True Colours
Hair. It’s one of those things about human beings that both connects and distances us from our primal past. Like all mammals, we have a surface covering of fine fuzz and, in a similar manner to apes, monkeys and chimps, spend time and effort trying to keep it clean and tangle free. Unlike our simian cousins, however, we are blessed (or cursed?) with a crop of hair on top of the head, quite different from anything found in the animal kingdom – the homo sapien’s crowning glory.
Since time immemorial, human beings have used, abused, loved and loathed their hair. We have cut it, grown it long, trimmed, treasured, willingly bestowed and even forcibly taken it at various stages throughout history; what such varied and disparate acts have in common, however, is their betrayal of our tacit understanding of hair’s worth, its importance and its symbolic value.
Just lately the power of hair to affect more than just an individual’s appearance was brought home to me; a lesson the fates chose to administer through pain, and which was delivered at the hands of a thoroughly incompetent colour technician at a supposedly ‘top salon’. After my own disastrous ‘hair-raising’ experience, I’ve realised that our treatment of our hair quite closely reflects our perception of ourselves, and our place in the world around us.
I have never been a naturally self-confident person. This revelation will no doubt prompt storms of protest from family and friends, who know me as outgoing, funny and always willing to chat. The truth is, though, that beneath the bubbly exterior, my insides generally teem with more insecurities than my nearest and dearest could ever imagine; and over the past year, up until this point, they had been multiplying, breeding in the darkness that had been a thoroughly difficult and depressing twelve months.
This August, finally heading towards a fresh start in the form of a Master’s Degree in Fashion Journalism, I should have been feeling relief, and running with boundless optimism towards the fulfilment of the promise that had helped me to maintain my sanity. Instead, I looked at myself in the mirror and felt hopelessly, desperately inadequate. Who was I to set foot upon a career path that would demand charisma, dynamism and self-assurance?
In my own eyes, I looked how I felt: tired, beaten, mousey. Somehow I just didn’t measure up. And my hair, in years gone by a Timotei-girl mane of golden blonde, had darkened, almost in keeping with my frame of mind; in its now ashy hue were summed up all of the things I felt had gone wrong – and were wrong – with me and my life.
I resolved to go blonde as soon as possible. Armed with pictures of Jean Harlow and Debbie Harry I envisaged myself at the dawn of a new era, due to commence as soon as I left the salon. I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes repeatedly, and bought endless magazines depicting light-haired lovelies who looked cool, calm and in control. I wanted a platinum-blonde bombshell look that dared anyone to call me a bimbo; I intended my shocking, bright new colour to defy anyone who might otherwise have called me ‘ordinary’. In a single stride, my hair would announce what I felt my personality alone could not: “I am spectacular”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my high hopes were disappointed. I had wanted Marilyn Monroe. What I got was more Pauline Fowler on a bad day. I had intended to look in the mirror and be greeted by a new woman who was proud, in control, confident. Instead, the person staring back at me from the glass wore the horrified expression of one who has just been cruelly duped in a rather extreme episode of ‘Beadle’s About’, and hasn’t quite decided yet whether they are going to find it funny.
My hair was yellow, decidedly not blonde at all. It was like I’d been lemon Tango’d. To add insult to injury, the ‘stylists’ at the salon appeared to see nothing wrong with the result and press-ganged me into believing that once I’d spent twenty-four hours in the company of my new colour (which by rights ought to have belonged to an oft-used toilet brush) I would love it.
I went home, dejected and more down than I had felt in months. Assurances that it “wasn’t that bad” from my friends and family couldn’t assuage the swirling feeling of embarrassment, perhaps even shame, that eventually spilled from my eyes and all over the shoulder of my boyfriend. I felt stupid; how could I have thought that something as superficial as dyeing my hair could make up for months of constant stress and strain, myriads of insecurities that I didn’t know how to tackle?
I didn’t look like me, and I’d thought that was what I had wanted, but now, confronted with the reality of my bleached barnet, I didn’t look like Debbie Harry either. I didn’t feel like me, and I’d thought that was what I’d wanted too. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
When I combed my hair in front of the mirror the following morning, my skin was as pale as paper, and the familiar rosy blush so recognisable, such a part of ‘my’ look was absent, unachievable; no amount of make-up could mask the pallor that seemed to spread from my hair to my cheeks. My eyes, usually a rich chocolate brown, seemed shallow pools of black, and my eye-brows contrasted with the colour just centimetres above them so strongly that they announced it as a fraud more loudly than any megaphone ever could. I was devastated. Not only was this not the new me I had hoped to fabricate from what I had viewed as the wreck of the old – I missed those features of my face that I had considered sub-standard and boring, that I had all but obliterated with the garish mess now dominating my entire appearance.
I had to wait a week until anything could be done to resolve things. The chemicals that had been applied directly to my scalp left it red, dry and sore, and my hair was brittle and weak. For seven days I barely left the house, and if I did it was in dark glasses and a hat – not a comfortable look at the height of summer, since the majority of my hats can only be described as ‘woolly’.
I had previously thought of myself as having little to be proud of in terms of my personal appearance, but now the vanity that must have lain dormant during my prolonged period of feeling low was stamping its feet and refusing to be seen-in-public-looking-like-this. I was angry with the hair salon for charging me a small fortune for a hair colour that I could have achieved on my own, in the dark, with only a bottle of Domestos. But mostly I was angry with me, for selling myself so short.
Afraid of feeling mousy, ignored and in the corner, I had opted for an attention-grabbing colour that would wear me; an obvious, trite, unimaginative and – above all – ineffective way to address the gnawing lack of confidence I had had in my looks, my intelligence, myself. Terrified that, faced with my MA class, I would have nothing of worth to say, and that nobody would want to listen, I thought: never mind. I’ll let my hair do all the talking.
As women, we are often told that doing something with our locks can be the outward sign of an internal change. How many of us have tried to metaphorically wash, or even cut and colour, that man right out of our hair? But how often do how many of us try the ‘quick-fix’ of changing our hair instead of addressing the things that we need to change in ourselves?
It’s easy to be hoodwinked into believing that a new do will provide a new you, but I found out – at considerable cost – that altering the colour of my hair could not alter the colour of my life. Even if my stylist had done a better job and achieved that perfect shade of peroxide, real life would still have been as dark and light in its moments, with as many flashes of grey in between.
Resigned to return to a shade as close to my natural hair colour as possible, I went back to a colourist who had known me years ago, based at a good quality but thoroughly un-trendy salon. She understood perfectly what I needed from her and why it mattered so much, and the result was a minor miracle. After a week of tears and tantrums, and to the relief of everyone unfortunate enough to have suffered my company since the original dye-disaster, things were back to normal again. Well, almost.
I said at the beginning of this piece that I’d been taught a painful, but profound lesson, and here it is: there’s no such thing as a colour cure for how you feel about yourself. Moreover, mousy hair’s a myth.
Returned to its virgin colour (or as near as damn it), my hair flushed my face with health and gave my eyes back their sparkle. Immediately I was happy to leave the house devoid of disguise, but more than this, I could do it with my head held higher than it had been in the preceding twelve months.
Your hair, like your life, is in many ways what you make of it. Now I have looked at it with new eyes, really looked at it, I can see the golden streaks shining through that remind me of my childhood self; when it catches the light, I notice ash and hazel browns dancing with vibrant rust and auburn strands, that speak of Irish roots and, somehow, make me look more like my beloved mother.
Right now, I’m done with dye, and think I will be for quite a while. The only treatment my hair will undergo in the near future will be an intensive conditioning mask, to repair at least some of the damage wreaked by the bleaching process.
My hair is part of me, and after this whole silly but strangely significant affair, I’ve realised that somehow, fundamentally, I am part of it. From now on, I shall treat it kindly, and cherish it.
By: Laura Starkey, 06.12.2007 | Comments (0)
