I Was a Fake Blonde Anyway

I dyed my hair. What a pointless, anti-climatic, and petty thing to post ON A BLOG. You may be thinking “I could care less about your hair color” or “Why are you dedicating an ENTIRE post to your hair?”, trust me I would be thinking the same thing if I saw a post titled like this. Just for the heck of it, humor me.

I naturally have dark hair thanks to my dad. My dad has thick, black hair (or he did, now it’s all gray) and bright red facial hair. I am still appalled how that combination came to be, it does NOT add up. I remember begging my mom in 8th grade to highlight my hair. I did not want my dark hair, I wanted bright blonde hair. From middle school on, I wanted to fit an image, I wanted to be THE beautiful blonde (don’t hate me, it was a very juvenile mindset) I wanted to stand out.  As any mother of an 8th grader would, my mom denied my requests.  I didn’t drop the argument, as the years went on Maddy Blaedow and I were inseparable and our parents knew that we would always get into some sort of trouble, usually meaning we would secretly find our way to Walgreens and box dye our hair. Wow, I was SUCH a rebellious child! I always thought we would get away with it, if I sprayed enough perfume upstairs as we soaked our hair in bleach my mom wouldn’t smell it. My mom has the nose of a hound, I am not kidding she can smell THE slightest scent from a mile away, so mixing chemicals upstairs was never successful. As time went on and I grew older I was able to have my hair professionally done and thus began the blonde journey. During my junior year of high school, I needed to stand out again so I impulsively decided to go back to brown, and that a mistake because I left the house to hang out with Maddy as a blonde and returned with black hair. I remember walking in the house and my parents panicked at the sight of my box dyed black hair, I told them I hadn’t dyed it, “it was just wet from showering”. It was a mess. It had a lovely green tint as any box dyed black hair would. It took months to reverse the damage and eventually become blonde again. 

Fast forward to 2020, when the world is shut down due to a pandemic, there is anxiety about going to a hair salon (naturally). My roots had been growing out for months, at first it was trendy and cute but soon it was a harsh contrast, people’s eyes were drawn to it immediately (or so I thought).  I knew something would need to be done but I couldn't bring myself to anything. Anyway obviously after months of debating what to do and overthinking something so simple I went to a salon on my lunch break and did something I never thought. Though I did need to hype myself up for weeks to even consider making an appointment, it didn’t seem like a big deal until my mom and Morris came down to visit and I had briefly mentioned my blonde hair and my identity in the same sentence. It was nothing too profound until a few days later when my mom brought it up again, reminding me it was a thought-provoking point. So THAT is why I am writing this post on my hair color because as you will soon find out, it’s a bit deeper than sharing about my lunch break salon visit. 

I was full of false confidence in high school and until my junior year of college, using sarcasm to draw people in. I personally don’t like looking back at myself in high school because I remember how low my self-esteem was, I don’t like seeing who I was and how I projected my false confidence back then. I mentioned to my mom that it had taken me forever to dye my hair dark because I was worried that dark hair would make me the same person I was in the past. I was feeling so confident and proud of physical appearance and dying my hair brown seemed like I would be taking steps backward to who I was before. 

We are doing identity work in 7th grade ELA this year, it’s brought up every day (even when reading The Canterbury Tales). During their first assignment, students created an identity web, something that pushed them to really think about what made them unique. Physical traits are a part of our identity but I saw that too many of my students only listed their physical traits to express their identity. There’s nothing wrong with this and I realized I did it too,  physical appearance is THE first thing people see about your identity. I pursued a blonde identity for so long because it was what people saw first, if people liked that maybe they would stick around and experience the rest of my identity.  I was a blonde when I finally felt confident in my skin, so in my head, if I got rid of my blonde hair I would be the person I was before, I would be getting rid of my confidence. I would be taking steps backward when I finally had the momentum going forward. That realization was a sign that I was hiding the other elements of my identity and only focused on my physical appearance. I was putting so much work into my blonde hair that no other time was spent on other elements of my identity.

I dyed my hair.  I made my hair color the focus of my blog post because it became too much of a focus in life. We often disregard other elements of our identity and focus too much on the physical traits. Physical traits are a part of who we are, but they are not our entire being. I know of the other elements of my identity and am proud of them, but I owe it to myself to put in as much effort into making those elements known as I did to make my blonde identity known. With that being said, if you find yourself making an identity web or listing elements of your identity and you are only listing physical attributes maybe it’s time to dig a little deeper and identify what is beyond your hair color.