back to b(l)ack

I think I have a habit of going from one hair disaster to another. A while back I did a post on my horrendous haircut. Whilst my hair has slowly grown to what I would consider to be a more appropriate length, I have (literally) on my head, another (slightly exaggerated) catastrophe.

This time, it involves the gel/cream-like substance I decided to coat my hair with in an attempt to change the colour. This is otherwise known as hair dye.

I had virgin hair until I was basically 16. I attempted one of those semi-permanent things back in highschool. It was some red/brown concoction and you couldn’t tell I had done anything until I stood in direct sun and you happened to be at the right angle to see the ‘highlights’ it apparently put in there.

The sole time I went to the hairdressers to get a colour was with my sister. It was spur of the moment as she was getting hers coloured. The hairdresser advised me to go darker and thus commenced to put some weird purply gunk on my head which initially, didn’t look too bad. For weeks after however, despite washing my hair a hell of a lot, it felt like it had glue in it. Gross.

More recently, after the hair cut incident, I figured I might as well attempt another change. Despite the fact that there was enthusiasm on facebook for a change of my naturally dark hair to Asian blonde, I didn’t think I could be that adventurous.

(Blonde Amanda? Don’t raise your eyebrows at me)

 That’s right. Blonde. One of my friends and myself have debated going blonde. We’re both naturally dark haired, and so blonde would be a rather significant change, but while she could probably pull off a decent blonde hue, maybe mine would be less successful.

I think my attempt at blonde (without the use of some extra strong (especially now) bleach which would probably kill my hair instead) would make it more orange (‘Asian blonde’), and possibly not even a decent orange at that.

Anyway, again I took the plunge. I had ventured out to the shopping centre to pick up a hair colour, and ended up completely overwhelmed at all the different shades on the shelves.  I decided I better do something a little safe, forgo the blonde ambition I had been harbouring – at least for now – and select a brown. Which brown though? Chestnut? Mahogany? Frosted brown? Praline? Dark chocolate? Iced chocolate? Dark brown? Teak? Holy shit!

Standing there looking at all the pictures I was rather confused. I went for dark brown. I figured that considering the girl on the box was black (ethnic wise), and her hair had gone a nice ‘brown brown’ which looked a few shades lighter than what my current hair colour actually was, I could probably achieve a similar result.

Looking at my hair now, this was obviously a lie (and whoever took those photos to go on the box clearly used Microsoft Paint to change the colour of her hair)

My hair is black.

So black it is darker than burnt. As in burnt charred remains of anything. If you cut it off, frayed the ends a little and stuck it on a log, it could probably pass off as the burnt remains. Or something.

I had a ‘mini’ (debatable) freak out. Did the L’Oreal Casting Crème Gloss people accidentally place the wrong colour in the box or what?

I wanted my hair a few shades lighter than what I had, and ended up with something even darker than my natural hair colour.

Before, I was told you couldn’t pick that I had any Asian background. The other day at work this random guy came to my register and loudly stated: NI HAO MA! (And the startled and confused look on my face then prompted him to explain that it was hello in Chinese and that he thought I was from China. True story. Really. Oh my)

Luckily, in my hair-dye-buying ignorance, I picked a 28 wash colour.

In the space of two weeks, I should at least be down to two remaining washes before all the colour is gone. Right?

Or else, clearly Rod Stewart’s ‘blondes have more fun’ should be overhauled.