Maybe, due to the same stereotypes that led to Barbados guy's drug and sex-party comments, they didn’t want to be seen as the parents of the blue-haired girl. What was it about my hair that set them off? I was shocked that the same people who had supported me when I decided to major in gender and sexuality studies, move across the country twice, and jetted off to Ibiza at a moment's notice had such strong opinions about something so personal and so unimportant. For the entirely of the two days I spent in their house, I received a deluge of questions and comments: “Why did you dye your hair?” “Have people been asking you why you dyed your hair?” “That’s not permanent, is it?” “Will you be able to change it?” “Were you trying to be really artistic or creative or something? “People have been complimenting you?” “Please don’t get blue shoes - it’ll just give you an incentive to keep your hair blue.” So, I didn’t think it would be an issue with them.īut when I visited home, it was all they could talk about - and not in a good way. And, by the time they saw my hair, I'd only received compliments about it. They let me make my own decisions in peace. I have pretty accepting, mind-their-own-business parents. Since the general stereotype of fantasy hair is that someone’s wild and rebellious, I guess it’s not too surprising that a feminine-presenting person with electric blue waves would be viewed as “slutty.” 3. Then, he said something I was not expecting: “It sort of gives off the impression that you’d, like, go to a sex party and sleep with 15 guys.” Apparently, like most stereotypes associated with women, this one has a sexual component. “Are you going to dye your hair back?” he asked me. We ended up talking for a few hours, and we ran into each other again a few days later. “You seem like the type of person who’s kind of crazy,” he said. While I was walking along the beach, a guy came up to me to sell me a drink, and one of the first things he asked was which drugs I was into. It was when I took a trip to Barbados, though, that things really got interesting. But on my way back to New York, they stopped me at security and I had to consolidate two bags into one. It could’ve been a coincidence, but on my way to San Francisco, when I still had brown hair, I didn’t get caught for bringing an extra carry-on bag onto the plane. Here are some of the biggest changes I noticed. But I finally felt I had hair as unique and colorful as I was.įrom the moment I stopped out of that salon, people were already treating me differently. Ironic, I know, since I looked as different from the way I was born as possible. ( Bleaching kind of destroys your hair, so the ends don’t always hold up.) But afterward, I looked in the mirror and for the first time, I thought I looked like myself. I had a brief mid-appointment freakout when I saw myself blonde, and then another one when I learned they had to cut off several inches to avoid damage. I decided to go to Posh in San Francisco at a friend’s recommendation, showed the photo to their colorist Whitney, and put the fate of my hair into her hands. I googled “blue hair” and browsed the image results until I found one I loved, which faded from turquoise at the top to green at the bottom. I was going to do it and not pay attention what anyone thought - except, that is, for the purpose of an experiment: I would document how my hair color affected the way people treated me.įor such a big decision, I honestly didn’t put all that much thought into it. I wondered how people would treat me differently with colored hair that was a shade not found in nature.īut this summer, I decided that the haters were not my problem. But dyeing it always seemed like an act reserved for an older, braver version of myself. For years, I had this fantasy that one day, when I was grown up and self-actualized, I would have blue hair.

Silver blue hair men