![]() ![]() In the world of hair color, I've learned, red is the most difficult hue to achieve. It's that I haven't really looked at your face in a while," he says. "It's not that you seem like a different person. Over dinner, as I'm complaining about the general reaction to the new me as "unrecognizable," an old friend stops me. Within a few days, roots start to come in, a welcome relief from the outer-space prissiness of almost-white hair. Though my hair still feels healthy, it has a thick, roughed-up texture from the bleach-which I love for the added volume, but which also makes my scalp feel tight. We've lived in the same building for two years. Two hours after seeing the new me, the cute guy from my building texts to ask me on a date. At a sceney restaurant, the bartender asks my friend if I'm famous. My best friend vows to go platinum, too-and then she actually does. "And report back."Įven an old soccer T-shirt seems hip with this hair. He points out three men who have done double takes-one even did a 360. I scuttle out the door to come to terms with the color, and Viveiros follows. I'd anticipated punky post– Café Society Kristen Stewart. After 45 minutes of bleach, rinsing, and then toning with classic Clairol Professional Shimmer Lights, my hair is…translucent. The fumes are so strong, I can hardly keep my eyes open. This time, the process starts with a developer applied directly to my head with no protective foiling. I hadn't anticipated loving it.Īmber Valletta\’s platinum Frances F. I'd thought that going blond would satisfy an itch, but make me look alien or tired. Mascara gets piled on thick, and I can't stop marveling at how light my brown eyes suddenly appear. The next day, I pick up a color corrector to counteract my rosiness, a subdued taupe blush, and an icy pearlescent highlighter to play up my newfound pallor. "Welcome to the world!" And suddenly everything looks different. It's not quite platinum, as originally planned, but rather, he says, "your three-year-old niece at the beach." Rather than using a second bleach on my sensitive scalp, Viveiros paints on the faintest shading of light ash blond at my root and an allover golden glaze of color. We work our way through piece by piece like this for 10 hours. He massages purple-toned Clairol Professional conditioner into each processed section, then plastic-wraps it for about 10 minutes. After about 20 minutes, Viveiros peels back the aluminum section by section. I expect burning but don't feel much of anything-just ammonia fumes that make my eyes tear when I'm planted under the dryer hood. The risk is real: The process of going platinum requires removing the color from the melanin in the hair shaft by softening the hair cuticle with bleach and dissolving the color molecules through a process called oxidation. At the salon, he divides my hair into sections and painstakingly paints each one, then foils it until a silvery ruff wraps my cranium (the foils allow for a lower-strength bleach that will keep the damage to my hair as minimal as possible). Per Viveiros's directions, I don't wash my hair for a week, building up oil to protect my scalp from bleach. This past year, I cut more than a foot off the bottom into a choppy chin-length bob. ![]() My long, thick, brown-with-the-slightest-wave hair was my crown jewel, yes, but it's never been particularly distinctive. I was born with the kind of face that encourages tourists to stop me for directions, which is to say I look familiar in a nonthreatening way. ![]() And I understand the rush that comes with changing how the world sees you.īut let's back up. And I get it: Now, when I'm on the subway and I see telltale roots, I know how many hours their owner has spent in a salon, how expensive it was, what it takes to maintain. They'd offer homemade mask recipes for mashes of avocado and olive oil they'd talk about changing their hair for themselves alone ("everyone else can go to hell") and dye jobs gone horribly wrong. Once I started experimenting with the color of my hair-a journey that took me both six shades lighter and three shades darker than my "base" over the course of seven weeks-women began to share their own stories. But what's really surprising is the reaction of women: Coloring one's hair is like a secret handshake into a world of feminine mystique. What they mean is, Are men paying more attention to you? And the answer is yes. The first question people ask after you've gone blond is whether you get more attention. This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of ELLE. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |