Hair Journey

It’s hard to overstate how much I loved pink hair.

In all honesty, though, I did not expect this. Pink hair would be my first “unnatural” color, in that it was going to fall outside the gamut of hues I could conceivably have been born with. Even though I felt fairly certain that my previous hair colors were obviously not my natural color, this was bound to be a step beyond. But, if only in honor of my younger self, I felt I had to give it a go.

For context, little-me loved the color pink. I know many little girls are obsessed, but I’ve been told I took it to extremes. “Pink” was synonymous with “good” in my child vocabulary, such that at family dinner blessings I used to thank the Lord for “having a pink day.” D’aw, so cute.

But eventually, I grew out of pink. It’s still a color I like, just not one I wear very often. And when my hair journey was first conceived, it didn’t make the list.

And then I started doing my “research” (which here means obsessing over other people’s hair colors), and quickly stumbled across images of people online with absolutely stunning pink hairstyles. I learned that what I wanted was more of a rose or peach color, something dusky and delicate, but still dark at the roots like a balayage. Elizabeth assured me I’d have to start with something pretty strong, because really vibrant dyes fade faster than the ones I’d been using thus far. So I basically just trusted Elizabeth to pick colors that would work, and then let her go to work on another marathon session of bleaching and painting my hair.

I should say that this is also the point where my hair experiment got expensive. Like, really expensive. Turns out, it takes a lot of time and product to bleach your hair and then paint stuff back in, not to mention treating it along the way to make sure it doesn’t become impossibly fried in the process. I’m glad I’ve reached this point several months in, because by now I feel like I understand and appreciate the cost. If I’d been quoted this number six moths previously when I first started I probably would have been more than a little incredulous. I also appreciate that Elizabeth breaks this news to me before we’ve started so that I still have a chance to change my mind. I decide to go for it, but also to wait longer for my next appointment so that I don’t destroy my budget. I’m glad to know that my root color (the same I used with my previous balayage) will last for two months, even though I’m pretty sure the pink ends won’t.

Anyway, Elizabeth finishes up and turns me around. I’ve learned by now that my reaction will always be somewhat giddy. As much as I didn’t anticipate how expensive this whole process would be when I started, I also didn’t realize how fun it would be. And now here we are, with a pink color I never thought I would choose, and I’m over the moon. When I get home, my niece Charlotte (3), who’s usually shy and won’t let me hold her, pats me on the head tells me “I like your hair.” Thanks, Char. I do, too.

At one point, a couple days after dying my hair, I went out to one of my favorite local pubs to grab a pint and do some reading. I sat down at a bench not far from a girl with rainbow colored hair, and thought, Oh, her hair is very fun. And then I realized that I, too, have very fun hair!

That was a turning point. My heart leapt. I might have smiled awkwardly at her. The thing is, when I see people on the street I assume that however I see them that day is however they must be all the time. But in reality, most of us take turns looking good: some days we’re wander out of the house in a semi-unkempt state, and we see the put-together folk wandering about and we wish that we, too, could look be perpetually sharp like that. And then there are other days where we’ve taken our grooming an extra step, and people probably look at us and think we always look that way.

Well, in this instance, it was me looking at a girl with colorful hair thinking she must have always had her hair that color. And then suddenly realizing that now people look at me and probably think that I’ve always been the kind of person to sport pink hair, when in truth, only six months ago I’d never dyed my hair at all. Well, look at me now. Look at me now!

The sad news is that, just as I’d been told, the pink faded. After only a couple weeks I felt myself already missing the bright vibrant color I’d started with. I had meant to take pictures along with way, but for most of this time period I was absorbed by painting my new home, which didn’t leave me many days to get cleaned up enough for pictures.

I also noticed a distinct difference in the texture of my hair—something I again expected because of the damage bleach does. Up to this point, my hair had been surprisingly resilient. Now, it felt rougher particularly after a shower. I had some hair serum lying around that’s supposed to make your hair feel smoother, but I’d never needed it with my natural hair because it was slippery enough. Well, it’s finally found its purpose. I guess the other side affect of the new texture is that my hair stays in place a little better. If I had more time, I’d probably use this to try some new hairstyles.

Even though I didn’t get pictures of it as it faded out, I did have the foresight to snap a foto the day I got it done, while still at its most vibrant and with Elizabeth’s curls intact. I almost wish I could stay with pink a bit longer, but I have a couple more colors lined up for the summer before I reach my grand finale, and I’m to excited about what’s coming up to linger. I go blonde tomorrow, for the first time since I was five. In the meantime, here you go, folks: pink hair, don’t care.

Well, I have a lot to catch up on.

And although there are a lot of things I’d like to start writing about, I have to start with my hair because I am seriously behind the game on that one. I’ve gone through two different colors since I last wrote about my hair journey, and I’m going in on Saturday for my next stage. And since I am absolutely dedicated to chronicling this adventure to the end, I have to get my thoughts out before I fall further behind.

Back in September, when I first started talking to Elizabeth about my plans for dying my hair, she told me I should try a “balayage.” I had never heard of this word before, but I pulled out my cell phone and looked it up. Essentially, it’s a super fancy way of highlighting your hair from one color at your roots to another at your tips. It takes a lot of blending, but the result is more natural looking and super cool. We talked about a few options for where I could do a balayage, and the original plan was to do it as I transitioned from chocolate to a lighter color. Elizabeth thought chocolate with red ends would be cool, but in my mind I didn’t like the thought of going from red to chocolate back to red again, So when the day came, I asked for her to do a warm caramel color.

Because I wanted this hairstyle to last for two months while I was in Spain, we chose a root color which we thought might blend in with my natural roots as they grew back. (Balayages in general are a more forgiving hair color, because they tend to fade well over time.) I sort of fell in love with the ash brown we chose, and I sort of wish we’d used it when I did my all-over brown. Maybe someday. Elizabeth also left some of the dark brownish-red I already had in my hair in place as the blending point from dark to light. This ensured I would keep some warm tones and that everything would blend more naturally.

What followed was truly epic. Elizabeth busted out her foils, and spent the next… two hours? carefully painting my hair, piece by piece. I have a lot of hair. It’s thinned a little since starting this whole process, but still—it’s a thing every single stylist I’ve ever visited has commented on, usually when they’re about halfway through blowing it out. And I have to emphasize: Elizabeth was painting tiny pieces at a time.

She started with the root color, painting in the dark brown a certain distance down the strand. Then she used the bleach to start lightening the ends, leaving a certain portion in the middle untouched. And I think she might have used some more dye to help blend the dark and the light together so that the gradation would be smooth. In a few places she let the dark root color go all the way to the ends, and in others she let the highlight go almost all the way to the roots. It took forever, but in my excitement I didn’t feel bothered by that. When she finished painting everything in, she left me for a bit so that the dye and bleach could do its thing, and then used a caramel glaze when she washed everything out to give it that rich, warm color.

I don’t know if I’ve gotten more used to having dyed hair, or if this color just worked for me. But something about this color felt right to me in a way that nothing previously had done. As much as I loved my earlier colors, they took a little getting used to. Every time I saw myself in the mirror I had a bit of a pause. It’s also true that the caramel color was closer to my natural hair color than anything previously, so maybe that was a factor. In any case, I felt happy and excited by this style the entire time I had it. I got a bit used to twirling the ends around my finger when I was distracted to see all the different colors. And, as Elizabeth though it would, this color held strong for a full two months. My roots definitely showed by the end, but only noticeably in strong lighting.

I was in a hurry the day I took pictures, so I struggled a bit trying to get a good pic that really captured the balayage in all its glory. So here are three. One of the things I learned about this style is that curling brings out more of the variations in tone. I’ve included pictures of both so that you get the idea.

I dyed my hair for the first time at the beginning of October, and it was so much fun.

As in, way more fun than I expected, and I expected to enjoy it.

It started off with Elizabeth, my stylist, pulling out a big book of hair swatches for me to pick from. I had to rely on her guidance quite a bit, because I had no idea how the dye would look once she’d actually applied it. I wanted to go for a natural-looking auburn color—something dark and bold but still believable as a natural hair color. At the same time, I worried that in attempting to pick something natural I wouldn’t go red enough. Like, I wanted to have red hair, just not red red hair. It’s a fine line.

Elizabeth’s big tip was that lighter = brighter. And since I didn’t want to go for fire-engine red, we decided to do a mixture of two dyes: one a reddish brown, and the other a reddish copper.

Elizabeth went off to begin her mad scientist hair-dye chemistry (or maybe she envisions herself more as a creative genius painter), and I waited in my chair, sentimentally gazing at my natural hair in the mirror, wondering when I would next see it again. When Elizabeth returned, I expected to have one final, big moment to say goodbye. But I guess she’s less mushy about these things than I am, because she just slapped the dye straight on without warning. Which was totally cool, actually. In retrospect I appreciated that she just got on with it.

A couple hours followed in which Elizabeth coated all of my hair with an alarmingly orange-colored cream (the dye), then left me to sit and read while it soaked in, and then washed and dried and styled it, mostly with my back to the mirror. The entire time, even as she applied the wet dye to my roots, she told me how much she loved the color, and how much she thought I was going to love it, and I still have no idea how she knew that even before the dye had started to work, but she seemed pretty confident.

Forget mad scientist or genius painter. Maybe she’s really a wizard.

Anyway, when Elizabeth finally turned me around, I made that jaw-dropping face which she later told me is the reason she loves her job. All my life I’d subconsciously identified myself with brunette characters: Belle, or Hermione Granger, or Elizabeth Bennet. Suddenly I had become Anne Shirley or Ginny Weasley.

(Which, when you think about it is a little weird. Why identify yourself with some fictional characters more than others based on their hair color, especially when you’re reading a book and often times never see them visually represented at all? Yet, I’m pretty sure most of us do this.)

I think I walked out and could not stop smiling for several hours. Every time I saw myself: big grin. It helped that I’d picked such a dimensional red that it seemed like a different color in every light.

Literally could not stop smiling.

Then in my car.

Selfies in the parking lot.

That said, after the initial excitement I felt very nervous about my hair for the first week or so. I kept being surprised by my own reflection in the mirror. I felt self-conscious in front of other people, and couldn’t wait to wash my hair to get some of the staining off my scalp. Also, every time I wore green I felt like the poster child for Irish tourism, which wasn’t a bad thing it itself, but it did feel a little cheesy.

After a week or so the color toned down, and either I liked it better that way, or else I just finally got used to it. I’d originally planned to do red for only a month, but by the time my next appointment came round I’d decided one month wasn’t enough.

Also, it was still Fall, so the color felt in-season. This was another thing I learned about dying your hair: people pick seasonal hair colors. I mean, this was (at least in part) the reason I’d chosen red, so I’m not sure why it surprised me. But nonetheless, I had several people complement my hair by telling me I’d made a good choice for the season.

A lot of folk told me they liked the red, but I was more surprised by strangers or people I’d just met commenting on how they liked my choice. As in: they knew it wasn’t natural, even after it had softened and could conceivably have been so.

I had mixed feelings about this. As I mentioned in my first post, I’ve always felt (somewhat irrationally) that dying your hair was cheating in some way, as if you’re somehow faking not your hair color, but some aspect of your personality. That in itself says a lot of weird things about how we attach personality stereotypes to hair color, which again is somewhat irrational. But given the fact that those stereotypes do exist, and that we somehow expect them to map to hair color in some way, then wouldn’t choosing a hair color which you felt better suited your personality be a truer form of self expression than otherwise?

Probably I am reading too much into this, but probably I will continue to do so as this series continues. Consider yourself forewarned.

Anyway, I liked making a personal statement of my hair color, and it felt cool to connect with people about that, if only a little. Also, it surprised me how much I noticed other people’s dyed hair. Now I understand a little better why past hair stylists kept expressing amazement over how my hair had never been dyed.

In conclusion, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed red hair, particularly after it mellowed a little and became more coppery and less auburn. My stylist keeps telling me that red and blonde are the most addictive colors, and that for many of her clients, once they get a taste they keep going back to whichever of those two shades they tried first. I don’t know if that will happen to me. I always expected to go back to my natural hair once I’d tried everything else. And while I know a really vibrant copper is in my future this summer, I could see myself eventually gravitating toward a rich chestnut with a hint of red undertones.

In the meantime, it’s on to something darker.