Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Hair

I've had really boring hair my whole life. Straight, parted down the middle. For.e.ver. Proof:

I'm in the middle. The oldest, but the middle. You get it.

In college I had a perm (hey, I liked it, so suck it) and after that it's been kind of wavy. Not straight or curly. Sometimes I've had bangs, but my husband hates bangs. The only thing I particularly liked about it was the color, blond. I've always liked being a blond, probably because I connected it with those beautiful Disney princesses like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Blond=better is how petty I've been my whole life.

The perm. You know this is an old photo
because it has a cool 2000's timestamp.

But then I got older. And had one kid. And another kid. And suddenly, without doing anything, my hair wasn't quite so blond anymore. In fact, upon asking my 3 year old, she said my hair was brown.

What.

I do not have brown hair. At least, my self-image does not contain a person with brown hair. My personality doesn't go with brown hair. I am not a person with brown hair.

Or am I?

Seriously, what color is this?

When you start becoming unsure of your own hair color, life becomes unnerving. Especially in the year you turn 30. So last week, reminiscing about a picture I saw in a book of a similarly neither-here-nor-there hair-colored woman, I decided to dye my hair. Platinum blond.

When I picked up a box of hair dye, my daughter got very upset. She told me to leave my hair alone and not to make it look "like an old lady". I was a bit taken aback. I didn't realize a 3 year old would care about such things. I decided to just dye it when she wasn't home and see if she'd even notice the change. Note to self: next time, take her advice.

This was actually not my first stab at this hair color. The first time was two years ago, when my husband was on a business trip in Germany. I didn't tell him I was doing it, because I figured I had enough time to go get it fixed before he got back and he'd be none the wiser. It ended up not being much of a change, my hair just looked a little lighter. This time I went for it, and the results were...not pretty.


After first box

The first pass made me look like a tiger. No joke. There were great big places where I'd missed (have you ever tried dyeing your hair without someone helping you?) and the roots were a noticeably different color. Bad bad bad. And nothing scissors could even save (I considered it). The next day I promised my husband beer in exchange for helping me fix it, which he did. And now? Still bad, but at least uniformly so?

After second box

It's MUCH brighter in person than in this picture. And of course, all this was happening just before my Momiform MAKEover post was due. Hence what prompted the change in the first place. But I hadn't banked on the change going so terribly wrong. Suddenly, these new clothes I was pumped about rocking made no difference to me. I wanted to pull out of the tour. I wanted to never leave the house. I almost didn't order pizza delivery one night because I felt like it looked that bad (for the record, I did order pizza, and the delivery guy had a mullet, and I laughed at myself for feeling so foolish).

It's even bad in a ponytail.

On the advice of a friend and Mr. Google, I've ordered some purple toning shampoo and it should be here this week. Supposedly, the purple cancels out the brassy tones and will result in a more ashy/white-blond look, which is what I want. In the last week and a half I've basically been wearing my hair up and avoiding mirrors. I'm really super frustrated, because I feel like I've spent the last 3 1/2 years of mom life rebuilding my self-image and confidence (oh, you didn't know? becoming a mom screws with your identity). With one little box of hair dye it all went off the rails.

So cheer me up! Have you ever had a hair disaster? How did you recover? I know this is only temporary, but I think it's safe to say I'll be leaving the dye to professionals from now on.

5 comments:

  1. Ohhh it is quite amazing the ways in which becoming a mother changes you. AMAZING.

    I am not a dyer. I have a relaxer and ridiculously fine hair that is prone to breakage so I can't do both chemical processes. BUT as a teen I wasn't aware of this and tried to dye my hair black.

    1) I looked ridiculous.
    2) I have super sensitive skin and even though I did an allergy test my ENTIRE face broke out in hives. In my senior year of high school. So much tragedy! :)

    I hope the purple shampoo helps and kudos to your husband for helping you! Mine has done my hair several times! HAHA!

    For a moment there I *did* think you'd dyed it brown and really think it would look ahhhhmazing as a deep reddish brown ;-)

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    1. Ahh motherhood. I can't even imagine sending my daughter off to her senior year of high school...I'm totally in denial about THAT happening!

      Wow, having hives on your face in high school...that sounds just awful!! I guess it definitely could have been worse!

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  2. I can totally sympathise! I spent a lot of year box-dying my hair red, blond, and brown, and it was never really flattering... the key is to feel like it's at least fun! I thought you looked great in your Momiform tour pics, and definitely didn't notice anything unflattering about your hair! I've got really similar used-to-be-blond, is-now-dark-ash-blonde hair... when I wish I was more blond I usually go for some 3% hydrogen peroxide splashed on my hands and run through the front (it's really subtle or possible not even noticable) or some leave-in "natural sun highlights" sort of stuff.
    If you really hate it, you could go for a temporary dye job on top, the kind that fades after a certain number of washes.... Hope you come around to liking it! :)

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    1. I think that was the biggest problem, it didn't even feel fun. I should have done all this experimenting when I was younger! My younger sister has had purple hair for quite a while though, so I don't think anyone in my extended family will even notice my hair!

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  3. I've had so many hair disasters I've lost count. One of the last times I ever dyed my hair with a box resulted in my hairdresser telling me next time I did it and she had to fix it she was going to charge me $100 extra...she was joking of course but I didn't listen to her. Several months later I got the urge to dye my hair black after being blonde for months and the dramatic change left me in tears. It was horrible, I looked horrible. After dying it I immediately went out to Walgreens again and bought another box of a lighter dye thinking that would help...didn't even phase it!..I washed my hair a gazillion times and even tried Tide detergent because I read that would lighten it. NOPE! So I went to a JCPenney salon the next day and they said they could fix it. They didn't, they only made it look worse. I worked at McD's at the time and EVERYONE was asking what the hell I did to my hair. A friend suggested her hairdresser (because I was avoiding mine) so I set up an appointment with her. She ended up having to strip my hair and dyed it a pretty strawberry blonde. I probably sat in her chair over 4 hours. I was so thankful to her. In total I spent over $130 on that hair disaster, which was a lot to a poor college student some 20 years ago. I finally learned my lesson though. I leave it all to my hairdresser now...and btw she never did learn of that fiasco because I knew I'd get an ear full. lol!

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