Tuesday, August 12, 2014

#throwbacktuesday "My hair: a history."

I came to think about my hair one day, when it was one of those days when your hair simply refuses to cooperate. I tried to make a messy bun, but it looked all crooked and wrong. I tried to make a braid, but there were strands of hair sticking out of it in random places. I tried to leave it down and back-comb it a bit for volume, but I only managed to look like I'd just escaped the 80's... Bad hair days suck.

Right now, my hair is down to my shoulder blades, and it's more than halfway down my own natural hair color. I bleached my hair almost white a couple of years back, and then decided to grow my own hair color out. The first few months were really bad when the roots started to show, but it got better and better and nowadays it looks like I have dyed the ends blonde on purpose.



Like so.


I started dyeing my hair in my early teens, and I've had a variety of different colors in my hair since. It's been platinum blonde, traffic light red, dark brown / black, had pink highlights, blue highlights, red highlights... You get the idea.

I don't know why I decided to grow my natural hair color out. I didn't have allergic reactions to hair colors, I liked the different shades that I tried on my hair, and my hair didn't start falling out or wasn't otherwise suffering from the horrible treatment... (much.) I guess when I think about it, it all comes down to me being so damn lazy. I mean, the dyeing project was a time-consuming one. Every month or so, I'd have to dye the roots and/or spruce up the color otherwise. It took around two hours, more if I had a bright red or something of the like, because then I'd have to first bleach and then dye my hair again.

So, I went and dug around my photo folders. I have started taking photos of my life around 2004, so I have about 10 years' worth of pictures stashed away... So let this be a #throwbacktuesday of my hair (because #throwbackthursday is so last season). Also, I'd like to point out that I have been so fucking emo at some point that it's not even funny. Or actually it is extremely funny. I laughed at some of the pictures. A lot. Hope you do, too. ;)

Without futher ado, my hair from 2004 to 2014. Warning, massive amount of pictures ahead. 41 pictures to be exact. But well, I wanted to document the changes, and there were times when I changed my hair color once a month...)

May 2004.
Oh my god I look young.


October 2005.
I had this red hair for quite some time.
It was a pain to maintain.


March 2006.
I actually went from red to dark to this bleached yellow monstrosity, but I don't have pics of the dark hair in between.

March 2007.
I didn't have pictures of 2006 and 2007 that much, but I returned to red for some time in 2006. Then I went to this. This is the shortest my hair has been since high school, and I haven't cut it that short after 2007.

September 2007.
I had a more natural-toned hair color around this time. I think it might even have been at least partially my natural own hair color. #emointheforest

December 2007.
omg, hahaha I was such an emo. :D

December 2007 part two.
This was not permanent color, because it's faded away before the next photo, which is two months later.

February 2008.
Dear god, those bangs. Apparently I was not a fan of seeing anything? #imsofuckingemo

March 2008.
Apparently the ends are dyed, but I've concluded it's mostly my natural hair color. The bangs are slightly shorter too, so I can see again! :D

July 2008.
Yeah, definitely growing out my natural hair color here (and getting rid of those bangs!)... why did I give it up at some point?!

August 2008.
So, I went darker. Can't for the life of me remember why. #sostupid

September 2008.
Oh look, I added a flashy blonde ~highlight at the front. #deargodwhat

April 2009.
I'd had the dark hair with the highlight until this. Then suddenly BAM! bleach all over! #wtfwasithinking

June 2009.
Oh look, I did manage to get it look somewhat more even-toned.

July 2009.
No, wait, I bleached it again. gg me.

July 2009 part two.
I discovered shock-color highlights! #lolpink

August 2009.
The fun part about shock-color highlights is that you never know what you get once they fade. #orange

September 2009.
Oh hey, let's cover up the orange with blue! *insert that Eiffel 65 song here*

October 2009.
Once the blue faded, I dyed my hair darker again. Only you can see that my hair was in such bad condition that the color didn't stick to all parts of my hair. Those "highlights" are completely unintentional. D:

January 2010.
The Return of the Bleached Highlight! *drum roll*

March 2010.
Because of course I wanted to go back to the color that requires the most maintenance. #herewegoagain

May 2010.
Since I am lazy, here's how well I maintained the red hair. It basically just faded into this. :P

July 2010.
Oh hey, we didn't learn anything from 2005 (or 2006 for that matter), now did we? #headdesk
Of course, the color is absolutely divine, too bad it only looks that radiant for the first three days after dyeing.

September 2010.
I'm going emo again, dyeing everything black besides one red highlight.
(...2005 called, they want their emo sass back.)

January 2011.
Oh hey look, the highlight has changed color. Here you can see what the bleaching is doing to my hair. Ugh, it's so dry it looks like it's going to crumble away any second now.

May 2011.
So then I went all black.

July 2011.
No, wait! Let's bleach this hair a little bit more! ...because it definitely needs that. #hairtorture

October 2011.
At this point you can see the laziness again. #roots #omgyellow

November 2011.
Yeah, I took one look at the pictures from October and went dark again. #seriouslywhat

May 2012.
So here I'd gotten to the point where I wanted to grow my natural hair color out again and I'd cut the split ends and just let the dye fade. I'd gotten such a good start, then I saw this picture and panicked.

May 2012 part two.
So then bleach happened. Again. My poor hair.

May 2012 part three.
MOAR BLEACH!

August 2012.
I treated my hair with a conditioning color mask that was supposed to be brown. This is what it did to my bleached hair. #prettyinpink

September 2012.
Luckily the pink faded away relatively quickly.
At this point I'd taken my hair a bit more seriously and treated it with conditioners and moisturizing treatments, so it looks better.

October 2012.
I attempted to dye my roots darker to match my natural hair color (I wanted to grow my natural color out again)...

October 2012 part two.
...but it didn't stick to my bleached hair. So I decided, "Fuck it."

***

This is the point where I decided to stop dyeing my hair altogether.

***

December 2012.
Roots. And orange ends. Yay.

April 2013.
More roots.

October 2013.
After one year of not dyeing my hair at all.

December 2013.
It's starting to look like it's dyed like this on purpose. #winning

May 2014.
Definitely happy I stuck with the no-dye plan. Loving my natural hair color!

***


So there. My hair has seen all colors and all kinds of lengths and cuts, but no more. I'm sorry for all the hairdressers who won't be getting any money from me, but I find my hair is now a lot easier to maintain. I cut some of the split ends myself when need be, but now that I haven't dyed my hair in a long while I've noticed I don't need to cut my hair that often. Right now I'm just waiting for it to grow so long that I can cut off all the dyed ends, and then I'll just focus on growing and caring for my hair that isn't treated with chemicals or blown to hell with bleach.

love,
scoundrel

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