I went berserko when the lil’wrekker came home after 2 weeks at college with pink hair. She has the prettiest blond hair with a teeny strawberry cast too it. People drooled over her hair when she was small. All her highschool friends loved it. She kept it very long until her Junior year (god the seems so long ago) she had some inches cut off and shorter in the front. Again people loved it.
And then she had the unmitigated gall to dye it pink and come home like it was nothing!! The brat!
Seriously, I got used to it and her experiments and found out most are temporary. But man thst first pink dye job sent me in to orbit.
Yes, hair is an emotion. It just is.
Fix her wagon! (And everbody else!)
Go fire-engine red!
Your wrekkerette surprised you with pink lemonade hair! Mr Wrekker leaves you to deal with feral hogs, birthing dawgs, the workings of the well, snakes and lurking sweetgum bombs.
Cut it off spiky-short, dye the top fire-engine red, and laugh hysterically.
A lot.
DIL and the grandwrek would love the Hell outta that!
~VOW
If you have a Trader Joe’s available the stuff is like four bucks a bottle but if not you can get it from Amazon. It’s basically just plant extracts without all that sodium laurel/laureth sulfate crap that strips all the oil out of your hair and gives you cancer and shit. Smells nice too.
It’s getting too cold to essay the experiment but next summer I’m thinking of having a medium undercut done then dying the short bits in ombre blue shading to purple. I figure it’ll keep my head cool to have some of that mop underneath taken off and growing it back will be simple enough. If I don’t like the dye job I can cut it off after about maybe a couple months and no harm done. The hair in back from my ears down is the hair that isn’t silver so this will probably make things even more striking. I’m old, I can fuck with my hair if I want.
Has anyone tried either temporary dyes (to cover gray until it’s all grown in, then wash it out) or just dyed their hair gray to get the transition over with?
I ordered the Teatree shampoo and conditioner.
And…~VOW…
I almost…ALMOST hit send to call the beauty shop. I’m working up to it.
I’m trying not to panic.
This will take at least 3 days.
Sure, I went through that crap. My grey hair was Kryptonite. I had to leave even the temporary stuff on for hours. As for permanent color on the grey, read upthread at “That’s Not the Color on the Box.”
The bleaching of the dark hair is something my mother did. She married at 22, was dyeing her hair when I was born and she was 28. My sister arrived 6 years after me, and Momma was bleaching her hair. I remember times when the bleach job turned out purple or blue. I want NO part of that nonsense.
My dark hair is at the back of my head. I can’t see it, so why should I care?
FYI, you don’t “dye” hair grey, or blonde, or white. You must bleach all color from the hair shaft, and then you dye it to the shade you want. Or the shade you think you want.
~VOW
I use a temporary dye (Natural Instincts)for exactly that reason. Sometimes I’ll let it get completely washed away just to see how things are progressing.In fact, I’m in that phase right now. Sparkly silver stands in my medium brown hair:o I’ll get around to dying it again but like the OP, I just wish it would hurry up and do what it’s going to do. Or at least come in in nice wide sections and not single strands. That makes plucking them hard to resist.
When my daughter was in high school, she had her hair cut in a relatively short bob. It was heading towards Summer, and it was getting hot. She is cursed with the thick-thick-thick hair, and she got the BRILLIANT idea to shave her scalp from her ears to her neckline. It looked like a “normal” haircut, but it was physically and esthetically cool!
~VOW
I second this motion and offer Beck all the long distance hand holding and support she wants
I go by the two-week rule for making big hair changes…with the result that my hair has gotten pretty long because I can’t ever make any decisions. 
On the other hand, it’s just hair. It always grows back. Go crazy!
The problem is that society tells women they’re wrong. They’re too tall or too short, they’re too fat or too “boyish”, their lips are too thin or too thick… and whatever hair you have you have to change it. Like, yesterday, sister.
So girls with curly hair try to iron it straight, and girls with straight hair are told to get a perm.
Seriously.
I have hair so straight it could be used to calibrate plumb lines. And all my life I’ve been subjected to random people tell me how much better it would be if it had just a little curl, or I tried this or that perm, or that wave… and you know what? It doesn’t work. In my uncertain teen years I took the mop out to get a perm. Sure, curls… and 40 minutes later it was hanging straight again. The stylist in question was ethical enough to tell me that unless I was wiling to chemically fry my hair getting curls was pretty hopeless.
So I learned to love the hair I have, instead of longing for the hair I don’t.
Best. Hair. Decision. Ever.
That’s exactly what I do - and yeah, natural instincts. But my hair has always taken dye fairly well, and I just pick up a medium brown thats going to blend with my ordinary brown and cover my greys for a few weeks. But no more - I had my long hair chopped off so there is no old permanent color and the greys are free to fade in.
I colored mine, not because I was vain but because I didn’t want my teenagers to think I was too old to understand. They are adults now.
Basic answer is that I like my hair curly, even though it is naturally straight.
My hair is fine, thin and straight. It actually has a little curl to it where it’s really short (the short hairs around my face that never seem to get longer), or when it’s received just the right amount of humidity (gentle mist).
But 99% of the time it lays flat against my head. It either looks limp, greasy, or both.
I think it looks better curly, after I figured out how to handle it with a perm. This is also why I’ve spent time and money on various hair curling appliances.
Mind you, I stopped getting perms ~20 years ago, because I didn’t like the smell or the time, and my hair is getting increasingly fragile with age. I also found that if I go to sleep with my hair just washed, it has more body than if I wash it early enough that it’s dry before I go to bed. This is what I look like if I have some body in my hair.
Schwartzkopf makes a “permanent” gray dye under the color “Metallic Silver” but you should first bleach colored hair to use it. I’ve got a box that I found I didn’t need; PM me if you want it.
I truly understand (to the degree I’m able) the emotion that is attached to hair. But I’ve always had “good hair.” It’s really thick and naturally curly and red. Now that I’m older, the white just looks like strawberry blonde.
I dyed my hair back to auburn a few times, and it looked fine. And now I just cut it when it’s in my eyes. Do whatever is comfortable.
The best thing I’ve found about my age is my willingness to just do whatever makes me feel good.
(Paradoxically, I think that my IDGAF attitude is becoming to me. I’m not trying to impress anyone now, but I get hit on more at fifty and married and slightly overweight and DGAF than I did at 30 and single and size six.)
But I’ve always had “bleh hair.” Bothersome hair, with cowlicks and going grey in odd stages, with some patches darker.
That’s why it’s been hard getting to a place where I can say “Hey, nobody really cares. I’m leaving the house without even looking at my hair.”
It’s almost scary, the amount of emotion that’s attached to hair. I’d love to read an article… might be a throwback to the animal kingdom and manes and mating displays.