I’m 52 years old but my hair is almost entirely (well about 80%) white, which makes me look at least ten years older.I’ve been dying my hair for many years.I do it at home from one of those bottles you can buy at WalMart or Target or Big Lots.About two years ago, I realized that if I don’t color it every four or so weeks, it looks pretty bad and I am treated older.This I don’t like so I try to do it often.Earlier this year however, while I was in the packing and moving stage of my out of state move, I went about three months without coloring it.It looked horrible.I felt and looked about 70 (well at least in my book I looked a lot older).When I came up with my final load (well final minus all the stuff I left in storage), the first thing I did was go to Target and get a box of hair color.That was a while ago.I’ve been so busy that I hadn’t even noticed that my hair was pretty white all over again (not “pretty white” but a lot white).It had been two and a half months since I had colored my hair.By then I had gotten some stuff from storage, including three bottles of hair dye.So I grabbed one and dyed my hair.
Now you have to understand that dying your own hair, while very much like shampooing your own hair, is not as easy as it sounds or looks.You need to be able to get every bit of it soaked in hair color.Every strand.This was easy.Before.Like a few years ago.Now it’s not so easy.I can get the hair I can see, in the front, top and sides, but I can’t get the hair in the back.
I colored my hair and two things went wrong.First and most obvious, I apparently grabbed the bottle my daughter had bought for me to put in her hair.It’s black.I don’t ever color my hair black because it’s just too dark for me.It’s too severe of a look, especially for a 52 year old.I usually use a dark brown, which is my natural color.So the first thing I noticed when I washed it all out and took the towel off is that I now had dark, dark, dark black hair.Oops!
The second thing that went wrong was unknown to me for a week.My daughter came over yesterday and we spent the day together.In the middle of one store, she grabbed my hair and shrieked, “You missed a spot!Oh my you missed a HUGE spot!Oh Mom!It’s all white in the back!”
Apparently my hair has gotten too gray for me to do by myself without really messing it up by missing a huge spot.So I either need to go get it done at a salon, find someone to come help me do it at home, or get my daughter to come over and just take a look and make sure I’ve gotten all of it in the back.Doing it at a salon is far too expensive and I don’t know anyone in town to come help me.I guess I will have to trust my daughter to come when I need her to come so she can inspect the back of my hair.I also need to get two bottles of the same color so that I can use two bottles to make sure I get it all, if necessary.
In the meantime, I will walk around with a skunk stripe in the back.Aging stinks!
Ack!!!
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Well, I think gray hair rocks. Mr. R. keeps telling me I should color my gray, but I like it.
I’ll bet your gray streak looks punk rock!
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Okay first let me say that this reminded me so much of dying my own hair that I had to chuckle a couple of times. 🙂 Secondly, if you can, become friends with a hairdresser/stylist. One of my best friends is a hair dresser and she will usually do my hair (if not free) then almost free. I usually just pay for the color, which is less than $15. That’s less than the cost of buying hair color for my thick hair or fixing a foible. Or I’ll treat her to lunch which can also be inexpensive since she is always dieting and we can usually share a meal. It’s pretty sweet! Right now I do have a few gray’s but I’m dealing with them. I won’t pull them out though because then 10 more will show up for the funeral! 😀
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Every once in a while my son tells me that I have a chunk of dark hair standing out from the fake blonde. Kind of mortifying to look in a mirror and realize I’ve been walking around with weird chunks of blonde and brown in the back…
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I dyed my hair black once when I was younger… it isn’t as easy as you’d think. I’ll probably make my daughter help me out too. If I couldn’t do it right when I was twenty, there’s no way I’d get it right now.
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I had to giggle, because you reminded me of the time I bought the wrong color and got that awful red that seems to be the favorite of those over 70.
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Shawn, the one time I splurged on hair coloring at the salon, the guy put in the right color but took it upon himself to put in a “burgundy rinse” without saying anything to me. I hated it. It was that color that old ladies wear! I wondered if he was trying to tell me something about my age!
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i keep waiting for the right time to just shave the whole thing off and start over.. out here on the coast gray boring old looking hair is the norm so i would blend right in!!!!!!
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I love my gray hair — but the black it’s on top of tarts it up nicely, I’ve had people ask me who my colorist is. My mom was the only one of her sisters (and her mother, too!) not to color her hair, so I guess I come by it naturally. I had my godmother admire it and had to tell her that the reason she hadn’t had it like that was because she was probably busy dyeing it black right then.
Now I got one MORE reason not to dye it, lol! Thanks, Corina…
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I’ve started to get some gray, and I’m only 31, and I wonder sometimes if the color is causing it. Like you, I hafta color frequently to keep my shade, because I find no matter how permanent it says it is on the bottle, my hair always fades back to a sort of brassy strawberry blonde. It doesn’t look good with my skin tone, I like it much darker.
Weird to my mind that nature, in all her wisdom would give me the wrong hair color for my skin tone.
I guess a skunk stribe isn’t so elegant, but it it were a forelock of white, that might be ultra cool. Think ‘Rogue’ from X-men.
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Amuirin…my daughter has been wanting me to get a Rogue stripe in front for the past five or six years now. I might do it one day. I love X-Men.
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I’d give anything for all my gray to be one lovely streak in the center of my head. Instead, I have a little here and there.
I’m actually lucky. Many women in my family are gray in their early 20s. My sister is one. I only have a few strands. I haven’t colored my hair in six months.
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Pan…my hair has been gray since my teens…a lot gray. Of course it has gotten much worse in the past five years or so but still, it got gray very early!
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Once I had black hair. No, it wasn’t some gothgirl stage I was going through. I was in a production of West Side Story and I was a Puerrto Rican and the director insisted on authenticity and made those of us who were blonde dye our hair. I was the blondest of the blondes and it was a disaster.
I hope that you are able to rectify the situation. Next time have your daughter help you 😉
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My son has had gray in his hair (silver, actually) since junior high.
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