Since I was a wee ickle thing, I've always had a weird preference for non-traditionally colored hair. When I drew, I drew girls with purple and blue hair. As I got older, I longed for all of the fun colors in my hair that my parents would never let me have. Especially pink. I wanted pink hair so bad, I could taste it.
My mom, a hairstylist, allowed me my first adult haircut and highlights when I was 13. It was a clunky, unsophistocated bob with brassy highlights and I hated it. This didn't stop me from begging, though. Slowly I worked my way towards red highlights, then red tips. In between colors, I kept my hair dyed a glossy blue-black, because it just couldn't be 100% normal. Finally, my junior year of high school, I was allowed an all-over strawberry blonde, which then became a raspberry red for 6 months.
Then college happened. Rules about my hair color suddenly didn't apply to me and I made a point of dying my hair in whatever way and with whatever colors I wanted. I found out lots about my particular kind of hair, what it could or couldn't handle, and where it's snapping points were.
Then, a year ago today, after years of dying, damage, dying, frying. breakage, and more dying, I made a scary decision. Convinced by my cousin, I cut off almost all of my hair, leaving only about an inch and a half all over my head.
In the African American community, women who transition from chemically treated hair to 100% natural hair will often do what is considered the "big chop"; they will cut off all of the damaged and treated parts of the hair, leaving only the natural strands behind. This is what I did, with the intention of growing my hair out naturally.
The problem was, I just really was not pleased with my natural hair. I didn't have a problem with the texture or anything, it's just that the color was soooooo boring!
So earlier this year, I bleached out my hair and went full-on blonde again!
(no pictures of the fresh blonde, because I'm dumb and forgot to take them as I often do)
The thing is, I went blonde with the intention of dying my hair another color, only to find that I couldn't decided on what color I wanted. This led me to being blonde for months before finally finding my color inspiration:
Having considered Kelly Osborne a style icon since before I even really had a sense of style (and when her's was just as gritty as mine), I loved seeing this look on her, and seeing it pop up more and more as it started trending, I needed it on my head. I needed that specific color on my head. I wanted lavender and I wanted it NOW! However, I knew that there was no way I'd get the color to come out on my own, even having already bleached it. I inlisted the help of my beautician friend Sarah to do my roots, lift the rest of my hair another level or two, and create the lavender.
(I'm a Pikmin! Or a unicorn! Unicorn Gundam!)
Lavender proved tougher than we both thought. Since there are so few medium/light purple dyes, we had to dilute a violet, and the original result was grey that faded out within a week. Two weeks later, we tried again using a different violet dye and increasing the amount of dye in the mixture. The results were perfect!
It was a perfect lovely lavender, with some darker streaking in the front and it is magnificant! I am so in love!
The next day I went to the mall with Katie and I got a fair number of complements on the color. The best parts about the trip were finding purple bobby pins (I had to buy them, I had literally just been complaining about not being able to use black bobby pins in my hair about an hour before), and having like three of the sales girls in the MAC pro store try to convince me that this beautiful lavender lipstick from the Nick Minaj Viva Glam collection would DEFINITELY not clash with my hair. Their convincing worked.
And that leads me to today. My hair has been trimmed up and the damage from the extreme bleaching has been cut out, but I believe I've grown about eight or so inches of hair since my big chop. My hair is by no means perfect and more often than not I will simply resort to wearing a wig because my hair isn't tidy enough to wear out, or it doesn't fit the occasion, but I'm trying to learn to be more accepting of it. I'm trying very hard not to cut it anymore so that it can grow out to the length it used to be (and longer) so that I can enjoy my natural, beautifully colored curls in more ways than just "afro-fluff".
But most importantly, I'm learning to love it for what it is. Soft, fine, curly, and awesome.
♥ Princess Kisha ♥
No comments:
Post a Comment