The Biggest Hair Mistake I Ever Made*

Let’s face it, no one has a perfect hair history. We all look at old photos and cringe at someone of the hair styles, even if some were only during childhood. It might be easy to laugh some of those bad hair choices, but others can really effect people emotionally.

My hair is naturally blonde. When I was little it was white blonde but as I got older it started to darken and looked more like what LM has now. But it was thick and bushy. I had a natural wave but with the ingrained notion of “brush your hair” it usually looked more like Hermione Granger circa Philosopher’s Stone (before they gave her glossy girls and ruined her for all not-so pretty girl like me, thanks Hollywood). Then came the steam straighteners. My mum was a hairdresser in her previous life (before she had me, decided she loved kids and retrained as a teacher) and would never ever let me iron my hair, so I had those old steam straighteners.. which didn’t really work as the steam made my hair more frizzy than straight. This was followed by highlights at 15, a consolation prize for getting braces. I looked like your typical teen of the time, straightened (sort of) hair with high lights. I still wasn’t happy. So I went to a friends house and dyed it bright red, with permanent hair dye when I was 17. My mum wasn’t impressed and by the time I was leaving for University she had finally got it back to blonde. Poor mum. The start of my second semester I dyed it brown, and I never looked back. Well kinda, but we’ll get to that.

As my hair is naturally thick, (well was) I’ve pretty much always had it long. In childhood my mum only cut it short twice, once when I was a toddler much to my Grandmother’s horror and once in school when some jerk put gum in it. Both times is grew back fairly fast. The only other time I’ve had it cut short was shortly after I finished University, I was struggling to get a job and my mum thought it was because I looked young. So I had it cut short with a blunt fringe. I hated it. I hated it so much I wore a hat for weeks on end. I felt ugly for the first time ever because of my hair. But if I thought having a glossy brown bob with a Zooey Deschanel fringe was bad, I had no idea what was to come in 7 years time.

Fast forward 7 years, I had gorgeous long red hair with my natural wave. It straightened well and was finally a perfect hairstyle. THEN I made the biggest hair mistake of my life, that even 2 years later I’m paying for. I let myself to be convinced into dying it, blonde. I was stupid, in love and riding on that. I felt invincible. But I should have known it was the worst idea even after my sister put the first box of colour stripper on my hair and it went like straw and bright orange. I have never ever cried so much over my hair as I did. 2 boxes of stripper and a £120 trip to the hair dressers and I was a horribly yellow blonde. I’d lost a good 5 inches off my hair, it no longer had a natural beach wave (even if I used salt spray I couldn’t get it to work any more), it wasn’t glossy it was dry. In my head I had lovely ashy blonde waves, I looked like a Disney princess with the length. In reality, it was a mess and I hated it. It would never be the colour I wanted because my hair has natural red tones in it, it’s why even brown dye had looked red and why red dye always took so well. But at £120 (that my mum, sister and then boyfriend chipped in for) I couldn’t just stick on some red dye again and go back. I was stuck. I paid a further £80 on two separate occasions throughout the next 8 months for it’s up keep. In the January, that guy dumped me and I was so sad that my mum helped me dye it back to red so I wouldn’t be dumped with bad hair. But it was too late, the damage was done.

I can honestly say my hair hasn’t grown since then, it’s the same length. Even after a dye it’s no longer glossy and that natural wave never returned, no matter how may hair masques I stick on it. But the worst part, it still falls out. I knew as soon as I put bleach on it, there would be some initial falling out but it’s still falling out. My hair is so fragile and thin now, I miss when I used to struggle to tame it when my top knot would be massive and if I braided it, I had lovely thick braids I could band over my head like a milk maid. I’ve even looked into hair transplant cost London, it would be worth travelling to the city if it gave me my hair confidence back.

Now I dye it once every 3/4 months, usually before a special occasion but it doesn’t really hold any colour. I try to not wash it more than twice a week as washing it seems to cause it lose it’s colour along with a ton of hair, dry shampoo is my best friend. I hope eventually after enough time has passed it’ll be in a better condition and it’ll start to grow again, but in the mean time, I’d just really like it to stop falling out!

What’s the biggest hair faux pas you ever made?