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THIS MORNING I have an appointment for a haircut and possibly some new color. I go through this pointless ritual periodically, for reasons that remain unclear to me, especially since I find the whole thing rather unpleasant.
If I were living back in caveman days, my hair would just grow any which way and nobody would care, as long as it was long enough for my mate to grab a hank and drag me around by it, seeing as cars had not yet been invented. Looks didn’t matter; everyone kept busy just staying alive. But today, with survival pretty much in the bag, hair is a big deal and has been for my entire life, causing me to spend untold thousands on how it looks.
Naturally this lapse in judgment is directly attributable to my mother, since everything we do as adults is traceable to what we saw our parents doing during our formative years. My mother went to the “beauty parlor” every Friday where a pudgy stylist named Harvey shaped her hair into a red helmet and sprayed it liberally with that gluey stuff called “hairspray.” She then didn’t touch it all week, and neither did anyone else, and was judicious in keeping it from getting wet in the shower and at the beach.
I rejected almost all of that behavior, except for the coloring part. My hair has been black, blond, red, streaked, striped, brown, auburn and whatever since I was about 13. This seems normal to me. And of course now it’s boring, seeing as how it could be orange, green, purple, blue, magenta, yellow or any combination of those. (Kids today hop on the hair-changing wagon early.)
Somehow new hair helps me feel good, or at the very least different, if only for about a day or two. And who among us doesn’t yearn to be different?
—Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.
I stopped coloring my hair about 2.5 years ago, and luckily it came in a great salt and pepper. But had it not looked good I would still be coloring every two weeks or so (my hair grows REALLY fast). Now I keep eyeing those temporary coloring kits in magenta and cobalt blue. Maybe for my next birthday I’ll give one a try in a great big swath. Nice column!
I’m still a slave to color. But those temporary color kits in crazy colors appeal to me, too.
I felt liberated when my hairdresser put in “highlights” that gradually evolved into my natural “silver” color. I get more compliments for that than I ever did for my colored hair.
Love this one so much. Now that I’m in my own ‘crazy lady’ stage of life, I feel less constrained by rules when it comes to expressing my creativity, especially when the canvas grows back with such regularity…damn it! I saw this lovely shade of magenta the other day. Hmmmm
❤️