There’s something about milestone birthdays that makes you think harder than you should. Especially those that end in -0. When I turned 30, I had been on my blonde curve for about two or three years. I somehow got it in my head that it was time for a change. So obviously I needed to change my hair color to red.
On my way to my birthday hair appointment, three people stopped me to tell me my hair looked nice. That’s when the doubt started to creep in. I remember thinking, “If my hair hasn’t been done in three months and people are still stopping to tell me it looks good, should I really be making this hard of a left?” Clearly that wasn’t enough to stop me. I went to that Macy’s basement and proceeded to plop myself in the chair to get my red on.
After it was all said and done, my hair still looked nice. I knew I needed to get used to it, but I realized it wasn’t for me. Styling seemed to present some of the same challenges I had when my hair was its natural color, the wardrobe I was wearing really didn’t jive with the red, and the random compliments stopped.
I felt less seen. I was no longer the Blonde Asian, although at that point I wasn’t even calling myself that. Mostly, I just didn’t feel like myself.
I lived with the red for essentially four to six weeks. I wanted out after two.
The specific moment came when I was getting ready for a party or something. I put on a dress, looked at myself, and thought I looked like some sort of Disney cartoon villain trying to be normal.
I Wanted to Be Blonde Again
I was pretty bad about scheduling my hair appointments, but one before or around my birthday was something I never missed. I intentionally waited long enough that I wouldn’t seem too eager to change it, if that makes sense. I didn’t want my hairdresser to think I hated what she did.
Plus, I needed to make some money to get my hair back.
I didn’t think going back to blonde would be like a standard hair appointment, but I also didn’t think it would be that big of a deal because I hadn’t kept the red for very long. I had absolutely no idea that what I was asking for was a color correction.
I Had No Idea Going Back to Blonde Was a Color Correction
I plopped myself in the chair and immediately said, “I want to go back to blonde.”
My hairdresser froze.
Her face basically said, “Oh shit,” and that was when I realized this was a much bigger request than I thought. She told me it was actually good that I was doing it now instead of after a few more appointments coloring my hair red, but I was going to need to be there longer than usual.
I was cool with that, so I prepared myself to sit for a while.
She never once said the words “color correction.” I want that on the record. Now that I know what I actually sprung on her, I feel terrible. I would have come back another time, but bless her, she made it work.
Looking back, I also would have communicated with her before the appointment. We had Instagram. We could text. I just didn’t want to bother her, so instead I apparently decided surprising her with a color correction was the less bothersome option.
How My Stylist Got Me Back to Blonde in One Appointment
When the bowls of bleach came out, she looked at me in the mirror and told me my hair wasn’t going to be as blonde as it had been before.
I didn’t care. When I originally went blonde, I had done it gradually, so I understood that this was basically starting over again. I wanted the red gone. I didn’t need her to perform a miracle and get me completely back to where I had been in one day.
There was a lot of bleach. Enough bleach that I remember my neck hurting from the weight of everything sitting on my head.
The appointment took most of the afternoon. I got there around noon and didn’t leave until somewhere around 4:30 or 5. She worked on two other clients while I was processing under the dryer, so there was a lot of sitting around while whatever needed to happen to my hair happened.
Once the red had been lifted, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “Yup, this definitely is not the finished product.” I mean, I would have left like that if I had to, but I’m glad I didn’t.
She essentially had to remove the red and then color my hair again to restore it to something that looked like me. When I finally saw the finished blowout in the mirror, I was ecstatic. At the time, it seemed like I was basically back to the blonde I had before all of this.
Looking at photos now, I definitely wasn’t.
I’m glad she didn’t overpromise. She got me back to a blonde I was comfortable with without pretending she could immediately return my hair to exactly where it had been.
I also expected my hair to feel super crunchy afterward. It didn’t. There wasn’t noticeable damage, and looking back after many more years of blonde appointments, I can see that she didn’t lift me nearly as high as I go now. I don’t know whether that was intentional because of the correction, but I’m glad she didn’t push my hair farther than she needed to.
Why My Red Hair Was Easier to Correct
One thing my hairdresser told me was that I had made the right call by changing my mind when I did. I had only gone red once. If I had come back for several appointments and continued coloring my hair red before deciding I wanted to be blonde again, getting there would have been harder.
I remember her explaining it as color clinging to color, which is probably an oversimplified version of whatever was chemically happening to my hair.
I think about it like painting a gold wall versus painting a wallpapered wall. A gold wall presents some challenges, but a couple coats of primer can solve the problem. With a wallpapered wall, you have to remove the wallpaper and any residual glue before you can even get to the priming and painting part.
Apparently I changed my mind before I metaphorically wallpapered the room.
Would I Ever Make That Kind of Hair Change Again?
I don’t know if I actually regret going red. I wasn’t thrilled with how it looked on me, but I did get a cool photo sitting on a Santa chair out of it. I wish we’d had the hair-color filters we have now back then. Maybe I could have saved myself an afternoon under the dryer.
What going red really taught me was how comfortable I had become with being blonde. At that point, I knew I loved my blonde hair, but I think I also thought I was more ambivalent about it than I actually was. Changing it made that very clear.
It also taught me that changing myself up didn’t kill me and that it’s okay to be comfortable with how you look. Being happy with your appearance doesn’t make you full of yourself. Sometimes you actually like something because you like it, and you don’t need to change or justify it simply because you’ve reached some arbitrary age where you think you’re supposed to shake things up.
I don’t like saying I’d never make another drastic change to my hair because who knows what I’ll want someday. But 40-year-old me is definitely not changing my hair because I hit a milestone birthday.
Unless I’m getting paid. . . A lot.
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