redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird Apr. 19th, 2006 11:07 am)
I feel as though everything I've done with my hair lately was a mistake.

Before I went up to Montreal, [livejournal.com profile] rysmiel had offered to trim my hair for me. I liked this idea, because I'd rather trust a long-haired friend to take off no more than necessary. Unfortunately, by the time the removal of split ends was done, there wasn't enough left to braid properly. I feel as though I've lost about a year of growth, and am hoping to have it long enough to braid by summer. [livejournal.com profile] papersky says that hers grows about 2 cm in the two weeks after a trim, which would be nice if it happened for me as well. In the meantime, it'll have to go back in a stupid little ponytail while I'm exercising.

Also, the purple seems to be almost gone. While I was in Montreal, I was enjoying that my relatively subtle purple highlights were calm and modest by local standards, because we saw lots of people with really impressive not-found-in-nature color jobs. But one more shampoo, this morning, plus the haircut, seems to have left me almost purple-less. But with the damage from the bleaching.

I think I'm going to go buy a can of the spray-on purple.

And I'm going to try not to be too disturbed and distracted by this, because it really is trivial. But the significantly shorter hair feels different, when I brush it or reach back to run my hand through it, which I do quite a bit when it's loose.

From: [identity profile] callunav.livejournal.com


It *does* feel different. And it's an important part of how you perceive yourself, even if not primarily visually.

When my hair was growing out, too short to braid and too short to look anything other than ridiculous but too long to be any good hanging around my face, I discovered that I could braid the sides back along the side of my head. I guess it was a simple kind of French braiding. And the entertaining thing was that even if I could tell it wasn't very good, no one else seemed to be able to. It was a godsend, as a technique, because I was going crazy with middle-length hair going everywhere in my face. I don't know if something like that would work well for you, but I thought I'd mention it.

Also, it sucks that the purple has gone. When I was dying my hair blue with Manic Panic, two washes took it from royal blue to baby blue, and another two to a sickly chlorine green (since I, too, had bleached the hair in order to get the dye to show up.). I resolved this by redying it once or twice and then cutting it ALL OFF, but I was 21 and in college, which is, for most of us, a better time to shave one's head than later in life. I was hoping your dye would last because A: they all *told* me that blue didn't last the way other colors did, but I was stubborn, and B: you got it done in a salon. Fooey. I hope you find a solution which pleases you.

Also, please admire my restraint in not immediately innundating you with hair care advice. Except, I suppose I sort of did. But nowhere near as much as I might have!
liv: oil painting of seated nude with her back to the viewer (body)

From: [personal profile] liv


I can really relate to this. It's only in the last few weeks that my hair has grown back enough to make me feel comfortable in my body after getting it cut a year ago. It was a really, really nice haircut, but it was way too short. (Even now that it's waist-length again I miss those extra couple of inches.) And the professionally done and very expensive dye didn't last nearly as long as I would have hoped.

The one time I dyed my hair purple (really more magenta), I did it myself using what was supposed to be a semi-permanent dye. It was absolutely stunning for approximately 6 hours. Then I had two weeks when I got pink dye over every garment I owned while my actual hair faded to this weird pink-ish tint which just looked odd with my colouring. Of course, the pink was much more indelible on the clothes than on my hair! Then I had a few months with faint reddish tinges under certain lights, but basically you couldn't tell I'd done anything. Given it took me about 5 hours to do in the first place, I never repeated it.

So yeah, if I try to do anything to my hair, I end up regretting it. Either because it's too short, or because the style I was aiming for works but lasts too little time to justify the cost and effort of achieving it. And then I feel guilty for that much emotional reaction to something as trivial as my hairstyle.

From: [identity profile] pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com


I should plug "Deep Purple" by Special Effects, which on me goes from a very dark grapey purple to a bright magenta over a couple months.

But I tend to wash my hair every four or five days in cold water -- if you wash yours every day at the gym, for example, I'm sure it would fade more quickly.

From: [identity profile] dichroic.livejournal.com


I agree that it's generally safer to have someone with long hair cut yours. Stylists are especially bad about wanting to layer it so that it's OK hanging down but you end up with all sorts of little pieces that can't easily be put up. And if I'm putting it back for rowing or the gym, I just want a ponytail or two braids; I have no time to futz with bobbypins.

Incidentally, two braids worked for me back when it was still too short for one ponytail. When it was even shorter than that, what worked for me was stretchy headbands that are essentially just oversized ponytail elastics, to get it off my face for working out.

My hair gets pretty bad split ends when it's this long. I think they usually solve the problem of not cutting too much off by just cutting off only the worst of them, not every last bit of splittage.

From: [identity profile] porcinea.livejournal.com


Oh! Yes, that's the *oddest* feeling. I find it's worst in the shower. Your hand runs out of hair!
.

About Me

redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Redbird

Most-used tags

Powered by Dreamwidth Studios

Style credit

Expand cut tags

No cut tags