A Hairy Deal

The new profile shot I uploaded today doesn’t quite show the full truth of things, but a week ago I had my hair professionally dyed magenta pink with fuchsia purple lowlights.

Long a fan of non-conformist hair colors, last winter I had dyed my hair black on a whim.  I guess I felt like being Snow White for awhile and it went well with the screaming red lipstick I had just purchased.  Unfortunately a few weeks into the hue I came to the crushing realization that I no longer looked… well… strange enough.

I don’t know much about fashion or even really what looks good on me, but I do know this: I hate looking like everybody else.  You’d think a life of bigness would make me want to be as unnoticeable as possible but no, I definitely want my head to scream: LOOK AT ME!

I consider this to be a positive sign of my beleaguered self esteem potentially rolling over and giving a healthy cough.

Additionally, over the past few years of trying some new things and meeting some new people I have realized that life in general (and youth in particular) is entirely too short to be spent looking any way other than exactly however the heck you want to look.

I know the arguments against looking strange, the biggest one being that nobody is going to hire a girl with pink hair because “it’s unprofessional”.  To such potential employers I ask this:  What is remotely unprofessional about an employee who has obviously put thought, effort, money and time into a carefully constructed appearance?  Same thing goes for unique jewelry and body art.  In the end I realized that should I happen to be looking into changing jobs any time soon, I don’t really want to work for a place that would discriminate against me based on a unique appearance anyway.

The process of going from black to pink was interesting since I’ve never had my hair professionally dyed before.  It took two applications of what I guess was bleach to “lift” the black shade up to a positively 1980’s hue of peroxide-bottle orange.  Observe:

Yes, hair bleach smells every bit as bad as you might think it does!

Then, the Artist (for she really is an Artist, not just a Stylist) carefully painted each lock of my hair in magenta brightness and used foils to piece in the purple lowlights just under the top layer before giving me a funky cut.

The end result is weird, and unique, and I am completely in love with it.

Bazinga!

Ted paid me the loveliest compliment on my new ‘do.  He said that, “somehow, such an unnatural color looks so completely natural on you.”  And you know… I actually think he’s right.

Some notes on care: Color like this cannot be shampooed.  Ever.  Conditioner-washing only!  Additionally you can’t put hot water on it.  Good thing I had this done in the spring, eh?  Brrr…

In honor of being very happily “Strange” – have some Kerli and Tokio Hotel…