COLUMN: Hair solution to emotion
I’ll never understand why, but somehow hair is linked to emotions. There’s something about cutting, curling and coloring hair during life’s crises that makes everything wrong go away – even if it’s only until the first look in the mirror after the damage has been done.
I’ll be honest. The last few weeks I’ve been a little on edge. I mostly blame it on the fact that I graduate in a couple months and feel like I have to decide what I’m doing with my whole life now. Some days it seems at any moment I could get my car keys and drive to the coast of Florida just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it all. However, as nice as laying on a beach with pina coladas sounds, it’s not really logical. So that’s where hair comes in handy.
About a week ago, after eating half a pizza of my feelings and then pushing everything out of my mind while I worked for a few hours, I found myself driving to Wal-Mart in search of a solution to all my problems. Food was not going to cure me and neither were hula hoops, cheap dishes or discounted grandma sweat pants. I found myself in the health and beauty aisles of the big-box retailer, and soon I found a friendly face. She was the model on a box of Garnier Nutrisse hair dye, and she seemed to be daring me with her perfect blond highlights.
Not being one to look like a complete wimp, I embraced her challenge, buying not just one, but two boxes of dye and a Diet Coke I could drink while my roommates experimented on me.
It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time I made it home, and my friends began pulling strips of my hair and drenching them in glue-like bleach. Patiently I sat on a wooden chair in my dining room and sipped caffeinated heaven while they took over. One on each side of my head, I could feel their fingers thumbing through my locks, taking huge chunks and laughing as they told me it was going to look good.
This wasn’t the first time I had been in a situation like this. I’ve let roommates dye my hair a handful of times, never worrying too much about the results. I didn’t worry this time either. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything anymore.
After they finished and I waited 20 minutes for the dye to do its magic, I took a shower. When I came out and looked in the mirror, I was no longer me. I was a Martian from Planet Blond. Malibu Barbie gone bad.
I frantically started combing my yellowy orange hair, but as the tangles disappeared, the color did not and I knew I’d be stuck looking like an outcast member of the Brady Bunch for quite some time.
I’m not really sure how long I sat on my roommate’s floor that night as I stared into her mirror hoping it would get better. We tried blow drying it, straightening it, parting it in different places and putting it up. It was useless. Nothing was going to cure my Madonna disaster but a hat.
Once again hair was linked to my emotions, only this time I wasn’t stressed because of life, and I wasn’t being brave because I took on a stupid imaginary dare. At that moment I was hysterically terrified. My roommate was laughing and, surprisingly, I was laughing too, although deep down I was wondering how expensive it would be to purchase a ticket to Malibu, or how easy it would be to get a job with Mattel. If I was lucky enough I could just be abducted and taken somewhere I would belong.
I realized at that moment that girls can sometimes be really dumb. During emotional breakdowns, instead of simply staying calm while rationally working things out, there are times when we eat our weight in ice cream, max out our credit cards on shoes, or end up with some severe color streaking our hair. Why I ended up with two highlighting kits, I’ll never really know. Mostly, I think I was stressed and blond was an outlet. More importantly, I wasn’t thinking. I’ve generally never made my best decisions at 1 a.m. in Wal-Mart. I should have remembered that.
For now, it no longer matters that I only have two and a half months before I put on a cap and gown and face the real world. At the moment, I have bigger problems which will last until I can earn enough money to see a professional.
Hair stylist that is.
Manette Newbold is a senior in print journalism. Comments and questions can be sent to manette.n@aggiemail.usu.edu.