the colour of my hairs

Yesterday, I said good-bye to blonde hair. It's true that blonde hair has been saying good-bye to me for years. When I was little I had light brown hair that turned blonde in the sun. When I got older, I began having that light brown hair streaked blonde a couple of times each year. Most people (I think) have thought of me as having blonde hair for most of my life.

About 5 years ago, I started getting white hair. Sturdy, sometimes electrically wavy, strands of white poked straight up like exclamation marks, until they got about an inch or two in length, then they would lie down. Just a couple appeared here and there. Sometimes I plucked them, sometimes I'd go get my hair streaked again, and they'd blend in with the blonde.

I haven't streaked my hair for about 6 months. Wearing it shorter these days, I find that the streaks are cut out pretty quickly. Recently, I found myself with light brown hair again, but this time with a lot of white and grey all in the top and front of my head. The overall effect is kind of like a gerbil getting old. The only difference is that a gerbil lives for only a couple of years. I have lots of time to go, and I'm reluctant to impersonate an aging gerbil for a slow, drawn out process until I reach full silver.

At my last haircut, I consulted with Julie, my hairdresser. She told me that she could streak my hair again, but if I was looking for a change, she thought I'd look great with a browner kind of brown, maybe with a bit of gold to counteract the grey and the the gerbil-ness. She told me that she could colour my hair, or I could do it myself. Home hair colour products are apparently very good these days - easy to use and to achieve good results.

So now I am a self-coloured medium brown-haired mompoet. I decided to start conservatively with the change, but I'm sure I'll be more adventurous next time. Don't worry, I won't turn purple or orange (at least not on purpose). It's only hair, though, and it grows pretty fast, so why not have fun with it?

So, I am officially no longer blonde-haired. Notice please that I did not say "I am no longer a blonde." I don't like it when women are called a hair colour as if it is a noun. "A blonde," or "a brunette" evokes a stereotypical image in my mind, out of the 1940s or 50s in a magazine advertisement. It's as if the most distinctive and noteworthy characteristic about that woman is the colour of her hair. Ug. We never call a brown-haired woman a brown, either. We say brunette. I guess it's more feminine and diminutive, which adds to my dislike of the convention. We would never call an older woman (or man) a "grey," nor would we call a man a "bald," although I'm sometimes tempted to call a guy with a goatee a "goat" or a guy with a toupee a "toup," but I would't, really.

So I am, if anything, a brown now. In a month or so, I might be a different shade of brown. I prefer to be known as a mom, a poet, a neighbour, a helper, a friend, who no longer has blonde hair.

question: what shade is your hair? by birth or by choice?

mompoet - chemically modified ever so slightly