Hair part 6: The Redhead Experience

Yes, I do realize that it's a little ridiculous to have a six part saga devoted to my hair, but you could argue that this whole blog is ridiculousness, and you know, give the people what they want, or something. At least that's what I tell myself when I want to publically rant about my hair for a page or two.

So, two weeks ago, this happened:

Red hair!

Similar to the whole tattoo debacle, dyeing my hair red was one of those things that I considered for a while, but never actually thought would happen. Then BAM, life happens, I feel like I'm being dragged into insanity, and decide to drastically change my appearance to cope with it. Yes, I am one of those girls who shells out obscene amounts of money to change herself when facing a bad situation. You know you've done that at least once in your life, don't lie.

So, impulse decision aside, I've noticed that the redhead experience is quite a positive one. It's not like some coloring is going to alter my personality completely, but, as my roommate claimed, I seem like a much more natural redhead. And my agreement stems from one hypothesis: redheads are allowed to be weird.

Like, when you're blonde, there's the eccentricity quota that you just can't mess with. Singing and dancing in public places is totally off-limits as a blonde. You're expected to wear yoga pants and end every sentence is like, a question? And if I was experiencing these expectations as a dirty blonde, I can only imagine how bad it gets as a bleach blonde.

Now, people not only encourage crazy random happenstances, but they expect it. I'm instantly pegged as the girl with the weird stories, the creative spirit, ever so spiritual, all that jazz.

Another thing I've noticed comes from my expectations for myself, rather than others' expectations for me. But ever since making questionable life choices dyeing my hair, I've been less afraid to talk to people. Granted, I don't think shyness is something that can just *poof* go away, but instead of worrying about what I'm going to say/sounding like an idiot, I just say words to people. Those words have usually successfully formed coherent sentences, which surprises everyone. There's less fear that if I screw up one thought, everyone will hate me forever. So that's a nice feeling.

In a superficial sense, it seems that redheads are more acceptably "cute." I used to have mixed feelings about this word, but because I have the face of a twelve year old, I've had to embrace the "cute" status, trying to ignore all the "hot" and "pretty" blondes that roamed around. It's no longer strange to throw my hair in braids and try to pull off the 16 year old look. I could be totally off here, but it seems that the general rule is that blondes have to be pretty, other hair colors can be cute. So why not indulge in that expectation, seeing as the idea of growing up still makes me want to hide under my covers and never come out?

So, in this instance, the impulse decision ended up being a decently good idea. Just watch out for any impulse tattoos that may pop up periodically.

Namaste.