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.