Vanity, Thy Name is Erin

For the first time in almost three years I am totally FREE of the unending hair-dye circle of life. I know that sounds extremely silly to some of you, but just hear me out. Here is the story of my vanity.

Three years ago in April, Josh and I got married. Shortly afterward, we were sitting in our Little House on the Airport watching Doctor Who, where a new companion had just been introduced - fiery, Scottish, redheaded Amelia Pond. I made the spur of the moment decision that I really wanted to be a redhead, so we crossed the street to Wal-Mart. Josh did a great job, and after about 45 minutes (and another episode of Doctor Who for inspiration), I was a redhead.
Well, naturally, everyone knows that hair color fades and must be redone/touched up to keep the color up. So as our time to move back to Florida drew near, I redid the roots -- and it came out two different color reds. Gulp. Upon arriving in Florida, my mom tried to fix it by doing my whole head over with color. At the end, the two different shades became much more pronounced. I now had pinkish roots and faded red/orangeish hair. Another friend tried a blonde to lighten the red and then a brown to cover it over. Still no effect. My hair had a mind of its own.

My wonderful husband kept telling me that I was beautiful, that he didn't see all the "flaws" that I saw in myself. He tried to tell me to leave it alone and not keep dyeing it. But I didn't listen.

At that point I decided to wear my line of demarcation as my scarlet letter. We then found ourselves in Arizona for our evaluation, and naturally all of the girls told their hair color stories because one of the girls was getting ready to redo her hair. I shared mine, too, and one of the girls talked about how easy it would be to fix my hair predicament. Josh told me no, but my vanity screamed YES. We made an afternoon of it, playing with her babies and stripping and redyeing my hair. It was beautiful at first, but very unusually quickly faded into a super ashy green. Yes, green
I felt like Anne Shirley who had just met the peddler on the road who told her it would turn her hair "a beautiful raven black" and ended up crying over her green hair. Of course we ended up being in airports (with fluorescent lights everywhere) for the next while, where I tried to hide my green hair as much as possible. When we got to Florida I ran to my normal hair stylist and begged her to save me. Josh was gracious enough not to be mad at me for all that money just to satisfy my vanity (which put me there in the first place, mind you). After laughing sympathetically at my green hair, she fixed it and I had my normal-ish hair color back.
From that moment, I swore with everything in me that I would not dye my hair until I absolutely couldn't avoid it any longer, possibly never. Of course, there were new things to take the place of soothing my vanity, like getting my nose pierced because "it's pretty." I fielded question after question about my hair and why it was noticeably two different colors. Luckily for me the "ombre" look became big right about that time, so I kind of went with that.

I was getting that vanity itch again, as the demarcation line reached my ears. I needed to be rid of this three year long vanity MESS I had gotten myself into.

So this week I went to the hair dresser and got it cut. The girl was super nervous as I told her I wanted all of the hair dye cut out of it -- a whole whopping SEVEN INCHES
Cardigan is an upcycled sweater. DIY tutorial coming this week!
She took some convincing, but in the end, she did it. This is the shortest I have ever had my hair that I can remember. I do miss the length I had, but I definitely don't miss the two-toned hair or the faded orangey-blonde color and I definitely don't miss the green hair. I'm finally my natural color once more! And I started taking Biotin and Vitamin C to make my hair grow faster, and have seen some good results so far. I might add some Pre-Natal's (not because I need them, but they're good for the hair), and some Fish Oil, too, since all of those help hair to grow quickly. Hopefully it won't be this short for long!

I have learned my vanity lesson (at least I really, really hope so!), and I have learned that I need to listen to my husband more, since he's usually right (but don't tell him I said so!). 

So my advice is this: don't dye your hair, if you do, don't go red!

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