Live Free or Dye
April 6, 2011 § 6 Comments
Will I be able to resist the urge to color...?
I’ve been a dye-hard hair color freak for over 25 years. I’ve been blond, black, brown, red, blue (in streaks) and multi-colored. My off-the-top-of-my-head estimates show that I’ve spent roughly 900 hours and over $45,000, ($45,000!) on coloring my hair throughout my lifetime. The people at Clairol send me a fruit basket every Christmas.
Well, they should anyway.
Fed up with wasting my time sitting in a stylist’s chair, spending extra money that I’d rather use to pay off my mortgage, and tired of dumping more toxins into the water supply, I decided to get to the root of the problem.
I stopped coloring my hair.
My dark roots are the longest they’ve been since I was 14 years old. They’re maxing out at about four inches right now. That’s about six month’s growth.
Some of those hairs are gray. I’m calling those little glints of silver “mylights.” At one point there were so many I considered calling them “crylights” but I’m over that now.
I cut my long hair into a chin-length bob to make the transition from the highlighted ends to the brown roots a little easier on the eye. I’ve been to the stylist three times in the last four months in an effort to get the right cut, but I was in and out in 45 minutes (as opposed to the four hours(!) it was taking before). This last cut was perfect, and my stylist said I don’t have to come back for six weeks. Six looonng weeks of follicular freedom!
What a person does with his or her hair is a very personal decision. It can even be political in some cases. But I arrived at this decision because I just wanted my time and money back.
It’s important when you’re ready to be rid of the things that no longer serve you, to cut ties and move on. If I change my mind I’ll certainly post why here. I’ve been eyeing some do-it-yourself henna bars that look pretty good, so we’ll see… Maybe after the novelty wears off and what I really look like scares the crap out of me I’ll have a change of heart. For now I’m going to go outside and take a walk. Who knows? Maybe that bright Sonoma sunshine will give me a few streaks the natural way.
[...] My hair is soft, clean and shiny, which is especially important now that I’ve stopped coloring it. [...]
[...] like the look of my natural color growing in under my blond highlights. But it’s possible that if something comes up – a wedding, [...]
Kudos to you but I just can’t do it. I’m 32 with an embarrassing amount of grey hair. When my gray roots show I feel old and look tired. After a fresh color I feel so much better. I’ve been dying my roots myself for the last year or so but even that needs to happen more and more often. Le sigh.
It’s funny that this comment came today, the same I started to feel drab, limp and unmanageable. Summer’s coming and I look like I just wandered out of an Edward Gorey book… I’m going to stick with it for now, but if the going gets too dull I may cave.
[...] Highly recommended. In addition to my hair care project, I am still growing out my hair to its natural color. It feels a little drab, to be perfectly honest, but I’m ok with it. The ends are still a [...]
[...] cell phone for four people. I hate how my hair looks, but I’m pretty ok with the fact that I have not colored it in 13 months. I actually turned down a freelance job earlier this year because it didn’t sound like fun. [...]