Originally posted 03.29.2004
As my teens and early 20s were given to coaxing out as much blond as possible, my late 20s were a play for red. Again, I attempted to keep it as natural as possible, to somehow convince myself and the rest of the world that my hair was truly auburn. I admire women who play with color, who unabashedly streak their hair burgundy, who bronze their skin with self-tanners and powders, who basically have fun with it all. For me, it’s never a matter of fun, and artifice that could reveal me as an imposter (“that shade does not exist in nature”) is avoided like the plague and Jagermeister.
Though I’d flirted with shades of red half-heartedly before, the catalyst toward action was a comment from a street vendor peddling earrings. She was working from a table set up on a pedestrian mall in my college town on a brisk spring day, where my mom and I were strolling after a leisurely brunch. As I held the dangly earrings of glass beads the color of a Montana sky up to my face, the woman commented that such a blue is particularly nice on a redhead, “like you.” Mom snorted, barely audible.
I bought the earrings, of course, and within days the first of many boxes of henna. Oh henna. What a mystery. What a mess. The first few attempts left my bathroom looking like a goat farm. But I quickly developed skill in the application of the stuff—from mixing it without sending up plumes of henna dust, to squeezing the mixture through my long hair while I bent over the tub, then wrapping the coated hair into coils, securing it with wooden sticks, and covering the whole thing with a plastic bag until the color set. The rinsing process never got easy though—standing under a shower head while what seemed like miles of mud-streaked water swirled down the drain. With care, I managed to keep the henna away from the walls, floor and shower curtain. The only evidence left behind was the smell. Which is somewhat, um, organic. A bit like manure.
As home-spun natural as my choice of hair dye was, the other products used to pull off a realistic redhead effect were not at all. A little Jolene bleach to take my near-black eyebrows down a peg or two (it stings, it burns, it takes four times longer than the recommended time to lighten brows from ebony to caramel). And auburn mascara (as blue earrings bring out the red in hair, auburn mascara makes blue eyes pop, or so I was sold to believe).
The effect was more or less believable. Though my parents never bought it (dad wasn’t about to make that mistake twice), many others did. Weirdly, as a first impression, red stuck much faster than blond, and there are many today who still think of me as a moderate redhead (“I saw this girl in Scotland with long red hair, she looked like you.” “Did you ever see the painting of that woman in the white dress with long red hair? Reminds me of you.”) But others are more honest, less dazzled, or perhaps lacking in romantic associations. When asked, in an attempt to tease some flattery out of him, what color do you think my hair is? My dear friend gives me a short, quizzical look, a little smirk. “It’s brown.” But there is so much more to it than that….
