Friday, August 18, 2006

Hey, Red!

I want to say up-front that I am not a hair color virgin (or any other kind of virgin for that matter). I've been coloring and highlighting my hair for years, ever since I started squeezing lemon juice on my head and sitting in the sun to lighten my hair (That doesn't work, by the way.). In my defense, though, I have to say I've always stayed within the color range of blond -- dark blond, ash blond, honey blond, almost-platinum blond. I have no experience outside the sphere of blond.

Well, this time when it was time to get my highlights redone I said, "What the hell. Let's try something different. Let's take a walk on the wild side and go strawberry blonde." Only it's not called strawberry blond anymore. It's called copper blond. That should have been my first clue. Well, now my hair is...um...orange. Not red. Not copper. Not strawberry anything. Orange. Halloween candy orange. It is not a good look for me.

I have been back to the hairdresser once already to get my hair "re-processed." It didn't work. I'm still orange. Only now I'm just orange at my roots. The rest of my hair is actually a nice caramel-honey blonde. But the roots are still orange! So not a good look for me! And, no, I am not posting a picture. No way. No how. You'll just have to use your all-too-vivid imaginations .

This weekend I go back to the salon for an even more intensive re-processing. They're going to put ammonia on my head. It doesn't sound good to me. I have visions of ending up with fried hair. Or bald. If I don't...if it actually turns out that I end up with hair that's all one color and not any shade of orange, I promise the hair gods that I will never venture outside the realm of blondness again! Never, never, never.

So, my question to y'all is... What the biggest hair or fashion mistake you've ever made?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, where do I start?

There was that whole 70's phase-- short layers and bangs with blond hair. In photos I look like Captain Kangaroo in drag.

Then in the 80's I went back to natural color for a while and just permed. Ringlets everywhere and "fro" picks.

Then mid-90's I needed a pick-me-up and began highlighting, which slowly turned into the never-ending hair appointment. It always needs "a little something." Blond can be addictive. And if you ever try to kick the habit. . .

Well, Candace just testified to the vengeance of a blonde color scorned.

Welcome back to the fold, Candace.

anne frasier said...

i've had red hair for about 7 years. sometimes it's orange-red, sometimes red-red, sometimes purple-red. last winter i decided maybe i should look my age and i colored it brown. kind of chestnut i think the box said.

waaaahhhhhhhh!!!!

of my god. i looked like some cigarette-smoking, heroin-addicted country singer who's been breast-feeding for too many years. it accentuated the lines in my face and the circles under my eyes. so i've been battling to get back to red for months and months. once you go darker, it can take a year or longer to get back to what you want unless you go the color-strip route. so i'm off again today for another redjob. maybe i'll post a photo.

Michele Hauf said...

I've had an orange nightmare myself. What is it with orange that it is an impossibility to cover up? I was in cosmetology school, and volunteered for a hair show model. That means I was *just* the model. I didn't have any say about what they were going to do to my hair. I had to sit there and take it. Well, they decided to 'tiger-stripe' my usual mousey brown long hair. (This whole thing took place in a hotel; we were doing hair processing in the bathroom. Try leaning over a hotel bathroom tub while they're rinsing bleach out of your hair. Oh, the horrors!)
Anyway, it was supposed to be nice golden stripes through my hair to give it a tigerish effect. Accept. The golden never showed. It was bright orange. Stripes. And this was very close to Halloween, as I do recall.
Talk about the whispers when I returned to class! But, fortunately, it was beauty school, so I had it redone the next day. Whew!
Now, the pink stripe I had later was my own idea.... :-)

Helen Brenna said...

This is so fun to read everyone's comments! It's all so visual.

I got a perm once when my hair was all one long length. I looked like I had a ... a ... triagle head or something. It stuck straight out and my dad didn't help by exclaiming, "Oh, my God, what did you do to your hair?"

After college, I had my first job as a CPA, very high-powered stuff (ha,ha). A friend talked me into going to this trendy, very expensive downtown salon, where I waiting for more than 45 minutes for "the master" and a separate person washed my hair. This guy cut my hair so short, they called me "Butch" in the office the next day. It wouldn't have been so bad, but this was waaaaay before short hair became popular.

I've now been going to the same stylist for 20 year! :o

Unknown said...

Christine, what a hoot! And so appropriate at Christmas! I confess, I occasionally have a glint of "chlorine green" to my hair-- but I prefer to think of it as a status symbol. It says to the world I have a pool and I'm not afraid to use it!
heh, heh.

Helen Brenna said...

Chris!! Yeah, you came!

Betina, status symbol. LOL!