Oh The Hair

I got a lecture at work today (first day back to work in over a week and what do I get?) about my hair, just like B warned me.

The rules are pretty clear cut: no facial piercings, visible tattoos, or unnatural colored hair. When I got hired my GM, Vicky, specified that I was absolutely not allowed to work with any jewelry on my face - so no lip ring. Fine. My piercing is not so important to my identity that I won't take a job if I'm not allowed to wear it. It was never an issue with me. Every so often I will forget my lip ring is in and wear it to work by accident, but I always take it out once I realize it's in. This happened a lot more when I worked at the Coffee Co, because piercings where allowed there and I would sometimes go right from one job to the other, and it would be more likely that I'd forget to take it out.

I work with a lot of girls who have their noses pierced and eyebrows pierced and tongues pierced and nobody says anything to them. If I forget nobody really says anything to me either (until today...) but I know I'm not supposed to wear it so I try to remember not to.

So when I got to work this afternoon I gave Vicky my doctor's note, which she didn't even read (so, apparently, I could have made her a shitty forgery and she wouldn't have cared...) and promptly got this talking to about how a tongue piercing counts as a facial piercing and also isn't allowed. I don't have my tongue pierced. I will never get my tongue pierced. And I seriously had to stick my tongue out to prove it wasn't pierced. Whatever.

And I got told I'm not allowed to work again until I change my hair.

When I got hired I think I had black hair, or it may have been black and red. It definitely wasn't pink. When I dyed my hair pink I got a lot of comments but no one said it wasn't allowed, but, whatever, they're saying it now, and, since I prefer being employed to being unemployed... the pink hair has to go. It's a really dull faded muddy magenta right now - not attractive at all, so I was going to change it anyway - I don't know how well my hair is going to hold any color because it's bleached platinum underneath, meaning whatever I do will show up really brilliant but fade quickly. I was just going to cop out and dye it all black again, but black dye is insidious and never goes away and is known to ruin all attempts to re-dye any other color until it is completely gone.

So, not black, and nothing from my Manic Panic/Special Effects collection means... drugstore dye. L'oreal Feria Espresso is what I'm trying. It's a warm-tone dark brown - I don't HAVE to dye my hair brown, I could be a redhead again, I've been a redhead plenty of times, but I've been kind of sick of my hair lately and would like to just leave it alone. My real hair is brown, so my roots will grow in brown, and maybe if I dye it with permanent dye (instead of demis like I usually use) I won't have to bother with it anymore.

I'm hoping that since my hair is so light underneath the color won't look totally flat and it will be kind of like highlights or something... I don't know. Wish me luck. I have to go wash it out now.

Not Happening

So I dyed my hair last night. Washed it. Went to bed with wet hair (towel on my pillow of course) and got up this morning. Put on a good playlist. Ate a decent breakfast. Did some stuff. Went down the block to the other house to check things out. Came back here. Looked in the mirror.

I don't think I can do this... have brown hair, I mean. I just don't look like myself. I mean, I went to bed with my hair wet so it dried curly. I have... curly brown hair. *shudders* The dye job itself isn't so bad - it has a sort of translucent quality, kind of like I thought it would, since my hair is, essentially, platinum under all the color. It's like a slightly plum-toned dark brown, darker at the roots of course, but...

I think I need to go pick up a box of black dye. Black dye is insidious, but it also covers a multitude of errors.

I do not feel very badass with my hair this way.

I look very ordinary. I do not want to look ordinary. I spend a lot of time and effort making sure I do not look ordinary.

And yes, I am aware that I am disproportionately upset given the lack of overall importance of the color of my hair -

BUT IT'S MY HAIR! IT IS IMPORTANT, DAMNIT!

I do not wish to be seen with such hair.

Several years ago, when I was living with my mom, I had dyed my hair black and then not touched it for about six months, and rarely straightened it. I was stressed, and busy, and fairly miserable, and didn't have the time or the desire to do anything with my hair. So it was half black and half brown. And even THAT looked better than it looks now.

I had no idea my hair could upset me this much! I've bleached it (before I knew what I was doing) and it turned yellow. I could handle that. I dyed my bleached yellow hair purple, which faded to pond scum green. I could handle that. Once I dyed it flame red, but it faded to pumpkin orange. I was not phased.

"No unnatural colors" didn't have to mean "go back to looking like I'm fourteen!"

I'm dying it black tomorrow.