Thursday, January 13, 2011

Hair Colour

If you are female, you would have coloured your hair at least once, is my guess. The female sex is fairly obsessed with hair colour, yours truly being no exception. I bet even Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette must have done something with their hair. Not only hair colour, we are obsessed with painting our faces. When Jezebel was surrounded by Jehu she arranged her hair, painted her eyes and looked out of the window from where she was subsequently thrown down (2 Kings 9:30). She must have known she was about to die and wanted to look presentable in death. And whenever we think of Cleopatra the first image that comes to mind is her dramatic eye makeup. So don’t pass judgment on young girls with eye makeup that made them look like they have been punched in the eye; they are just following a centuries-old tradition.

So what’s with the hair? Colouring hair is fun, easy, and puts you in a good mood. A newly coloured hair makes you feel good about yourself and you secretly wait for others to notice it and shower you with compliments, and who loves compliments more than us females? Can’t afford pricey colouring at salons? No worries, there are hundreds of do-it-yourself packs at affordable prices, and there’s always good old henna.

I was born with fine thin brownish hair, and have been constantly colouring it ever since I was maybe fourteen/fifteen. There were no fancy colours back then, and my mother would apply black hair dye for me and I would roam about with unnaturally black hair which was still better than a sad brown. Then came the henna phase. Henna mixed with oil, coffee, tea, eggs, lime juice, beer, everything which was recommended. Henna makes your hair dry, but I find it very cleansing. And I love the smell.

Nowadays we have all kinds of colour available to us. I have tried chocolate, burgundy, cherry red, metallic red, and an almost blonde light brown. I used to curse my natural hair colour because it made me look like one of those raggedy light haired street children, but now I consider it a blessing. Why so? Well, since it is such a weak colour, any hair colour you apply on it will immediately overpower it and the result is beautiful glorious crowning glory. I’ve had friends who are unfortunately born with jet black hair, who no matter how many bottles of hair colour they apply their hair still remains black. True, natural jet black is beautiful, and sometimes I’d envy them, but I've learnt how to be happy with what I have and work towards improving it.

But the biggest drawback, or should I say disadvantage, of colouring hair is the obvious difference in colour when hair starts growing and ugly roots show up. As much as I love colouring my hair, I have always been lazy in the touch-ups department and so my hair is always a kaleidoscope of colours. Not to worry, I can always go for another round of colouring and bring it to one solid colour.

6 comments:

  1. Mizoramah sam colour arawn lar lar kha, ka sam zuah lai ani bawk nen ka ti buang ve theng a; kohhran lama ka in hmanpui te mit akham khawp mai.

    Sam tuak neih hian sam colour chu analh lo duh bawk ! A CHANVE VAR A CHANVE BUANG, SEN :-)

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  2. Even I color my hair - during Holi. Or to be more precise, my friends color my hair :P

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  3. sekibuhchhuak - Hahahah kohhrana inhmang tak, samsei buang theng mai chuan mit chu a tikham duh ngawt ang le! Ka hriat vawikhatna, che dangdai khawp mai.

    Kima - To be even more precise, what's left of your hair... :P

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  4. When girls talk about coloring their hair, reminds me of the line in Mr.Deeds where Winona said "I have brown eyes and I don't know what my natural hair colour is anymore."
    Anyway, while in college, I went through a phase where I grew my hair a bit and colored it from yellow to beige and even purple and finally bleached it.. those days.. I was told I looked like Ajinomoto.. whoever that is.. LoL..
    Anyways, Happy Belated New Year!

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  5. blackestred - Happy New Year! Long time no see! Good to see you woken up from your hibernation, am expecting a new post from you.

    Purple would be beautiful, but yellow... anyway if you want to experiment with your hair, go ahead - has always been my motto (not ajinomoto :P). We are lucky that hair always grows back, so the worst haircut and most unflatterring colours can always be changed after a few months.

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  6. i prefer simple herbal henna to all kinds of hair color stuff till now.. the most tragic thing i faced here is, no one knows how to apply on your hair.. (mind they don't have normal hair here!!) and i had to apply it all by myself, the result was always different, some part too dark, some part too light.. and my friend asked me one day "What's the color of your hair?" i simply said, "Castanha!!"

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