen. Hey, I got free food while I waited for the color to set, so it wasn't all bad! I was crazy experimental back then -- if it's a shade of red that you can buy at CVS, it was on my head. I'd love to tell you that being a brazen ginger was a fantastic time, but 97% of those shades made my skin look fluorescent yellow (damn my awkward skin tone) -- or, more often, I just looked like a foolish college student who was discovering what fun hair dye could be. OH. I was also getting wickedly curly perms through all of this. This was a dark period in my life, kids.
Fall 2009 brought a nice round of sanity with it. I cut nearly a foot of (orange) hair off (it was frizzy perm growth (did I mention that it had turned orange?), so I was not upset in the least to see it go) and had my stylist take me to a nice, sane chocolate-y brown. I finally looked closer to my age, and I spent the winter trying out different shades of brown... until I realized that I had been unintentionally working my way darker and darker.
In the spring before I graduated college (eww, weird December graduate alert), I snap-decisioned a really really REALLY short haircut. I'm talking... nearly shaved on the right side of my head. Part of the decision was due to my wanting to thoroughly erase all the damage the red dye and perms had left behind, but 3/4 was entirely my walking into the salon and saying "Let's do something new." I also let all of the dye grow out with the short haircut. Graduating college puts you in a bettering-yourself state of mind, so it was only natural to do.
I was actually okay with the ashy brown through most of that summer. It wasn't as shockingly gray since my hair was short, and it was definitely awesome feeling something healthy and natural on top of my head. ...And then I found Feria's midnight collection. Black dyes, with either red, purple or BLUE undertones? I was there. The red black faded to an auburn that reminded me too much of my previous mistakes, sadly, so I decided to say "Screw it" to being mainstream, and picked up purple. God, that purple black. It was just your average pitch black in indoor lighting, but a brilliant eggplant whenever I hit the sun. It also made my first showers after dye jobs look like murder scenes because of how much red and pink was rinsing out, but whatever.
And then there was the blue black. Starry Night. The best thing to happen to my hair since that very first auburn dye job, back in 2007. It was just black enough to be considered a natural shade when I was at work, but the second you put me under the sun or stage lights, I had blue hair. Blue hair!!! Do you know how awesome that made me feel? I stayed with that color for much longer than any other; for almost a year, I paraded around my blue hair like the proud little kid I am.
Then... I realized that blonde was the only color I'd never done. My hair was actually bright white blonde until I was 3 years old, but obviously, that was irrelevant in my thought process. Plus, since Amy Poehler holds the lady hero key to my heart, following her lead is something I'm always eager to do. For whatever reason, after years of bizarre hair colors, this was the one that gave me serious anxiety, though. I was terrified as I sat under my stylist's hairdryer. Since I'm a moderately paranoid child of the internet age, I spent the hours before my appointment reading up on bleach horror stories.
Thankfully, I had nothing to worry about, and, at least for the extended time being, I'm pretty sure my color-changing days are over. I really like being blonde. We do have more fun. Of course, that doesn't mean I've ruled out throwing in sections of pink every now and then, but I don't think we'll see that god-awful red ever again.
There's something wonderfully therapeutic about tweaking your appearance in an afternoon. I... might blame this blog post on hair dye fumes since I just touched up my color.
Um, if you want a glimpse of some of my color mistakes/triumphs, go through my album of profile pictures on Facebook. Look! A link!
