For
19 years I had long
brown hair. I didn't
dye it or even use
mousse. Then one day I bleached it and dyed it
blue (
turquoise, really), as the price for
permission to dye my
friend's hair
orange. It was fun. People stared at it.
Random people came up to me on the street and started talking at me. ("Have you ever seen the
movie the boy with
green hair? (this was after it started to fade - blue dyes are the fastest to fade) it was about war, or something. do you like
war?" "Um..") Best fun was seeing stodgy old
mutual fund reps (I work at the head office of a canadian securities dealership) do a triple take when they walked in to drop off business to be processed.
It was also a heartwarming look at how nice my co-workers and
boss are - the industry I'm in is 90%
male and everyone dresses to the nines and all the women wear ten layers of
makeup and
high heels and on and on.. except in my
office. I timidly asked permission before we went ahead with the dying, and my
manager was all "Sounds fine, I'll just doublecheck with the president-- no! I'm not even going to ask him! I wouldn't care if you
shaved your head! When you take away
freedom of expression, you have a fucked up
society!"
cool. cooool. The
president, as it turned out, totally loved my hair, especially when it faded to the same green as our corporate
logo. Hee.
Right now, my hair is
red. Not the red that 30something secretaries dye their hair to look
sassy, but the colour of the neon red
crayon in a package of
crayola neon colours. With a bit of a
purple stripe where I couldn't get all the blue out. It almost makes me look like I'm not
anaemic. Almost.
The whole experience has given me insight in to something I've never understood - why do people wear
makeup, or have
piercings, or get a
tattoo? (some
religious reasons aside..) Because it's
fun.
The body is a playground.
And hey, it's only
hair.