Dye Job

This weekend I dyed my hair. My sister Padrin got hers done and I loved it, so I copied her. I opted for Coffee Crème, by Natural Instincts. The reason I chose the Natural Instincts brand is because, like my desire for a new hair color, it’s temporary. So, now I’m a slightly darker brunette than before. Pretty much no one noticed it, but I totally love it. I woke up this morning, forgetting I had done it, and as I brushed my teeth in the mirror I was totally checking myself out.

I’ve gone through some unfortunate hair coloring phases in my life. In middle school, some of my friends and I would have Glints parties. We’d get together for a sleepover and dye our hair in each other’s bathrooms. Glints was a semi-permanent color, with very limited color options available. For a week, I’d have this very awkward shade of like reddish-orangey-brown. I thought I looked fantastic. But I’m guessing between the odd hair color, the glasses, and the braces, I was quite a sight. I don’t seem to remember having too many boyfriends around that time.

During my freshman year of college, I went to Mexico with my family. I returned to school with the most perfect, deepest, darkest brown tan. After showering one day, I noticed how good my hair looked wet. A deep, rich black against my deep, rich brown skin. When my hair dried, though, it was back to a watery brown and looked so blah. So, I went ahead and used a permanent hair dye called Blackest Black. For the first couple weeks, it looked awesome. My friend Madeline called me a Hawaiian Princess. It was lovely.

The tan faded, the hair did not. I went from Hawaiian Princess to Dark Princess of the Underworld. My paling skin was emphasized by the black and it was, to say the least, unfortunate. It took two trips to the salon to have the dye “stripped” because black does not fade or grow out well at all. By the time the blah brown returned, though, I was ready for another change.

I love blonde hair. I’m fascinated by celebrities who walk into a salon with drab brown hair, and come out looking like the sunshine is growing from their head. So, I went to a salon and said “Make me a blonde”. The girl did the best she could. She herself has gone from brown to blonde and back to brown. I trusted her. It was a mistake. I came out with a mix of very light brown hair with highlights of orange Kool-Aid sprouting from my scalp. I was not blonde. I was blorange. Unfortunately, being in college, I couldn’t afford to get it fixed, and I didn’t trust myself to buy a box of brown and fix it myself. So I painfully grew it out. It took a looooooooong time.

After I returned, again, to the poop brown hair, I dyed it black again. I do not learn from my mistakes. This time, though, I bought a black hair dye that said “Semi-Permanent”, but that would be what is called “false advertising”. Black doesn’t wash out. It doesn’t gradually fade. Just ask anyone who’s accidentally written on a dry-erase board with a Sharpie. Again, I let it grow out, suffering through the inclinations to start drinking from a chalice and holding séances.

A few years back, there was a 3 week period where I had 8 hot pink extensions woven into my brown hair. Yikes. Let’s move on…

For the past few years, I’ve been pretty good about leaving my hair alone. I haven’t chopped it all off in a moment of tangled frustration, and it’s been humdrum brown ever since. Once I let my sister-in-law highlight it for her testing interview at a hair salon. It looked wonderful. Subtle, but beautiful. But I just couldn’t justify paying a bunch of money to make changes that made virtually no difference. So it faded back to dry-dirt brown.

Then this weekend, I fell off the wagon. I waltzed in to Target and chose the darkest brown that did not have the words “ebony”, “blackest”, “raven”, “ink”, or “jet” in the name. With nary a thought, I started slicking the gooey dye all over my head. Ten minutes later, voila! Coffee crème was achieved. It looks darn good, too. I’m just bummed it’s temporary. Although, knowing me, I’ll want to be a red head in two weeks anyway. I hear it’s a great color for fall.