An accumulation of thoughts on hair color
There used to be a huge social stigma attached to a woman who colored her hair. Today I think most women color their hair at least once during their lifetime. I know I have (I added the wrong shade of red, it didn’t look good). Yet there is still a lingering social stigma for women who choose to “go blonde.” Blonde hair is equated with youth and sexiness. Darker hair is equated with intelligence and stability. Therefore women who chose to change from dark hair to blonde hair must have some insecurity for which they’re trying to compensate.
I consider myself both intelligent and stable. I don’t do sexy very well, I’d much rather be classy than sexy. At 33 years old I don’t qualify as old yet, but I’m not exactly young either. In short my personality traits are all those which tend to be associated with dark hair, yet I’m a natural blonde.
Part of me is very pleased to be a natural blonde. There is a voice in the back of my brain which insists that because my blonde is natural it is somehow superior to the blonde of someone who colors. This is the same part of my brain which is frustrated looking around at all the blonde people and knowing that most of them wouldn’t be blonde without chemicals. That part of my brain is convinced that to be blonde is special and rare and everyone would know how special and rare it is if only everyone else would stop pretending to be blonde when they’re not.
Then the rest of my brain stifles the annoying voice and hopes that none of those thoughts ever made it into my face. But I wonder if I have these thoughts, do people ever look at my blonde hair at assume that I have chosen to be blonde? If they do, then what do they assume about me based on my choice of hair color? In truth, I am deciding to be blonde. I could very easily color my hair to be something else. But then I’d be plagued with light roots and the expense of maintaining my hair color. My hair is natural because anything else is too high maintenance. So I guess I’m blonde because I’m lazy. Somehow I doubt that is the conclusion anyone else would come to about my hair color.
I have more thoughts, but they’re too scattered to capture right now. I’ll have to wait for them to sort themselves out. It’s taken years for the above thoughts to be sorted even this far. Probably because I just don’t spend much time thinking about it.