the blondest spot

Last week I saw Jason for highlights. Instead of posting about the usually euphoric experience of becoming blonder after enduring three and a half weeks of roots, I posted about Dan who died. But today, while applying mascara I realized: there is an entire chunk of my hair that is blonder than blonde:

See it? Right there in the front?

Usually Jason does a toner rinse for me, but last Wednesday, he decided to bring the whole of my head up a notch. "How blonde do you want to be, Kitty?" he asked.

"What do you think?" I said. The guantlet was thrown.

10 minutes later, Jason was rushing me from the chair to the shampoo bowl: "It's turning grey, Kitty, go! Over to the shampoo bowl! NOW!" I threw the January issue of Shape on the floor and ran. It could rest there in a pile of hair for now. Who really cares what my "happy weight" is, anyway?

Fortunately, the almost grey spot stopped at blonde. But if you look closely, you'll see: it's a little blonde-grey. Here it is again:


The moral of the story: ladies, beware. Blonde hair = bleach + hues of purple & blue to off-set brassiness & orange. In short, when you really go for it with peroxide, grey is just minutes away.

Proceed with caution.

blonde of the week: Jean Harlow

In 2008 platinum blondes are all but common. But it hasn't always been this way. While women have been dying their hair blonde for millennia, starting with the Ancient Greeks, followed by the Ancient Romans, and pretty much every known civilization that followed, the "platinum blonde" didn't develop until early this century, when a young screen actress named Jean Harlow broke into the movie business.

With Jean Harlow the stars aligned perfectly: not only was peroxide safer and more accessible to modern women of the 1930s than for previous generations (though not nearly as accessible as became in the 1950s thanks to Clairol), innovations in lighting and new types of film stock made blonde hair appear lighter than ever before. The talkies were just catching on. Harlow had recently moved to Hollywood where she sort of fell into the movie business...or was pushed into it by her over-bearing stage mother (the real Jean Harlow; the famous young actress' birth name was Harlean Capenter.) A recent divorce left Harlow nee Harlean broke, and necessitated that she work as much as possible to make ends meet. As a result, young Jean appeared in three films that opened at the same time in 1931. Suddenly Jean Harlow was everywhere and her "look" became a sensation.

Harlow claimed that she had never dyed or bleached her hair...but sales of peroxide sky-rocketed anyway. (Legend has it Jean spent every Sunday with a studio hairdresser banishing her roots with peroxide, ammonia, bleach, and soap flakes--so much processing that at one point, it all fell out & she was forced to wear a wig.)

"Flaxen, tow, yellow, gold -- none of these was dazzling enough, modern enough -- to describe the astonishing hair of the movie stars of the late 1920s and early '30s," writes Ellen Tremper in I'm No Angel: The Blonde in Fiction and Film. "It was called platinum, after the jeweler's metal, rarer, even more valuable than gold." Platinum blonde. In 1931, Jean Harlow starred in a film of the same name, based on a young starlet whose life was not unlike her own.

So today, we celebrate Jean Harlow who gave bleach blondes of the 20th century new heights of blondeness to which to aspire.

If platinum blonde is "the lightest shade of blonde hair, obtained by bleaching almost all the color out of the hair and then adding violet and blue tones to give it a white-platinum blonde look", modern blondes of the new millenium have to wonder...

What's next?

Is it true...blondes have more fun?

I just purchased this vintage ad on Ebay this weekend! I can't wait until it arrives on my doorstep, via the magic cyber fairies in Ebay-land. I will frame it and hang it over my desk as a constant reminder that I am but one woman in a long tradition of blondes, obsessed with answering this very question.

Happy Monday!

brunette dreams

I had an early meeting on Friday, so you'd think I would have stopped drinking before midnight Thursday evening. I did not. And when the wine ran out around midnight, I went right ahead and poured myself and my guest a nice glass of bourbon, saying "It'll be fine! I'll just add a little water to mine!"

Needless to say, I was tired yesterday. So instead of writing all afternoon like a good, ambitious little author, I had to go down for a nap around 3:30, like a kindergartener. While I napped, I had brunette dreams...

In my dream, I was on the phone with the folks at Escape Salon, making an appointment with Jason:

"What kind of processing do you need done?" the salon guy asked.
"My roots," I said.
"A foil, then?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm not exactly sure what Jason does, but he always makes me ask for a long appointment when I book. Because I have a lot of hair."
"Okay, then. We'll put you down for a full foil. See next week!"
"Thanks!" I said, and hung up the phone with a smile.

Then I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth or put on make-up or something. And when I looked into the mirror, the me staring back at me was...a brunette?

Yes, there she was. Brunette me, from last winter. My hair was dark, and long, and lustrous, and shiny.

Oops! I thought. My hair's brown again! When did that happen? Jason is going to be so pissed! I'd better call the salon back and tell them I don't need highlights, I need a full color.

Then I started thinking about the situation rationally: How the hell is he ever going to get this color out? My previous visits to go from brown to blonde flashed before my eyes:

sitting in the chair for FIVE HOURS...
the burning sensation of the bleach on my hairline...
the part where my hair turned SALMON PINK...
the limp, lifeless, doll-hair texture that my hair ALREADY has from going blonde, to brown, and back again...

Sweet Jesus, what did I do???

A few minutes later I woke up. I grabbed a fistful of hair and held it in front of my eyes...

Phew, still blonde!

But goodness, what a nightmare!

Until I find you, Jason

We interrupt this blog for the following Public Service Announcement...

South End stylist extraordinaire Jason, formerly of Liquid Hair Studios, has landed at a new South End salon. Starting tomorrow, Dec 1st, Jason can be found at Escape Spa on Waltham Street on the edge of Boston's SoWa district.

Jason left Liquid abruptly early last Fall, much to the dismay of his devoted clients. The stylist has been difficult to track ever since. He offered services to desperate clients in need of cut and color on a limited basis from his South End apartment. These clandestine meetings allowed the stylist to keep a certain high maintenance hair color client blonde for the duration of his "between job phase", but the arrangement was sub-optimal: "Jason has two cats and I am allergic," says the maintenance blonde, who asked that her name be withheld. "But he did send me home with some delicious meat sauce after my last visit."

Jason can be found behind the stylist's chair at Escape Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from noon to close. For appointments, call (617) 423-1350. Please check back after next Wednesday, to read a detailed review of the high-maintenance blonde's salon-going experience.

Regular blog programming will now resume...

before and after blondes

Before the blonde,
before the Marilyn,
when she was still Norma Jean Mortenson...

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't. - Marilyn Monroe

* * * * *

After the blonde,
after the star was born,
a living icon, candy for any camera lucky enough to spy her...

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. - Marilyn Monroe

The fascination continues...

but Kir, you were always a blonde to me

About 2 months ago, the Mathematician and I journeyed west to seek our fortune in the hipster utopia of Portland, Oregon. Actually, he was going there for work, and I decided to go along for the ride. I reconnected with an old, dear friend of mine from high school last spring, Miss Mary, and she had recently relocated to Portland, so I decided to take this opportunity to visit with her in person for the first time in like 5 years. Our very different lives had put us on disparate paths. Would we still get along? Would we have anything to talk about? I had to find out!

I think we were both a little nervous at first. Our slight hesitance kinda reminded me of the very first time we hung out outside of school together 14 years ago. Remember that feeling? Your first friend “date” with someone you just met at school? Tentative at first, but we ended up having so much fun. A few days later I slept over her house & we snuck puffs of a loosely rolled, very weak joint (my first) and watched Dirty Dancing together. We ate Cool Ranch Doritos and raw cookie dough right out of the Pillsbury tube, and laughed and laughed and laughed. I knew it that night: it was love! The kind of special girlfriend bond I’d always missed out on, having only brothers.

Fourteen years later our lives are very different, but within hours of hanging out together in Portland we realized: we still heart each other every bit as much as the first time we ever hung out. And it’s amazing to have someone like Mary back in my life, who knows that old part of me so very, very well.

So I took her comment a little differently when, while talking about my blonde project Mary looked at me and said: “ I always thought you were blonde, Kir!”

“Really? Hmmm…well, you know, I did too. But I’m not, honey. This is blonde, this hair that I have now. And this is bleached.”

“Yes, I know, but I just remember you and I BOTH being blonde when we met.”

“Hmm…Maybe you’re right?” I shrugged. “I mean, hair gets darker with age. Maybe at 14 we were still little blondies.”

Several hours later, while looking through a mess of old photos, I had my answer. By fourteen I had a head of very light brown hair. So did Mary. But in our own minds, we both considered ourselves blonde.

Were we both in blonde denial? Sure. But, as I am learning more and more, blonde is as much a state of mind as it is a hair color. So I guess you could say, in addition to our Dirty Dancing obsession, our cookie dough obsession, and our Pixies obsession, we also shared a blonde thing.

I guess we're both blonde at heart.

Happy Birthday, Miss Mary xoxoxoxoxo

if nothing else, the man is honest

I walk out the door of the South End Bank of America and am blinded by the bright noon daylight. Blinking in the sunshine as my eyes adjust, I rummage around in my purse for my sunglasses. Seemingly out of nowhere a voice booms:

"I am so glad you dyed your hair back, honey. It makes me feel that everything 's right with the world!"

I turn around and find an old regular of mine from 647 has snuck up on me. "Oh my God, Rich, you scared me! Hi!!!" I say, and we exchange cheek kisses. "How are you, baby?"

Rich has been a regular at T647 since they opened: he was there on opening day, so he has been drinking at the place literally since Day 1. I worked at T647 for five years, but really only got to know him recently. Sure, I'd see him there drinking at the bar at least once or twice a week. But I don't think he ever actually talked to me until I was a blonde.

We shoot the breeze for a moment outside the bank, talk about our plans for the weekend, exchange bits of scripted speech about Toro & his real estate job, etc., before Rich goes on to say:

"You really look fabulous, honey. Your hair looks so great blonde. I mean, you're a beautiful girl, and so the brown hair looked alright..." He wrinkles his nose a little bit and gives his head a little shake, "but the blonde looks much better on you. It really suits you!"

"You always told me that," I smile, remembering that Rich and I didn't make friends when I was a little blonde: we didn't actually even had a conversation 'til I was a certifiable, nothing-natural-about-it blonde. And the day I dyed it brown, he was very vocal about his opinion. I think his exact words were: "Why 'd you do that? I don't like it."

Now, I'm not saying Rich he has a thing against brunettes or anything, because he's actually a real sweetie, and is friends with all of the brunette bartenders in the restaurant. Plus, it's not like I ever went out of my way to chat him up, either. I think we just saw each other so often that after a certain point, we were past the point of introduction. To walk up to one another and say, "Hey, I've been seeing you here every week for the past four years and never felt like introducing myself, but wanted to say hi now," well, it would have just felt weird.

"Stop it with the compliments," I say, "You're making me blush!" We say goodbye, and as I walk away, I smile to myself, I'm so glad that we finally did start talking to one another. Because if nothing else, Rich is honest.

doll hair

Did you ever try to style your Barbie's hair when you were little? Do you remember what a fruitless, pointless pursuit it was? No matter how much twisting or curling you did, it never stayed where it was supposed to. Sure, Pretty Make-Over Barbie may have come with a plastic comb and brush and brightly colored ribbons and elastics, all included in the plastic packaging so you could "do Barbie's hair at home!" But did you ever try to actually run those items through her hair? They didn't work. They didn't do anything but get stuck and snarled in her dry, brittle, totally un-style-able doll hair. The package may have claimed to include "all you need to make Barbie look like she just walked out of the salon" but did any of that stuff ever work? No. Because Barbie had doll hair.

And that is what my hair feels like now: Limp, useless, blonde doll hair. After all of the bleaching, processing, heat styling, darkening, and bleaching again, my hair has lost almost all of its natural elasticity. The previously strong, healthy strands are now little pathetic wisps showing what the trained eye would identify as visible signs of breakage (to everyone else, it just looks kinda frizzy.)

Did I know this would happen? Was I warned? Yes, of course I was. Jason is my hair guru. However, once upon a time I had absolutely gorgeous, naturally low maintenance hair. I was one of those people, whose hair did pretty much whatever I asked of it, whenever I wanted. Slightly uneven haircut? Well, that's hardly noticeable when your hair has so much body and natural curl! Bad hair day? Yeah, those must suck. I think I had one of those, once. Yes, I was warned that undertaking this project would "damage" may hair, that my hair would "not be the same" after so much processing. But did I really understand the true gravity of those statements? Hell no. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure," I said. "Dye it anyway!" Feeling very noble I'd add, "We all must suffer for our art."

Now my hair is like a porous sponge that throws up it's frizzy broken wisps in a tizzy at even the slightest hint of humidity. August in Boston is upon us, which means that I might as well just accept the fact that I will not be having a good hair day until October. My only recourse, I have decided, is to visit Jason once a week for a wash & blow-out, like my grandma used to. I now completely understand the concept of the old lady visit to the beauty parlor. It may be my only choice.

Make no mistake, blonding neophytes. The color transition from dark to light is no simple feat. Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, all those Hollywood starlets might have you thinking otherwise. But seriously, it is a bitch. Seamless transition between shades, much like instant loss of baby weight after pregnancy, is a fantasy. It only happens in Hollywood.

All of that said, I'm still, for some reason, absolutely delighted to be blonde again.

alchemy

Well, it's roughly a month and a half since I became accidentally blonde again, and I am finally ready to talk about it.

Let's zoom back to that fateful May afternoon, just a few days before I was to head off to New York City for Book Expo, a very big publishing industry convention packed with important business meetings for myself and my boss. I wanted to touch up the color and the roots before I left--this always helps me feel confident, cool and collected before a big work thing--so I booked an appointment with Jason about a week before the show.

"What are we doing today, Kitty?" Jason says, as I settle into his favorite chair at the head of the color table. He says this every time I visit.

"You tell me, you're the magician!" I say, as I do every time I visit. "But, if it's possible, do you think we can start the transition back to blonde? I know it will take some time, but I think I'm ready to go at least a little bit lighter."

"You read my mind!" he says. "Back to blonde we go!"

My original transformation to blonde was so simple. We started back in 2005 by subtly highlighting my naturally light brown hair. Each time I returned to the salon to have my roots treated, we'd go a bit lighter, and a bit lighter, and lighter still, until, POOF!--one day I was practically platinum. It was glorious, and revelatory. Sitting in the chair, head swaddled in a towel, waiting for Jason to unwrap my locks and comb them out and style them into a movie-star like coif was like opening a fun, blonde present. SURPRISE! Today you're blonder than you've ever been!

I so loved that feeling. I look forward to chasing it all over again as we transition back to blonde this Spring.

So, Jason gets to work, painting little tiny bits of my hair with goopy bleach and wrapping it up into an impossible number of crinkly foil wrappers. I know the drill, I've done this before. He paints and wraps. We chat about his life and his boyfriend, my life and my boyfriend, and how much more fun we're going to have when I have become famous & he is part of my entourage...or when he becomes famous and I am part of his entourage. This step takes about a half hour, then he steps away to attend to another client while the bleach does it's magic.

My hair cooks and I read Vogue. I make friends with a brunette woman at the color table who wants to know all about the project. I tell her what it has been like to be blonde. Eventually we run out of things to say, and I pick up a recent issue of Glamour.

Periodically the other stylists come by to say hello. Wendy, Megan, Dan: they all know me by now, and they always say hi and ask about the book. "What are you guys doing today?" they ask.

"Embarking on the road back to blonde," I reply, flashing them a big, about to be blonde soon grin. "I'm back! Or will be in a few months. I think we're probably just going a tad lighter today? I don't really know."

"Really???" Wendy says, a faint cloud of concern flitting across her face. "Already??? That was fast."

"Wow, that's...well, that's kind of a big deal," says Dan, looking surprised.

"HUH, okay," says Megan. "Well," and she ends our conversation the way the other two stylists had before her:

"Good luck."

...words you never want to hear from your doctor, dentist, or hair stylist.

Periodically, Jason returns to unwrap a foil, sneak a peek at my hair. It crinkles in my ears as he unwraps, re-wraps. "More time," he says, walking away to see a different client. I read more Glamour.

Ten minutes later, Jason returns, takes a look. "Ready?" I say. "Nope," he shakes his head. This happens two or three more times. I'm getting bored. I am just about to move onto an issue of Real Simple, when one of the assistants beckons me over to the washing station. Finally! The grand unveiling. I am filled with anticipation as I dip my head back into the sink. She makes a great ruckus as she unwraps those millions of tiny foils with quick, deft hands. She washes, rinses, conditions, rinses, deep conditions, waits five minutes, rinses, then wraps my head up into a towel.

Five minutes later I am back in Jason's chair, where he un-swaddles my head to reveal...

A kaleidoscope of colors.

From ends to roots I see:

• Dark brown on the bottom, the same color I was when I walked in today,
• Salmon pink in the middle, the oldest hair, which has been platinum, brown, auburn, almost black, and now en route to blonde again
• A two-inch ring of brassy orange circling my crown, the two inches of virgin hair that grew out over the brunette winter, and has only ever been dyed brown
• An inch of searing, albino white at the roots, the newest virgin hair that has never been dyed, reacting violently platinum to copious amounts of bleach

Wow. Guess I'm going back to blonde--or something like it--today.

What ensues is referred to as a "double process," so another round of Jason mixing chemicals, painting colors on my hair, foiling, waiting, reading Vogue again, getting bored, shooting the breeze with the other stylists, getting bored when they walk away to deal with their clients, and eventually staring into space by myself at the color table, wishing I could be anywhere but here. I have heard the CD go thru this rotation already, and I am sick of Joan Jett and the Hair soundtrack. My scalp is hot, and is starting to itch & burn at the roots. I wonder if I'm going to get one of those mysterious and inexplicable rashes that I occasionally get when my skin encounters harsh things, like soap or cat hair.

Poor Jason. He is swamped with other clients and I can tell the chemistry experiment that is my hair is working his last nerve. He enlists Dan to help, and they work tirelessly to make my now 2-tone hair look normal. By the time I am finally done with the second round of washing, rinsing, conditioning, rinsing, deep conditioning, rinsing and blow drying, I have been here for a whopping six hours.

And my hair is 2-tone. The top has achieved a lovely light, ashy sort of blonde, however the bottom half...well, we never went there with the bleach. It's the same dark auburn hue that it was when I walked in here at 3 p.m. I have a huge, important business trip coming up. And my hair looks like something you'd wear to a punk rock show.

I feel exhausted as I walk out of the salon, completely disoriented, and a little bit helpless. Jason is going to touch me up before my trip next week, but truthfully the last thing I want to do is be anywhere near that color table. I am mulling all of this over as I pass a gaggle of kids from the project down the street, who couldn't be more than 12-years-old.

"Hey, you want to suck on a frosty nipple???" one of them yells out to me. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is eating an ice cream cone, and probably feeling like a big tough guy for degrading a woman more than twice his age in front of all his friends.

Awesome. I've been blonde for exactly ten minutes and I'm already being sexually harassed...by a child.

Am I ready for this? This blondeness? The aggressive, entitled sexual harrassment that comes with it?

No. I certainly am not.

I miss my goldie locks

For several weeks, the brunette thing has really had me going. I've enjoyed my dark haired status and have really gown into the role of the brunette--an intelligent, sultry, slightly more intimidating, no bullshit brown-haired version of myself.

But now, with 80 degree days upon us, my brown hair feels out of place on top of my head. This weekend, the Mathematician and I took a special trip to Newport, where we sat in the sun on a patio enjoying seafood & bloody mary's, made out on the beach we visited on our first date, and had a curious dinner at the most peculiar yet enchanting restaurant in Newport, Elizabeth's Cafe on Thames Street. The weather was glorious, the day was perfect, and I couldn't have ordered up a more perfect Saturday. There was just one small problem: I didn't feel entirely myself, and it was entirely because I am a brunette.

As a blondie I felt natural in the sun. Long before I started this bleaching business, I looked forward to the natural bleaching effect of sunlight on my brunette hair. Long summer days spent lounging at the beach always cooked my locks up to a lovely golden hue, and a week on vacation usually left me with at least a few wispy streaks of real, live, naturally blonde hair. As a brunette now, in the midst of all the sunshine, and the sparkling preview of warm summer weather, I felt strange.

We stole a few moments in the shade while waiting for a table for lunch. The Mathematician looked at a map and tried to determine how we should be spend our day, while I sat and stared wordlessly at myself in the tiny compact mirror that I carry in my purse. A brunette woman stared back at me in that tiny little square of mirror. Her skin looked paler than usual, and the small wrinkles that have begun to crease the space between her eyebrows and her nose more pronounced.

I've come to love and accept that brunette since my initial deblonding in December, and I appreciate everything she has offered me since that fateful day. She has allowed me to be such a different woman than I was as a blonde, and I am forever grateful to her for showing me the vastly different ways that I could be me with just a deeper shade of brown. But as I stared in that tiny little compact mirror, I knew--the brunette looking back at me wasn't the real me.

It is official. I want my blonde locks back.

my brunette garbage

A reader recently left an interesting comment in response to this post. It was so interesting, in fact, that I wanted to post about it. She said:

Brunettes that are bleached are not Blonde. Yes, I know that Bleached Brunette sounds ugly but hey, if you are a Brunette and you're bleached, then you're a Bleached Brunette. Stop using the name Blonde to dress up your Brunette garbage. Blondes are actively disassociating from this forced relationship. Blonde is the name of the Blonde people and nobody else.

Well, she certainly told me, didn't she?

(Also, did you guys know there were a "blonde people?" Perhaps they hail from a great "Blonde nation" located in some remote region of Scandinavia?)

I was intrigued and just had to check out this reader's website, Blond from Birth. It's basically a soapbox where this very disgruntled blonde laments the shitty, undermining stereotypes she faces as a blond woman, and has likely been facing all of her life (if she is, in fact, among the 1 in 20 women who are naturally blond from birth--she's posted no pictures to prove it.)

The content is problematic to me: virtually unsupported & for the most part WAY oversimplified, i.e. her comparisons between blonde prejudice & racism or anti-semitism--in my opinion, that's totally inappropriate. But, I can't say I blame this woman for feeling upset about her plight. I'm sure that as a blonde, she's treated like a bimbo all the time. I lived as an almost platinum blonde for a year and a half, I know what that feels like. And truly, it sucks to be treated like you're stupid, solely because of the color of your hair.

That said, I think that more of the time, blondes are celebrated based solely on the color of their hair. I certainly was as a child, from the moment wispy strands of baby hair grew in flaxen on my head (yes, I was blonde from birth), thru my teens, when puberty, hormones, and the natural aging process turned my hair light brown. All of that happened again in a whole new way when I went blonde as an adult, and persisted thru the day I dyed my hair brown. Sometimes, as a brunette, I truly miss that special treatment...though I am beginning to suspect that the person who felt the most special about my blonde hair most of the time was me.

So, thanks for the food for thought, Carol "Blond from Birth" Cox. It's too bad you didn't take the time to read my blog, and just skimmed thru that one post before leaving me an angry/mean/slightly scary comment. The fact of the matter is, Undercover Blonde is a very pro-blonde, very pro-woman project, designed to question stereotypical notions of blondes, and make readers think twice about the prejudices we hold based on meaningless physical traits.

Far more interesting to me than your 'natural' blond hair color, however, is your self-protective, othering attitude about your blondness. It tells me that you fail to see the big picture I am so desperately trying to deconstruct with my project. The fact of the matter is, your experience of marginalization is so much bigger than you, and so much bigger than the plight of blondes alone. It's part of a very complicated web that has all women of every race, class, and sexual orientation ensnared in it's sticky fiber. It's the experience of being female in a sexist, looksist, unfair society.

The sad thing is, by fostering an "us" and "them" mentality with rhetoric about my "brunette garbage" and invalidating my experience because I'm not part of the elite "blond from birth," you are only making a complex situation worse. As women, we are constantly pitted against each other in this culture, constantly finding ways to undermine or undercut the other, based on horribly superficial things. Anyone who has ever critiqued the length of a colleague's skirt is guilty; anyone who has ever been so critiqued is a victim. It's a classic example of divide & conquer, baby. Ever heard of it? As aggrandizing as it is to put another woman down in the moment, it only serves to undermine our power as a group. And it's a remarkably effective way to perpetuate a sexist, looksist, and totally unfair status quo.

With a little bit of patience and a little bit more reading, you might understand that I get what it feels like to be treated like an idiot because of the color of my hair. Every woman does, because if it's not our hair that marks us as ditzy sex objects, it's our bust size or our height or not being pretty enough, or being too pretty, you name it...mostly we're marked as inferior because we were born with a vagina. It's part & parcel of the sticky web of sexism. Hair color? That's just the icing on the patriarchal cake.

Then again, perhaps you're not actually the blog reading type. Perhaps you lack the patience to pore through the many pages of Undercover Blonde, to make sense of my goals and ambitions with this carefully drawn project. If that's the case, you can wait until it's all out in book form, buy a copy on Amazon, or take a copy home from your local library. By then, I'm sure, it will be much more concise.

Lucky for you, that will sooner than late, because I just signed on with a literary agent.

And no, I will NOT be changing the title of my "brunette garbage" to Undercover Bleached Brunette. Something tells me a title like that just wouldn't work in the marketplace.

I've made a terrible mistake...

So, my hair was pretty blonde for a while there. Pretty damn blonde. As in, I'd look in the mirror, and occasionally think to myself, "Gee, is it really that light? Is that really what's happening here? I'm really doing it, aren't I? I'm really, truly, shamelessly blonde." (And somewhere in the back of my mind, an insidious voice would whisper..."Don't you think you look trashy?")

Last time I saw Jason in July, he was very bold with my color. He told me "you're not going to believe this, but we're going lighter." He said he couldn't believe it himself, but that we were taking a risk, a risk he'd ONLY take with me because ONLY I could work hair that light, and well, I'm writing a goddamn book on being blonde, aren't I? So, we went for it. Bold was what we did. And when the smock came off and the hair was blown out, there I sat the blondest I'd been since I was a little girl. I was the same shade of blonde as my four year-old niece. And suddenly, I was a blonde who wasn't even pretending to be natural. My long goldie locks were just one small step away from platinum, and that was what it all was about.

Now, I trust Jason implicitly. I really do. He is amazing, and I highly endorse his services. If you go to see him, you will never leave his salon looking bad. So, when he caught sight of me while walking down the street one day, and a look of surprise and a mild shadow of concern flitted across his face like a small cloud traversing the sun, I was appropriately worried.

"What?!" I said. "What was that look??? You don't like the hair, do you. Oh my god, do you think it looks trashy?!?!?"

"No, sweetie," he said, his voice the same calm timbre as that of my therapist. "You? Never. You will never look trashy, even if you are wearing a trash bag and a pair of Candies loafers. But...you should come see me next week. I have the morning free all week, you can just call me and come in when you have a second, and we'll have a nice, leisurely morning together. Sound good?" He made it sounds social, like all we'd be doing was a minor touch up while spending some quality stylist-subject time at the sink over coffee and the latest 700-page issue of Vogue.

So I went in. I followed his instructions, because Jason is my darling, and because he would never do wrong by me.

Except now, after our nice, leisurely morning together over coffee & the latest 700-page issue of Vogue, my hair seems...darker. And I am in a mild state of panic.

Jason swore up and down as I was leaving the salon that it was not, in fact darker, rather, he'd added more depth to the color, infused it with more gold, given me a more natural, sun-kissed look, as opposed to the all-over, almost platinum he'd he'd faded me to in July. "I'm only doing this because it's you, honey. I wouldn't do this with just anybody, because not everyone can rock gold. I'd only ever do this with you."

But to me, it looks darker. Everyone I ask smiles, says it "looks good!" and "looks really pretty, I LIKE it!" But I know in my heart what is true, and that is that, no matter what everybody says, my hair looks darker than it did before.

Here is a before picture:



And here, my friends, is the after picture:

Yes it look more natural, but herein lies the lesson of the story: I know now that I do not want to be natural. Natural left the equation some time ago. Maybe once upon a time I sought to look like a natural blonde, before I undertook this stupid project, back when I was still a nubile young highlight virgin, hoping no one would accuse me of being some sort of blonde poser since I'd taken up the peroxide.

Well, the cherry's been popped, folks, and those days are long gone.

I'll tell you what I want now: I want my hair to be the same almost fluorescent shade of flaxen that it was just a week ago. I want it to be as unnaturally light as the hair of the girl on the bus this morning, and the woman in the grocery store this afternoon, or my little niece Caelan and her baby brother Griffen, and the blonde heads I am beginning to see everywhere I turn. What was I thinking? If those harlots don't care about looking trashy, why the hell should I?

There is only room for blonde on this head. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and for the duration of this experiment, the only way out is up the color scale. Blonde baby. Blonde.

And I am very upset about what to do next because now I am also kind of broke.