Trying something new
Mid September I had a bad couple days and in a morning driven by a desparate need to change SOMETHING in my life and feel different, I went and had my hair dyed brown and chopped off. There were a lot of reasons for this. I was really unhappy with myself, and had been a redhead for 16 years, and desparately wanted to feel different about myself. Now I'm the first one who will tell you that changing your hair won't change your life - the issues you had pre-hair-change will still be there post-hair-change. But I felt like it was the only thing in my power to change at that particular moment (because I'm still way too uptight to get a tattoo). Plus, I wanted to see if people would treat me differently (SPOILER: they did). When I had red hair I would get a lot of inappropriate sexual comments/advances from people. Friends, acquaintences, co-workers, strangers in the grocery store... It was making me really uncomfortable in public, like people weren't seeing me as a person but an object. I ended up not trusting that anyone was actually interested in me, the person inside the biological container, but that they were just saying whatever they thought I wanted to hear. I always said if I weren't going to be a redhead, I'd like to try a chocolate brown, so that is what I went to the salon and asked for.
The next morning I woke up and was startled in the mirror. And a little freaked out that the my identity, both IRL and online as KymPossible wasn't what I had known and been familiar with for so long. It definitely took some getting used to. I started wearing makeup regularly though, and I did like how the color and cut made my eyes really stand out.
So it's a month later, and what do I think of it now? The social experiement was a success and people did treat me differently, and I made a point to not dress or act any differently than I had as a redhead. That was actually pretty awesome, to feel like people were seeing me as a person. Sure, I still had the occasional guy who talked to my chest (I think a tshirt with a picture of eyes across the boobs would be pretty funny) but overall it was a lot better. It is a lot more maintenance to style, and there was a fair amount of trial and error figuring out how to make it look decent and not all foofy like a muppet. It is less maintenance (and thus less $) in color, red fades pretty quickly and the roots are visible sooner than the brown. It didn't quite turn out chocolate brown, a lot of the red shines through.
Net: I like it.
BUT.
I miss the red. I was looking through photos this morning and when I hit this one I suddenly realized that I miss my hair.
I can go back to red pretty quickly. But growing the length back out will take a couple years. I'm glad I changed it, its just hair and will grow back. And I needed the change at that moment. And I did like feeling like people were treating me like a human and not a fembot. But I miss the red. Guess I know for sure now how I look as a brunette, and know that it's pretty good and still a viable option for the future if I ever decide to grow up and look more mature (I had several people tell me the brown looked more mature and sophisticated, to which I tried really hard not to cringe and roll my eyes).
In the past I tried to be someone I wasn't in order to try and make other people happy. It was a long, hard, painful realization that I was unhappy doing that. Some women change their hair all the time and it's no big deal. But my hair was such a big part of my self identity, and I changed it so rarely (chopped it off but kept the red in 1994 and 2001, roughly a seven-to-eight year cycle) that this just doesn't feel like me. I knew it would be temporary, but I'll admit I thought it would be longer than 6 weeks. :)
It was a good experiment and I'm glad I did it. I'll miss the feeling of freedom I have now when I go out, I don't feel like I'm being hunted anymore. But I'm going to go back to red soon. Hopefully I'll do a better job shutting down inappropriate comments and advances so I can still feel like a human instead of an object to acquire.
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