The Clam Rampant

Kasia July 31st, 2008

Mac was fearless enough to blog about having muddled, not once, but twice now, her efforts at home hair dyeing. And I thought to myself, “Self, if Mac can cop to having been that flighty on more than one occasion, surely you can tell some of your embarrassing hair stories.”

And then I thought, “What are you, nuts?!?”  :-p

But pity for poor Mac’s hair won out in the end, so I am going to tell you about my history with hair coloring. Please note that I no longer fool around with coloring my hair, whether at home or at a salon. I have learned my lesson. Perhaps if I won the lottery…

Anyway. My first instance of home hair coloring was the summer after my senior year of high school. My father had told me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want me dyeing my hair before I’d graduated. He really didn’t want it after that, but I chose to make graduation the dividing line.  :-p

So my friend Diana and I decided we were going to dye each other’s hair. Here’s the problem with that: Diana knew what she was doing. I didn’t know what I was doing. Don’t worry; I got my karmic come-uppance a few years later. I’ll get to that.

Diana had looooong (probably about waist-length) chestnut hair. She wanted to dye hers black. And if memory serves, she bought permanent dye for it (but I could be misremembering).

I had long-ish (about shoulder-blade length) medium brown hair. Because I was afraid of my father murdering me for coloring it, I opted for a one-week coppery rinse. (I do have some natural reddish highlights, so it wasn’t TOO outrageous.)

Poor Diana even asked me if we should get two for hers. I, having no idea, said I thought one would be sufficient. Remember, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I thought to myself, hey, how hard can it be?

Alack and alas, as you can guess, it wasn’t enough. And my technique was so bad that I managed to effectively streak her hair with black. As I’m thinking back, I don’t think she could have bought a permanent dye, because I think her hair was normal again for her senior pictures a few months later (though her mother may have had a salon make that happen).

Mine, on the other hand, turned out fine. My father saw Diana walk out of the house, then turned to me and said, “Let’s see how bad it is.” I pulled the towel off my head. He nodded, said “It could be worse,” and left it at that.

I’m a slow learner sometimes. I reeeeally wanted Tori Amos-red hair (she was still pretty popular at the time, and I was a huge fan.) I finally went to my hairstylist later that fall and asked her to dye my hair “Tori Amos red”. She had no idea who Tori Amos was, but she did know my father (she’d been my stylist for several years). She convinced me to “mute it with some brown” so my father wouldn’t have a heart attack.

Well, she “muted” it with so much brown that my hair was almost black. Which was my father’s worst nightmare. So when he saw me, he thought I’d dyed it black, and he nearly had a heart attack.

She and I tweaked it for a while and eventually got it fairly red (still with a fair bit of brown in it, but much redder). And we kept that up for, oh, a year and a half or two years.

Then my then-boyfriend and I broke up, and I was antsy and ready for a change. You know how sometimes an ugly break-up will precipitate someone doing something dramatic to their appearance?

Well, I decided I was tired of the dark hair and I wanted my normal color back. But of course, in order to get it corrected I was going to have to go to a salon, have my hair chemically stripped and re-dyed, and pay a lot of money for the privilege.

My dear big seester unwittingly paid me back for the hair crime I had perpetrated against Diana. She said “Oh, don’t go spending all that money to have your hair professionally stripped and re-dyed. We can just bleach the color out!” She admitted that she hadn’t done it before, but she thought it should be easy.

Those of you with some experience in these matters, you can probably guess where this is going.

We decided to do it on a Saturday, and to surprise my date that evening with my new blonder hair. I asked whether she really thought we could do it in that time, and she said “Sure, it shouldn’t take too long.”

We applied the first bleach treatment. My roots went blonde, but the rest of my hair just lightened a bit.

We did more bleach. My roots were platinum - we had to stop applying bleach all the weay to the crown of my head.

Several bleach treatments later, I cancelled my date. My hair started platinum at the top, and went through several shade gradients down the hair shafts to a deep strawberry blonde at the ends (which, of course, had been dyed the most). I looked ridiculous. And I had to go to work the next day.

I ended up - surprise, surprise - going to a salon and paying over a hundred dollars to have my hair stripped and re-dyed. Even then, the stylist only got it to within a few shades of my natural hair color (it’s hard to tell from pictures), and for several years I was chopping off that über-damaged hair.

The moral of the stories? Hair stylists are professionals for a reason. And never, ever let someone try to dye or bleach your hair if they don’t know what they’re doing.

Even if it should be really easy, and after all, how hard can it be?

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