My Hair is … What Colour?!

If you have hair on your head, i’m guessing you’ve had the urge to do something weird to it before. Or just the urge to dye it.

I was something like 11 or 12 when I first got that urge. To be honest it could have been earlier but that was when my parents finally let me get my hands on a bottle of hair dye. It was one of those wash out colours from the drug store that would only show up on your hair if it was one of the lightest shades of blonde, which, of course was the colour I wanted to go. So the dye did absolutely nada, as young Erika knew nothing of hair bleach and how a brunette becomes a blonde.

I didn’t really learn about the bleach thing until I was 14 and I just HAD to be blonde. You have to understand, my dad and brother are blondes with bright blue eyes. And though my eyes are a lovely hazel shade that I like, i’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my brunette locks. I was born blonde, and something inside me has always felt that I should have stayed that way.

Enter 14 year old me with some babysitting cash and friends who were allowed to dye their hair.

I bought the bleach, and my friend proceeded to slather it all over my head in her family bathroom. I was so excited to see how blonde I would be, and was definitely not expecting the nice level of orange I saw instead.

The above photo might be one of the only surviving photos from the 9th grade orange hair mishap. Honestly, it didn’t actually look bad. My mom took issue with it, but I kind of liked it and I wish that I hadn’t lost the majority of my pre-10th grade photos because there’s some missing gems in that collection.

A few months later I dyed my hair back to brown and didn’t touch another bottle of bleach until I was 19 or 20 and in college. I dip-dyed the bottom of my now very long, un-dyed, hair an odd shade of blonde, and it [literally] went up from there. Iv’e added more and more blonde into my hair periodically since then, and apparently it’s helped my reputation!

I guess my personality + my dark hair and pale skin is slightly threatening to people. Once someone said that I looked very intimidating, like I might be a witch – which is hilarious because of my massive interest in the history of witchcraft. But the blonde supposedly makes me look less scary so it’s gone over well. I’ve had a lot less people say to me “omg I thought you would be such a bitch when I first saw/met you, but you’re not!”

Maybe that has more to do with my apparent resting bitch-face though.

The funny thing is that 9th grade wasn’t the last time i’d turn my hair orange. I did it twice more, except I didn’t keep it for a few months. I immediately dyed back over the brassy with brown colour from a box, or I went to a salon to point at my head and cry “DEAL WITH THIS”.

Now I just go to the salon first because I cant afford to keep accidentally turning my hair orange when I have to look like my headshots. So accidentally turning my hair green isn’t really an option either.

Fun fact about blondes, especially bottle blondes, chlorine from pools can turn the most beautiful shade of blonde to a swampy-looking turquoise-green-ish colour. Since this is a fairly well known fact, most people have learned how to avoid or fix this issue. NOT ME. At least, not when you factor in copious amounts of alcohol.

I drunkenly went down the waterslide at my friends birthday pool party a couple summers ago, multiple times. So my head got a fair few dunks in before the night was out. It might have been OK if i’d washed my hair, or even ran it under the garden hose or stuck my head in the melted icebox, but instead I passed out in the basement bathroom. That’s bad. Apparently something to do with chemistry happens and the chlorine chemicals bond to the particles [or lack of particles?] in bleached blonde hair and alter the colour.

I woke up in the morning sitting upright in a giant armchair, with the entire dyed section [balayage] of my hair turned a nasty green-ish colour that I couldn’t tolerate. I laughed as I showed people, who in turn laughed at me, and proceeded to internally panic and be hungover.

Google is a good friend though. It taught me that ketchup is magical not only because it’s amazing on chicken nuggets, but also because it removes the green tinge from your hair.

So for the next 48 hours I sat in various locations of my friends house, and my own, with ketchup sloshed all over my head. It’s stinky, but effective. It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper than going to a salon and getting a colour correction because even if you use the whole bottle of ketchup, a new bottle doesn’t cost like $200 + tax unless you’re squeezing it out of a mink fur pouch. Which is gross and you shouldn’t be doing that.

Moral of the story: be careful with hair bleach. Even when it goes right, it can go wrong. Then you have to use your dipping sauces as emergency hair masks.