toro blondes

I worked tonight at Toro. We were super busy. The place was packed, four deep at the bar from 8 p.m. to 11. Only at the end of the night did I have time to look up and survey the scene around me. When I finally did, I realized: the place was packed with beautiful women, a reasonable percentage of which were light, almost platinum blondes. Three in particular caught my eye, all levels 10 at least, with very minimal highlighting. All of whom struck me as artificial, contrived.

"Wow," I said to my colleague Sarah. "Those women are so blonde." I thought back to a time when I just filled in at Toro, two summers ago in 2006 when I picked up shifts to help out my friend, the general manager. I counted the blondes then, tallying their color, viewing the light blondes with a competitive eye. I thought about the women in the restaurant now, about the sheer volume of processing that goes into an entire head of 12-14-inch hair that looks like that. It cost her thousands of dollars to look that way, I thought. And still, those roots.

"I'm not that blonde, am I?" I asked Sarah.

"No, no you're not," Sarah said. Then she looked like she felt bad, as though she was afraid she's hurt my feelings. Apologetically she offered, "You could be that blonde, with some highlights. Next time you go in, just ask for more highlights."

"No, it's cool," I said. "I don't want to be that blonde anymore. I used to be that blonde and I loved it. But not anymore. That's not who I want to be."