Fifty shades of unicorn

“Mom, look! The lady sitting over there has purple hair!” This is something that happens all the time. Long stares, gasps or comments that are meant to have no sound but somehow everyone ends up hearing them.  I must admit, I am aware of the fact that my hair, with its bright colours is somehow bound to catch attention of other people. But safe to say, the comments and notes are hardly ever negative; more often they are expressed with admiration over the unusual shade and occurrence of such (un)natural phenomenon.

Let´s take a trip down the memory lane and look at where it all began. I was born with a face (blessing or curse?) that encourages every stranger that has ever walked by me to ask for directions or an advice about a good local restaurant. It doesn´t necessarily have to be a bad thing because thanks to this little perk, I made friends with loads of people from around the world. Although my face encourages people to start a conversation with me, my hair, with its unorganized curls and not really distinctive shade of light brown never worked in my favour.  Ever since I have started experimenting with my hair, I realized that although it may sound drastic from the beginning, change can be really good.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where it all started. Of course, being a student with not much money to spend, I decided to turn to one of the most “reliable” hairstylists in the world; I went to a drugstore and bought a red box-dye. I remember exactly, that it was one day before my trip to England, first year of high school. I wanted to be cool so naturally, I bough the most ordinary and generic shade of red I could find and let me tell you, it felt great! Well, it doesn´t feel so great now when I look at the photos, but whatever, every person goes through stages, right? RIGHT????

Being the little emo that I was few years later (of course I didn´t call myself that way, I always thought of myself as the coolest metal girl ever) I didn´t avoid the dark phase of all the possible shades of black hair, either. Raven black, the blackest black, black with blue highlights, black with purple highlights… I had it all, trust me.

It well down the hill (and up the colour palette) in the following years. The worst phase was to bleach the dark hair and the urge to be blond was stronger than me. However, this time, I didn´t do it myself. I went to the hairdressers and had it done professionally, which was probably what saved my hair from breaking, falling and making me bald like my grandpa.  However, the urge to go darker found me one more time. This time I went “only” to chocolate brown, which lasted at least half a year. From there it started taking a more… let´s say… radical direction. I started with white-beached bangs which I later decided to colour with a forest-green shade. 

The forest fairy phase lasted maybe two months which resulted in me becoming a ginger. I kinda liked it, to be honest. And since then, I never went back to black. Later the balayage trend started and I was all for it. First, my friend hairdresser did it for me and I was living for it. Later I decided to be brave and do it myself. It always looked good but the quality of my hair started to go down the hill. I went to the hairdressers and they told me about a hair mask which nourishes and repairs my hair but leaves it platinum to lavender for a few days. I told myself that I would do anything just to keep my hair on my head. And from there, you can imagine how I ended up with so many colours on my head. When my hair got back to its previous glory, I found out about these crazy colours that you mix into a conditioner and it leaves your hair beautifully fairy-tale-shit-crazy-awesome. Using them, you can go from vibrant neon shades to beautiful subtle pastel shades.  As you can see from the collage, I went crazy and tried every possible shade that came to my mind.

To sum it all up, I am in no way, shape or for an attention seeker. I would say that I am a total opposite. I wouldn´t say that I change hair colours because I have a low self-esteem, either. I just do it, because I like the change. I change for myself, not for other people. I don’t even give a flying f*** about what people thing about my (maybe) crazy attitude. Some people paint, others have tattoos or piercings; there are so many ways how people can express themselves. Apart from writing, I express myself through my hair and I don´t see anything wrong about it.

Until next time,

Čauko, Lenka 😊