Saturday, March 01, 2008

Miracle in a Bottle - The Fountain of Follicle Youth

I'm going to let you in on a deep, dark secret.

The hair color? Straight out of Aisle 8 at the local Wal-Mart.

Oh, it's mine. Never you fear about that. I bought and paid for it, so I have every right to it. It's called Light Ash Brown. I got that color because after paying my hairdresser $40 and up every month for a few years to apply much the same color I do now, I wised up and realized that I could do basically the same thing for a quarter of the cost.

I don't get fancy. No highlights or lowlights or streaks or pink or purple stripes. I know that amazes some of you, given my penchant for the Wild and Crazy, but I actually am fairly conservative in my follicular views. You won't find any perms or crazy styles on this head. Not that I didn't go a little off the deep end in my day, but let me assure you I NEVER INHALED ANY PERM SOLUTION.

Every now and then, however, I do get a "wild hair" and find myself doing something absolutely nuts with my scalp cover. And most times my Most Excellent Hairdresser will try to talk me out of it. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I don't.

Such was the case when I decided about four months ago that I needed to grow out the color that was on my head so that I could actually see the God-given color my hair is without the benefit of chemical enhancement. I go through this every five or six years whether I need it or not, just to see if I can last long enough to really grow out all of the bottled color. My Most Excellent Hairdresser thinks I'm certifiable every time this happens, and asks me why on earth I would want to look "that OLD" on purpose.

To be fair, she's been around the block with me for the last 25 years or so, so she's paid her dues. I give her that for free.

Wanna know how I did? I failed. Miserably.

But in my defense, a girl can only look so bad for so long without harm to her psyche. And mine was pretty darn crippled after four months. Four months and a hairdresser who loves me.

So today I caved.

I had the monthly cawfee tawk with HeyJules this morning, took The Girl to the library, then decided to bite the Preference by L'Oreal bullet. BEFORE the nap. Even though i didn't sleep well last night.

Clearly, this was a BIG DEAL.

And in doing this little thing, I found out that Light Ash Brown is NOT the color I was given by God naturally. My true hair color is actually DARKER.

I will take a moment to let that little factoid sink in, because this is obviously proof that my little "grow it out" experiment is TOTALLY NECESSARY in order to keep things as close to reality as I can. Who knew?

However, the children are now much happier. Mom doesn't look as old, all her hair is the same color, and she might even be allowed to leave the house and accompany her offspring to a public place now.

The wonders, they never cease. And they all come from a bottle.

3 comments:

HeyJules said...

So the color of your hair yesterday at coffee was the real deal? And you thought THAT was light ash brown? Bawahahahaha...

Silly girl. :-)

You are obviously a "blazing chestnut" or some such nonsense. I thought you looked perfectly Chris yesterday but what do I know?

Dorcas (aka SingingOwl) said...

That was a funny post. :-D

As you can see from my picture, a few years ago I stopped dying my hair. I had started at about 17, when I began to look like I had frosted hair. Premature grey runs in the family. I colored it for a loooong time, then decided I needed to see what the real color was. It was a shiney steel grey. Eeek! I was 40 at the time. Back to the bottle! Then about 6 years ago I just did it. Talk about awful. I had three of four shades going at once, from dark brown at the ends to almost white at the roots and two additional shades in between. I looked like a calico cat--not a good look.

There have been times, even though I know my hair is pretty, that I've regretted the decision. I admit, it did age me to go natural. I don't have many wrinkles, but with my hair everybody knows I'm no spring chicken. Nonetheless, it was so awful letting it grow out that while I'd like to have my original brown back for a while, the eventual growing out when I quit, well, would just be too traumatic.

And you are younger than me. So keep dying till you're old!

LOL!

groovyoldlady said...

I dyed my hair for a couple of years because a friend teased me about much greyer I was than she was - and she's older than me! I did it all by myself, at home. Then my husband said, "I like you the way God made you." so I quit dying and saved time and bucks.

Now I have that naturally frosted with silver look.