The Effect of Hair Color

For the longest time, I had never thought about my appearance. At least, I didn’t over-analyze features about myself... features that I had otherwise not paid as much attention to. Then came a point in my life when I was in love, and the person I was seeing had told me, “You would look so much better as a blonde.“ Prior to that day, I hadn’t given much thought towards my hair color. So, I did whatever a love-drugged, naive 15 year old would do: I went to the nearest Walgreens, bought a box of hair-dye and dumped the contents of that box all over my virgin head. Little did I know, it wouldn’t be as simple as buying a box of drug-store hair dye. Every month, I spent copious amounts of money retouching my roots and buying toning products that ran out in a week. My life had changed, my identity had changed, and I no longer looked like the innocent teenager that I had once been.

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Over time, I went from blonde to blonder, eventually getting to a platinum white tone. Killing my hair with bleach, and killing my true self. I was obsessed with looking a certain way, convinced that it was my identity. People wouldn’t know who I was if I wasn’t blonde. I once attempted pastel pink hair, and even then it lasted for about 3 days until I went right back to being blonde. I couldn’t imagine looking any other way. 

Life happened, and being alone for some time, I realized that I wanted to change my life around. I wanted to stop focusing so much on my appearance. I began to remember the time before I went on that emotional rollercoaster. Before someone planted a seed in my brain about my appearance. I decided that I wanted to once again be the most natural version of myself. Because being natural means being true to myself. No GMOs, all-natural, I’ve gone organic baby!

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I went and saw my hairdresser (Peter you are the best!). When I had told him that I wanted to match my outgrown roots with the rest of my hair, and become my natural hair color he was confused. He asked me why I decided to take the leap to have such dark hair. I answer with uncertainty, “Fresh start?” After rinsing my hair, sitting back in that salon chair, and watching my hair get blow-dried... I felt so different, I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. When you’ve been blonde for what feels like your entire life, having a brown head of hair is a really freaking drastic change.

With my new ’do I began to notice something that was never really all that obvious. Now that I have darker hair, I receive a lot less unwanted attention than before. I had not lost weight, I had not changed the way I dressed, nor the way I presented myself to people. But if I were sitting at a bar with my friend, then I received less awful pick-up lines thrown at me than before. The more I went out, the more I began to notice this. From then on, I decided that I needed to chop off all that I had dyed to reclaim my real hair. I was in love with my appearance for the first time in a long time. I wasn't obsessing about going back to the salon chair, or planning my next bleach so that it would look fresh for an event. I wasn’t planning my life around my hair anymore. With my new natural-haired self, I began to focus more on my internal well-being (like my mental health), than anything else, and I began to feel great. 

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Looking back at it all now, I realized that I was constantly being influenced by people around me, I felt that their opinions were better than my own—even if the topic was about myself. Was my constant need to try different hair colors, tones, and change my appearance an identity crisis? I thought that if I would experiment with dying my hair different colors I would figure out who I was, and I would stop struggling in figuring out who I wanted to be. 

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Becoming the truest version of myself started with my hair, but it can be just about anything with anyone. Having my hair be its natural color helped me not only figure out my life, but it also helped me in understanding what I wanted to pursue as a career. I finally created goals for myself, and began to prioritize things that actually do have meaning and add value to my life. It’s crazy just how much hair color affected my life. How has body image affected your life? I would love to hear your story. 

Yours Truly, 

Veronika