I’d like to start by saying…I never meant to go blonde.
I wanted to go white!
Why? Boredom… Change… Excitement… Drama…
So I’ll tell the story from the top:
I decided, probably during first hair-dye job (last January) that I wanted to make my hair white at some point. I think someone actually commented on a photo during the dye process (the foam from the dye made it look white) and said “You actually don’t look bad with white hair…” and the wheels were spinning….Yessssss, White it is.
Little did I realize, it’s actually notttttt that easy for someone with black hair to go white via dye.
So it is Saturday, august 24th, and I wake up hungover at 9 AM which is extremely early for me (having gone to bed at about 5). I drag myself out of bed, shower (ambitious), get dressed and jump on the metro. I have decided to go back to Foshan, my old town (an hour away via subway), and get my hair did there. Why? Mostly because I knew it would be super cheap since I am friends with the hair boys (hairdressers) who have a shop below my ex-building. Unfortunately, when I arrive at about 10:40, the shop is closed and Kevin (my hairdresser) isn’t responding to any of my messages.
After eating, drinking some vitamin water, and sitting for about an hour outside the salon as the lady at the shop next door continuously tells me that they are on holiday, I decide to get Kevin’s phone number from his girlfriend (whose number I had forgotten that I had). When I call, he answers, and I tell him that I’m going to kill him. He responds that he is on his way ….he did know that I was coming..
What happens next is this:
I drink a Pocari Sweat (sweat sweat sweat) to try to rejuvenate myself as I wait for Kevin to arrive (a different employee arrived first and opened the door).
Kevin arrives, looks at my drink and says, “No, no, no, no!”
This ensues:
So I’m sitting there drinking a beer with Kevin at noon, and I’m telling him about how I want to dye my hair white. He tells me that it won’t look good, but I tell him I don’t care. Then he points out that the hair decoloring formula (Loreal brand) is all out. I’m depressed because all of the wild options are out the window as well. Luckily, I live in China, and anything can be obtained with a phone call…Within ten minutes, some new bleach was delivered and we were on our way!
Before photo (warning, the photos in this blog post are not flattering…regardless of hair color):
This is Kevin over my should. As you can see by my facial expression, I had complete confidence in him.
The first bleaching begins and I’m super excited about the fashionable ear covers I get to wear.
And then orange happened. Orange is the new black though…right?
After bleaching 2….still orange:
No one told me how long it takes. I started to get restless. PS check out my fashion Saran Wrap hat:
After bleaching 3, I’m still a bit concerned:
I at this moment realized how black my eyebrows were going to look…
I decided to watch Miley’s music video. This was taking a realllllly long time…and she is awesome.
Okay, finished!
I almost had a heart attack when he said “This is it!” I brought back out the white hair sample and showed him the difference. He just continued to say how scared he was and that we could try one more time. And thank god we did because even though it didn’t come out white (seriously, who wants white hair?) it came out much better (they mixed white hair dye in this time with the bleach mixture):
So here I was. At this point it was about 5:30 PM which meant it took about 5 hours of actual hair-doing in addition to the travel time…exhausting day! How much do you think it cost? About 16 USD. Kevin was terrified that I didn’t like it..he even messaged me the next day saying how worried he was. And well, here is how I feel about it still:
It’s mostly that I’m just not used to it. And can you imagine what its going to look like when my roots come in? Amazingly awful! Can’t wait!
In the meantime, let me give you some of my favorite responses to my new hair:
“Omg why?” – This is just the typical one.
“Boy band?”
“Is that real?” – seriously?
“it is true that blondes have more fun…your eyebrows look so bored”
“omg it is so bad. i hope when i come back it will be changed. i am sorry but why did you do this? do you think it is nice?”
And my personal favorite:
“What is happened?…….” followed by an exasperated, “You are stupid!” – Thank you, Sunshine (my colleague…a boy).
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Generally speaking, it has been love it or hate it from most people, and one thing I have discovered is that people do not spare your feelings. As I write this, my mother just called. Here’s how our conversation went:
“I saw a photo of you…”
I laugh.
“I thought you were joking!!!”
I continue to laugh.
“I hate it!”
Still laughing.
“Why did you do that? Oh my god, I really hate it. I think you are regressing to an earlier age! That’s something people do when they are much younger!”
I did clarify that I probably would nevvvvver do this in the US. Also, I just kind of saw this as an opportunity to spice up my life during this renovation period that my restaurant is in. I would never do this while I was working a full time job as a manager of a place.
—
All of this being said, I do think people should be a little bit more tactful. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. I’m finally adjusting to it, but is there really a need for someone to come up to me three times within fifteen minutes to tell me how much they dislike it? I think not. I mean, I’m fine with being the butt of jokes and things like that, but when people feel the need to tell me how upset they are about it more than once or twice, we must not have very many things to talk about…that or they just don’t understand what is acceptable social behavior (or both).
Hair grows. And as I have just proven, can easily change. I’ll hang onto it for a little while longer, but it will be back to normal in no time. I don’t normally feel the need to defend it because I know its absurd, but hey, you only live once…and for me, right now, Blonde is the New Black.
Frank Losing Face All Over China 