In fifth grade I got red highlights. Tenth grade I dip-dyed my tips. Twelfth grade I dyed my whole head a light brown. This pink-purple-blue-grey gradient is by far the most fun I've had with my hair yet.
I've been wanting to do a bold colour for awhile, but maintenance held me back. Now that I'm no longer competitively swimming, I decided that it was time to go for it, because I'd no longer have to worry about chlorine doing weird things to it (ah, the nightmare of poop green or plaque yellow hair).
After 5 hours of bleaching, bleaching again, colouring, smelling the chemical fumes every time my hair got rinsed, and my hairdresser tsk-ing over my dead hair... here it is!
"
Dyed hair, more piercings - are these the rebellious teenage years we never had?" -
Kathleen
Just a few days before this I was in
Beijing and had gone to get piercings with Kathleen. Mom would recommend waiting to do this in the States because it's more sanitary, but... it's so much cheaper to get it done in Beijing. So I went for my second piercings, but decided to hold off on my cartilage.
We went to a market that was selling a bunch of stationary, clothing, stationary, and... piercings. Winding through the alleys of the market myself, I would never have found it, but Kathleen had come here before with
Steph and both their moms to get their first piercings, so I followed her lead and we eventually made our way to a nondescript corner, no sign or anything. We asked around for "the lady that does the piercings" and she eventually popped out. She dotted our ears with purple marker and swabbed them with alcohol. 20RMB (10RMB for each lobe) later, I got two new holes in my ears.
I neglected to tell my hairdresser to be more careful around my newly-pierced ears, because his English wasn't the greatest (Korean hair salon), so I thought my explanation would only confuse him and I didn't want to trouble him, so I kept hush. Unfortunately, he shampooed around my ears very vigorously and somehow dislodged my right piercing, losing the earring. I quickly replaced it by pulling the earring out of my first piercing and putting it in my second piercing. I wasn't worried about losing the earring (after all, it was only 10RMB), but I was worried about the hole closing up and/or getting infected. Ironically, it was my left piercing that ended up getting infected because I had left the original low-quality earring in. But anywho, it healed and my piercings are in stable condition now. Oh, and I watched Korean drama (with subtitles) the whole time so it was an overall great experience.
Why do we do these things to ourselves? Why do we get our hair dyed? Why do we get our ears pierced? Why do we strip our hair of nutrients? Why do we poke holes in ourselves? What's the point? Economically and logically, it seems like a stupid thing to do because you're also paying money for... what? Aesthetics? Ah well, what's the point of anything really? Remind me to stop writing posts at 2AM.
PS: If you follow me on
Instagram, you'd have seen my new hair six months ago, oops. Now my hair has faded to a light brown/blonde, and I'll probably just leave it as it is for awhile. I think I'll eventually try something pastel. I mean, since my hair is as light as it's ever been, I might as well, right? :P
Labels: life lately
