Hellchick

I liked the results, but it was incredibly difficult to keep it white. So I decided that I wanted to go a completely different route and that I wanted something darker, more like a burgundy color. We got a color labeled burgundy, and it looked like a nice red wine color. Cool.

She dyed my hair and after washing it in the sink she toweled it off and said, "Oh my God. This. Looks. COOL!" I looked in the mirror. My initial thought was that she had a completely different idea of what cool actually was because my hair was purple. Not burgundy. Not red wine-ish. Pure bluish-based purple.

It turned out that because my hair had been stripped of color with the prior bleachings, it was primed to soak up the base color of the dye, which was actually violet. I wasn't sure I liked it. I liked punk but...this was a bit of a change. My stepmother thought it rocked. (She had actually dyed her hair purple in the late 70's).

My stepmother explained that she could drab it out with some brown if I wanted but that we had to wait a couple of days or we'd kill my hair. I worked part time in a nursing home, so I said okay and simply put a scarf on my head. But since I had a really punky cut, some of my hair fell out of the scarf and the people at work got to see my new color. Some of the patients wondered if their medication had been switched.

It only took a couple of days for me not only to get used to the color but to actually really, really like it. People commented that the super dark purple against my very pale skin and very light blue eyes would look natural if nature actually allowed that kind of hair color. I was the only girl at school with purple hair and people were jealous. "Your parents let you do that?" "Are you kidding me? They actually did the dye job!"

I kept that color purple for ten years, until I was about 25. Over the years my hair would develop a bit of build up of the color and it would become more reddish and more like the original intended color, so we would buy punk dye from the local skater shop and use that. (Manic Panic was the dye, for those who might remember it.)

I met my future husband with purple hair, and he married me with purple hair. But by the time I was 25 I began thinking it was time for a change, not just because it was hard to keep up the dye job (I had to do it every few weeks in order to keep it from fading to red) but because...well, I was 25. Sure, I was still young but I was getting a bit long in the tooth to successfully pull off a look that was more suited to the high school kid I was when I'd started doing it.

So I told my husband it was time I went back to my natural color. And I was also going to grow my hair out long. He was shocked and resistant. He's resistant to change and he'd only ever known me with purple hair. He didn't want me to change.

But I love changing my hair. I get bored with it easily and I always want something different. So I grew it out a bit and when it was chin length I went to my hairstylist in Laramie and asked her how we could successfully go from this weird, faded reddish-purple with blond roots to my natural honey blond color. She decided we could do a bleach and dye job that matched my natural color so as it grew out it would look natural and I could stop dying it.

I ended up walking out of there with pink hair. For some reason my hair was so resistant to stripping the purple that I had to have pink lemonade hair for a while. Eh, no big deal.

Eventually it did go back to my natural color and I let it grow out pretty long. I haven't changed it too dramatically, although it has gotten shorter as well as lighter and flippier at various times.

I decided this past week that I wanted another radical change. Len cringed. I've seen a lot of styles lately that use a lot of color, not just "natural plus a slightly different highlight." I mean dramatic color differences that sort of recapture the fun I had in high school of having funky colored hair but keeping it in a natural palette. Sort of the adult version of punking up your hair.

So the pic in today's update is the result, and I LOVE IT. I got it chopped off and colored with about four different colors in some new process my stylist said she was interested in trying. It runs from a deep copper red at the bottom layers to a light blonde at the top layers. It's funky and choppy and all spikey and messy in the back and fun.

Len said the same thing he always says when I get my hair done. "Well, as long as you like it." The poor man always looks like a deer caught in the headlights when I walk out of the salon. But he says he's getting used to it. He'll probably get used to it just in time for me to change it again.