blonde seeking blondes...

Blonde? Got a story to tell? I want to hear it!

Would you or a blonde you know like to take part in my research for the Undercover Blonde book? This can be done via email, and completely at your convenience. Contact me at stories@undercoverblonde.com.

Thanks in advance, and Happy Friday!

dinner with mom & dad

It is Saturday night. My father's birthday has just passed, and we are meeting them for dinner at Toro to celebrate. They are a few minutes late, so we wait for them at the bar, and have a drink. When they do arrive, this is how they greet me:

MOM: Our dear, sweet, beautiful daughter! You're our favorite daughter you know (I am their only daughter.) Oh, honey, you look so pretty tonight. And just look at your hair, it's so pretty and blonde!!!
DAD: Yeah,it looks great, honey! You just look SOOOOOO much better as a blonde!!!!
ME: Gee, dad. Well, that sure is an enthusiastic endorsement. At least I can count on you guys to be honest.
MOM: (backpeddling) Oh. honey, we just mean that when you were a brunette, you didn't look like yourself.
ME; Interesting, because brown is my natural color. As a brunette I essentially was myself.
DAD: Nooo...
MOM: No!!!
DAD: Your hair was almost black! You just looked so pale, so washed out all the time. It looked terrible.
ME: Terrible? You guys...
MOM: It just wasn't you, honey.
DAD: Yeah, not you at all.

Well, I guess we now know who to blame my blonde fixation on.

Jason, where art thou? Part deux

From Joanna Pitman's ON BLONDES, describing a hair trend started by the beautiful daughter of the Emporer Titus the first century AD:

"Professional hairdressers were employed, devoted teams on whom powerful beauties depended utterly for their reputations. Touching epitaphs still survive, composed by ladies mourning the deaths of their most able and loyal hairdressers. These women, highly skilled in their intricate art, mixed the thick hair dye, slapped it on to the hair in a slick of shining slime, rubbed it vigorously into the scalp and then scraped it all off hours later when dry. They washed the hair, dried it, applied further colouring powders and then embarked on the tricky business of styling. This was a task in which success brought rich rewards, while failure sometimes resulted in stabbings with bone hairpins or worse by disgruntled mistresses."

Times have not changed so much, have they? Just days ago, I mourned the "disappearance" of my stylist Jason. My dear, sweet, Jason, who for some reason, no longer works at the salon that has been my second home for two years....

And in the same breath, I cursed him. If he were here right now, I just might stab him with a hairpin for failing to deal with these disastrous roots.

Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear Kit-ty, Happy Birthday to me!

Today is the anniversary of my birth. People who know me will call me with good wishes, offer to buy me drinks while we are out, bring me presents, and generally make best efforts to ensure that this otherwise totally arbitrary day is a special one for moi. But one thing that these well intended folk are probably not thinking about: I am actually half of a pair. I have a twin brother, a brown haired Undercover Brother out there, and he and I have shared this special day since our time on this earth began.

I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss my Undercover Brother, and the curious dynamic that is our twinship. You see, Undercover Brother is my twin, sure, but we are about as opposite as opposite can be. Let's review:

Undercover Brother is quite and shy; I am outgoing and personable.

He is obsessively self-disciplined; I am peer pressure's easiest target.

He is very strong and works out every day; I count lifting my wine glass as bicep exercise.

Undercover Brother is a doctor. Like, he's been officially referred to as Dr. Undercover Brother on a daily basis as of this past June, when he graduated from med school. I am a publicist and a writer and also a waitress. And I'm officially referred to as "Miss Kitty" half of the time.

Undercover Brother is good at math and science and...cutting people open. I am good at grammar (ha!) and writing and liberal arts and "spin."

We are as different as different could be, and shared everything there was to have before we moved away from home to go to college. Until then, on every birthday there was a cake that featured two names, mine scrawled across it in pink frosting, his scrawled across it in blue. When I was little, I wondered what it would be like to have a birthday cake that is only pink: pink flowers, pink icing, and just one name, mine, written across it?

But now, as a grown-up, I miss our two-toned cake, our yin & yang life. And I miss him.

I don't think I'll be having birthday cake on my birthday this year: we're going to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and my "birthday cake" will be whatever dessert I order. But if I were to have cake, I'd want both of our names to be scrawled upon it, in pink and in blue. Even if Undercover Brother is 3,000 miles away in San Diego, locked up in a hospital working on his residency. Even though he doesn't eat sugar because his primary focus is "getting ripped."

Happy Birthday to us both!

Jason, where art thou?

My stylist has gone missing. Well, not missing exactly. In fact, I know exactly where my stylist is:

Not working at Liquid any longer.

Due to circumstances beyond me, which are presumably none of my business, my dear, sweet, devoted stylist Jason is all of a sudden, no longer employed at the salon that has been my home for the duration of this project.

We ran into one another the street the other day, while I was getting my morning coffee. He seemed upset, so I tried my best to quell my reaction to this truly disastrous news. When he said, "I no longer work at Liquid," I said, "Oh, okay. Well, where do you work now?" I tried to play it cool. I, in fact, even offered my support to my dear, sweet stylist/friend. "There, there," I counseled, "when it's time to move on, it's just time to move on. These things are usually for the best."

What I thought, but did not say: "Your ass best be moving on soon, honey. In a week, I'm going to have roots down to my cheekbones. And when that time comes, you'd better have a chair."

That time has come. It's undeniable. My roots are like a line of dark, glaring brown, drawn beneath my light, yellow hair, marked there as if to emphasize the fact that my color is fake, fake, fake. I've been in denial about it, lying to myself really, pretending the roots "blend" and "look okay". But today, they seem to have grown beyond the pale. I measured them: they are an inch and a half long. They scream for attention, and where am I to turn?

What the hell am I going to do???

a lot in common

"Hey you done in here? Can I ring something in?" I ask Juan, who is standing in front of the computer by the coffee station, staring off into space.

"Sure, go ahead," Juan nods, staring up at the shelf where we store the coffee cups, his jaw locked tight in frustration.

"You sure," I say, realizing that Juan actually looks pretty pissed off. "I can wait if you're still working...."

"No, no, I'm done," he says softly, steps aside, and glances down at the floor. He seems pretty rattled, so I ask him what's up.

"Table 42 is...fucking bullshit!!!" he says, gesturing with a nod towards a four top of drunk, khaki-clad guys about six feet away. Minutes before I heard the ring leader bellowing his order at Juan, "You didn't forget to put that paella in now, did you???" in the same patronizing tone a dad might use when imploring his teenage kid to put gas in the car. Juan seemed to be handling the situation just fine from a distance, but now at the computer, I can see that these guys are getting under Juanito's usually thick skin.

"Are they really bad, Juan?" I ask. "You know, if you can't deal with waiting on them, I can take that table over..."

"No, no, it's fine," he says. "They're just stupid...drunk. Fucking assholes, man."

I glance over at the ringleader, who is laughing heartily at his own joke as he reaches over to pour more wine in his already full wineglass. He is seated at an angle, elbows splayed out into the narrow aisle, knees spread way apart, making it impossible for other patrons to get by him without shimmying around his knees, his loafers, or his arms en route to the bathroom. It's as though his sense of entitlement is too big for his body, can barely be contained in his skin, let alone his khakis or the tiny tin chair where he'll spend the next 2 hours, presiding over his table and torturing poor Juan.

I look back at Juan, whose face is glowering with frustrated anger. Juan is 21, but doesn't look a day over seventeen. He's skinny, one of those people with a crazy metabolism who has to eat every three hours or they feel like they're going to pass out. And to top it off, he has braces, which could make even an 80-year-old nonna look juvenile. He just started waiting tables, and he's really very good--knows a lot about wine and food, more than I did at his age. But Juanito doesn't stand a chance in hell of getting any respect out of the "fucking bullshit assholes" at table 42.

"I'm sorry, Juan," I say, "They're treating you like you're stupid and like you don't know anything because you look young, right?"

"Yeah, it sucks," he sputters. "Fucking bullshit."

"I know, it is bullshit. It happens to me all the time, too, especially with guys like that."

"Yeah?" says Juan, surprised.

"Yeah, all the time. They think I'm dumb because I'm a girl, and I'm blonde, and I'm friendly and smiley and stuff. They think I don't know anything about wine or food, and like I'm just some little idiot waitress, even though I've been doing this for almost ten years now."

"Wow," Juan says.

"Yeah, but it's okay. He's just trying to compensate for the fact that he has a tiny little penis." This makes Juan laugh.

Who'd have thought that Juanito and I have so much in common? Or maybe it's just that those kinds of guys are all alike: drunk, rude, something to prove. All you can hope for is that they'll tip like they have manners.

Fortunately, these guys did. Juan showed me the charge slip after table 42 wobbled out of the restaurant, a big, juicy 2o% tip scrawled in the ringleader's barely legible drunk handwriting. He seemed surprised, but I wasn't. He deserved at least that, if not more.

We all do.

my dream the other night

So, I've been reading Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth, as research, for the book. It's an amazing read, a book that every young woman should know. How I got through four years at Sarah Lawrence without reading it is a mystery.

The other night, I read a little bit before bed. The Mathematician and I had just returned from a trip to the west coast. We had a big fight before boarding the plane in Long Beach, and didn't speak for the entire six hours on Jet Blue back to Boston. When we got home, I made the taxi drop me off at my house, alone. Hours later we resolved things over the phone, and I felt much better when I sank between the sheets to go to bed. I was exhausted from fighting, but not quite tired enough for sleep (my body clock thought it was only 9 p.m., after all), so I read. I read about the complicated matrix that binds beauty and women and work, the concept of beauty as currency in the American marketplace. Soon, my eyelids grew heavy, and I fell asleep with the light on. And I had terrible, volatile, dangerous dreams.

I dreamt of conflict and war. I dreamt that I was among a group of hostages or prisoners, being oppressed by a vigilant, unfair ruling party. We weren't just one group, my group, there were many groups, and many oppressors, and the mood was of tense chaos. The details are hazy. I was terrified, fighting for my life amongst a covert group of resistance fighters, who masked our subversive acts, so as not to arouse suspicion. We were worked like many cogs in a complicated machine, trying to overcome horrible obstacles to escape our hostage-like situations (I think the dream was also informed my my other book of the moment, Ann Patchett's fictional imagining of a hostage takeover, Bel Canto.) I raced for my life, plotting and collaborating, sneaking through a precarious spiderweb of alliances and mistrust.

Moments before waking, I saw a beautiful, angry, insubordinate woman caught and tortured at the hands of the vicious, nameless oppressor. She had long, brown hair, hazel eyes and olive skin. She was tall and had full, red lips. She was from a different group than mine, was fighting a different fight, but I knew that we shared the common goal of liberation. I stood, horrified, trying not to look but unable to turn away as a female terrorist raised a switchblade to the brave insubordinate's face, and slice a long, deliberate cut into the flawless flesh of her cheek. It snaked back and forth, a malicious ribbon running from eyebrow to chin. Eventually the wound would become a raised, ugly scar, resembling a flesh-colored piece of yarn affixed to her face, a permanent distraction from her naturally well arranged features. The pain would pass, but the scar would persist, a constant reminder of her insubordination.

But the beautiful prisoner was no victim. I watched in terrified awe as she raised her face to the knife, her jaw set and square, and growled at the terrorist: "Cut deeper." Her eyes blazed. "Cut deeper, come on, make me feel it," she taunted, not the slightest bit phased by the pain of the incision, the blood trickling down her cheek, or the impending scar. She was fierce, un-suppressable, and totally terrifying.

I put my head down and ran, and a few minutes later, I woke up. Blinking in the sunlight of my room, all I could think about was this brave, angry, brunette.

It was quite a dream, and haunted me for the rest of the day.

Perhaps I should be reading something a little bit lighter before bed?

"It's just hair"

Dear Anonymous, who left this post on my blog:

"ITS HAIR COLOR!!! people seriously need to get over it. I'm naturally dirty blonde. I've went brunette and I've went blonde. But honestly what does it matter folks?!??!?!?"

It matters. Ask any woman who has lost every strand of her hair to cancer and she will tell you: hair matters.

My mother lost all of her hair when she was battling breast cancer, about six months before I went undercover for this project. Her hair was naturally brown until Mom was in her forties. Then it started to gray and she started to visit the salon every six weeks to maintain her "natural hue." 20 years later, they found a lump. A few days later, she lost a breast. A few weeks later, she had her first chemo. Within days, all of my mother's carefully dyed hair was gone.

So, we shopped for wigs. "You could be blonde," the store-owner told us. "This might be your only chance to see what that's like." My mother looked at those wigs, perched suggestively on faceless dummy heads and laughed as though her as a blonde was the funniest thing in the world. She just wanted to feel like herself again. Our hearts leaped when we found the one, a wig the exact same shape as my mother's signature haircut in her "natural" color, almost the exact same dark brown. It cost almost as much as my weekly paycheck.

At first we were so excited! A chance to look normal in the midst all of that pain. We bought it instantly, my mom wrote a check. "The health insurance reimburses it by half," she said.

But wigs are hot underneath. They are itchy and uncomfortable and no substitute for real hair. She could only bear to wear it part of the time, when she had company, or had to leave the house. She was too tired to make the effort on ordinary Tuesdays.

Months later, my mother's hair grew back. It came in patchy clumps, weak and thin and tentative, as though still anticipating the devastating effects of chemo. It grew in a different color than her natural brown, reddish and strange and baby fine.

Years ago, I'd have thought you were right, Anonymous. I'd have stopped dying my hair, thrown in the towel and shut up. I never would have pursued this project, and listened to the many people like you for whom, after all, "it's just hair."

Then my mom lost all of hers. She was more upset by this than by the news of the cancer. Pain she could downplay, ignore, deny. But how do you ignore the fact that you're bald?

I was the only person besides my father to see my mom's bald head. It looked patchy, vulnerable, bare. I helped her cover it with wigs and swath it in scarves for 12 months. I helped her draw in her eyebrows with a pencil. We pretended it was the '40s, when women plucked out their eyebrow hair and drew them back in to be chic.

We are so lucky that those days ended. Three years later and my mom is still cancer free. Fine, hair covers her head all by itself again, though it's different than her hair from before.

Years ago, comments like yours might have stopped me, Anonymous. But after all of that, I just couldn't let my curiosity go. And I disagree.

Hair matters. A lot. Much more than you realize.

alone

Somehow, through a surprising and strange twist of events, I have spent more time in the past few days alone than perhaps ever in my life.

Largely this is because the Mathematician has been working a lot this week. Though he works hard and is supremely talented at what he does, the Mathematician is not one of those people who "works a lot". He pulls the occasional late night at the office here or there, but his job isn't the kind of job where you have to put in a lot of "face time" or screw around and be at the office "just because" for certain hours of the day. The Mathematician usually begins his work day sometime in the 10 a.m. hour, for example. And rarely is he not ready to pick me up by 7 or 8 p.m. at the latest on a school night, and spend his entire evening buying me dinner or watching a movie with me or somehow else basking in my loveliness .

This week, however, I have seen neither hide nor hair of the Mathematician, because he has been on a deadline that seems to me to have popped up out of nowhere, and has kept him at the office until all hours of the night. Like 3 a.m. in the morning all hours, which is later than most of my fellow restaurant employees end up coming home, and very unusual for a 9-5'er, n'est-ce pas? This means I have been a work widow all week, with the exception of this evening, Friday night, the night that most couples are out having date night, at the movies, enjoying Boston restaurant week, what have you. Tonight, I am a recording widow.

Boo-hoo, woe is me. Actually, none of this is any bother, because as I have realized this week, since we haven't been spending any time together, boyfriends take up a surprisingly large amount of time and energy! As I am dying and desperate to make some headway on my book, having some time to myself to be alone and think and write has been a blessing. I have been solitary and enjoying it. I have been getting in touch with myself. I have even started meditating.

Besides, I am not interested in being in the kind of relationship where my life revolves around my boyfriend. I was in that relationship once already, for 5 years, and I even almost got married to it. Consequently, in some respects I am fiercely defensive of my independent time, and when I find out my boyfriend has made other plans, I am usually quick to make plans of my own, if they weren't already somehow in the works, because, like a good Virgo, I almost always have a back-up plan.

So, a Friday night, left to my own devices? Sounds to me like a perfect time for girl's night. Woo-hoo, I love girl's night! But for some reason, through some weird alignment of the planets and crossing of the stars, all of my girlfriends seem to be hanging out with their boyfriends/out of town/working/ simply not returning my phone calls. "Okay," I thought, "that's no bother. I'll call up my gay friends." Oops, they too all seem to be hanging out with their boyfriends/out of town/working/or simply not returning my phone calls. (Hope you're having fun in P-town, A-lo. Baaah, restaurant week, I want my friends back!!!)

With all of my friends in the city otherwise occupied, i decided to turn to my family, my beloved family, my always there for me, supportive, wonderful family...

But even my mom and dad had plans.

I knew this was probably a sign that really, I was meant to spend this particular Friday evening on my own, doing my own thing, working on the book and getting to know myself a little bit more intimately that I ever have before. But seriously? After several days and nights left pretty much to my own devices, with a long Friday night stretching way out before me and two long weekend days of solitude on the agenda, I am kind of starting to twitch.

By the time 8 o'clock rolled around and I realized that there really was no chance in hell that I'd be seeing the Mathematician tonight, and that none of my friends were calling me back, I decided to occupy myself my making a lovely, delicious dinner pour moi. I went down to South End Formaggio, bought myself some wine, came back and started to cook an awesome and easy-sounding recipe from a book I publicized this June, called Cucina del Sole, about Southern Italian cooking. The dish is baked eggplant and penne and it sounds fairly simple, and I'd already procured all of the ingredients at the Copley Square Farmer's Market today, so why not? Sure, it might be time consuming, but from the looks of things, I've got all the time in the world.

So here I am, alone on a Friday night. And yes, a night alone, with the apartment all to myself would ordinarily be a blessing, especially since co-habitation with the Mathematician is on the horizon, especially with a book to write. But after three nights this week spent 100% alone, and several hours spent meditating about myself, and days with virtually no one to distract me from myself, well...it's been a little intense.

Not unlike this penne-eggplant project, which has been something of an undertaking. It's still in the works as we speak, and probably won't be ready for at least another hour. And at this point, I am not even the slightest bit hungry for the following reasons:

1. I bought myself a massive brownie at the Farmers Market at Copley today, which I proceeded to eat in it's entirety while enjoying a cup of appetite suppressing caffeinated tea at 5 p.m.
2. The nice guy at Formaggio tricked me into buying more cheese than I needed, and I have been nibbling on that since 8 (and by tricked I mean he ever-so-politely asked me, "Can I help you find anything else?)
3. I have already consumed half of the bottle of wine I was also tricked into purchasing while at Formaggio (and by tricked I mean it happened to be on the shelf and it happened to be for sale)

My dinner will not be ready for at least another hour, which means if I ever get hungry again, I will be eating at around 11 p.m., which we all know is not good for the system and which I suspect makes you fat. And by then, I suspect that all of the wine in that bottle that I was so deftly tricked into buying will be in my tummy, which means I'll likely be drunk and about to fall fast asleep.

I am ALONE dear readers, and I am not used to being this way. And you can't really blame me, after all, I have TWIN. I have been sharing time and energy and space with at least one another person since the womb.

I am ALONE, and feeling restless and a little bit like Sylvia Plath in the Bell Jar. I know I always make that joke amongst friends, but tonight it's actually kind of freaking me out.

The timer just went off. The penne-eggplant smells amazing. It smells so freaking good in my kitchen, like basil and Italy and love.

Anybody hungry for some penne?

i should share with you all...

That Jason fixed my hair! This happened like two weeks ago, and I just realized that I never posted about it. It looks so much better. Now for some before/after pics:

Before (in Montpellier, France):

In a wine cellar in Beaujolais:

Yesterday, in my apartment in Boston:

I also want to extol the virtues of going to the beauty parlor to get your hair blown out. It's so old fashioned, but Jason did mine for me this week and it was so worth it. It took about half an hour and cost as much as a yoga class. It was 90 degrees that day, humid as all get out, and I shudder to think of how things would have gone if I'd done my hair at home by myself that morning. There would have been sweating, tears, and heartache. Thanks again to Jason for saving the day. It still looks pretty 2 days later!

Bon weekend, mes amis!

toro blondes: the epilogue

She came back! The ethereal blonde in the shirtdress from this post written over a year ago came back to Toro last week! And I waited on her!

One of the great benefits of conducting this hair color experiment while working as a waitress is the constant stream of first impressions it offers. The people that I wait on have no idea who I am, what I am all about, and even if they did know how absolutely fascinating my glamorous life truly is, they likely would not care. They just want to eat some tapas and get a little buzz on. So, if their first impression is that I am a dumb blonde, they have absolutely no impetus to put on social airs or politesse. Usually they feel free to treat me as such. And I feel free to immortalize their obnoxious behavior on this blog. It's a win-win situation, so far as I can tell.

One of the great drawbacks of conducting this experiment in a restaurant is that usually, I never get to see these clowns again. They remain emblazoned in my memory and on this blog as their first impression. Sometimes, though, the stars will align just right, and the same person who made enough of an impression to warrant mention on the blog the first time we crossed paths will happen to come into the restaurant again on one of the three shifts that I work, and the hostess will happen to seat them in my section, et voila: I get to write an epilogue.

So, what was my impression of the ethereal, full process blonde in the shirtdress from last June this July? Well, for starters, she looked a lot more human to me this time. So much so that at first, I did not recognize her. She was on a date with a cute, sorta clumsy guy, whose manners were not as good as hers. She was again very tan, had her pretty blue eyes lined heavily with make-up, and was wearing a cute, if less elegant outfit. Her bare shoulders looked very thin to me and her cheekbones even seemed a little gaunt, which at first made me feel fat, but then had me worrying if maybe she had an eating disorder and that made me feel sad.

But the hair? What about the hair??? Well, the color was the same full-process blonde, which I noticed immediately because, well, I'm writing a book about blondes and now I notice all bleaching in all forms. But it did not trigger that same sense of inferiority deep within my soul that it did last year; it did not entice me to want to be blonder. And this is why at first, I did not even recognize the blonde from last year's post. My initial impression was not "Wow, I want to be that girl." It was, "Wow, that girl's hair is showing signs of breakage and she's gonna have roots in like ten minutes." Only after waiting on the blonde formerly know as the ethereal blonde in the shirtdress for about ten minutes did I realize who she was.

Same cute girl, same cute body, similar cute outfit. Drastically different reaction from moi. So, what happened? After much analysis, I have come to this conclusion:

It's not you, full-process-blonde-in-the-shirtdress. It's me. I've changed. I've had enough of this over-processed way of life, this constant fretting over roots and hair color and how much blonder can I be. I just want my life back.

But, I'm glad you came back to Toro, and your hair seems to be working out for you. Maybe I'll see you again in a year, and we can revisit your etherealness, or lack thereof. In the meantime, good luck keeping up with those roots, and I recommend picking up a bottle of K-Pax to help with the breakage. But you're beautiful no matter what you do with the hair.

And so am I.

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.

more pictures of France

We took almost no pictures in Paris, and did not visit a single art museum.

We did visit the infamous catacombs, an old quarry that became a communal grave during the 1800s. It reminded me of the basement at Toro...

...only in the catacombs, you can actually stand up straight.

* * * * *

We ate a lot of cheese, organ meet, and had a 3-star Michelin dining experience...















...It was almost as good as the Nutella crepe we ate from the crepe cart at midnight by the Eiffel Tower.

* * * * *

I made the Mathematician visit a whole bunch of open air markets, because I am obsessed with them, even thought we saw pretty much the same thing every time, even at this one in Lyon...

...but he was a good sport about it.

* * * * *

This is Mougins, the most special town on the Cote d'Azur...

...it is where my friend Alexander's family lives. And it really does look like that.

* * * *

This is the view from Chateau de Chevre D'Or, our hotel in Eze...

...this is where I want to be right now.

Bon soir, et bon weekend...

unforgettable

I am sitting on the hearth of the fireplace at Toro, doing my cash out with my fellow servers. A former employee who now works as a realtor, has been sitting at the bar with a friend having cocktails, for the past hour or so. I caught him looking at me three or four times earlier, before I knew who he was. (My initial thought: "Why is that tall blond guy staring at me? Do I have something on my face?") Eventually he comes over to where I sit with the other servers to say hi. He takes a seat right next to me on the hearth.

BLOND REALTOR GUY: Who are you?
ME: I'm Kitty. Who are you?
BLOND REALTOR GUY: I'm Emile.
ME: Hey, I know you! Yes, I met you one day on the street when you were walking by my apartment. You came right up to me and my friend while we were sitting outside on the stoop and asked us how we liked living here. You said that you were the person who originally listed our apartment. You didn't show it to us, but you gave the listing to my realtor, Joe.
REALTOR: Really? I don't remember that at all. I don't think so, that wasn't me.
ME: Yes, it definitely was. I'm sure of it. How many tall blond realtors named Emile could there possibly be in the South End? It was you.
REALTOR: Nah. I would have remembered that. Because I most definitely would have remembered meeting you. (He nods and looks up at me flirtatiously while tilting his head down to take a sip of red wine. The fact is, I've seen this guy before, and I've talked to him before, and I also had to call him once to ask him about something pertaining to my lease, which means that I've even spoken on the phone to him before. But at that time, I was still a brunette.)
ME: Yeah, you're right, BLOND REALTOR GUY. I'm sure you would have remembered meeting me.

Apparently as a blonde, I'm unforgettable.

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.

hiatus

So, as those of you who read this blog regularly have probably noticed, I haven't posted anything new for you in exactly a month. This is because I have been on hiatus. First my brother had a heart attack. He is only 39 years old. He is fine, but it was terrifying. Then my computer died. It was the hard drive and I lost everything. No, I did not have any of it backed up. In this day and age of simple, powerful technology, why would I have done an intelligent thing like that? Then, I went on vacation in France. It was amazing and lovely and relaxing, a much needed respite from the 2 jobs I work and the book I am trying to write. France was everything you'd expect it to be: narrow streets, baguettes and croissants, wine, lots of French language practice, cathedrals, castles, and chateaux. I was gone for 2 whole weeks and I still did not want to come back.

But like all things good and bad in life, the vacation ended, my other computer is back, and now it's time for me to get back to work.

But first, here's a picture of me in front of the Mediterranean Sea.

blondes vs. brunettes

More marketing at it's best! Since I don't have a TV (which really must change, since after all, I am a publicist) I only recently learned about the new marketing campaign for Sunsilk Color Boost. Here's the jist: marketing mavens at Mindshare Chicago have designed a totally interactive campaign to literally pit blondes and brunettes against one another, complete with TV ads like these that feature blondes and brunettes talking trash about each other, print ads (none of which I've seen yet), tie-ins to things like MySpace, and an interactive website called Colorshowdown.com, where blondes and brunettes can log in, choose a team, and "compete" to end this age-old question.

Isn't marketing fascinating?

Here's the lead to the press release I found on Imedia.com:

In order to answer the age-old question of who is better: blondes or brunettes?, Sunsilk created the Color Showdown, a campaign to ignite conversation about hair color rivalry while launching our newest line of products: the Sunsilk Color Collections.

Who is better? Blondes or brunettes? This first sentence struck me, because it is so basic. For two years now I have been pondering the "idea" of being blonde, images of blondes, commonly held notions of blondeness, my own deeply rooted feelings about being blonde, etc. To me, hair color has become a complicated web of questions. Blonde? Brunette? What does it all mean, to the world and to me, personally? And how can I work all of the many ideas and experiences I've had living as both into a cohesive, readable, 256-288 page book?

Left in the hands of a marketing team, however, there is really only one question: Who is better?

I was raised not to play favorites. I am one of four children and I have a twin brother, and no matter how many times I've tried to get my parents to confess to me that yes, I in fact was both the favorite twin AND the best child overall, it always yielded the same response:

"I love you ALL equally. You are ALL special and different and my favorite. I love ALL of you the best."

Sometimes my mom would answer "Well, you're our favorite daughter" (I am the only daughter), or "You're the best writer in the family" (I am the only writer in the family), but her and my father's message was always in it's essence the same: "You are all equally good and equally valued." In light of this, I find it audacious of Sunsilk Color Collections to so blatantly ask the world to play favorites on the question of blondes or brunettes.

On second thought, I suppose, Sunsilk probably does view brunettes and blondes equally. As long as women are spending money on their products, I'm sure the CEOs of their parent company Unilever will happily say, "Blondes & brunettes, we love ALL of you the best."

obsequious

Are you familiar with this word? I wasn't until an older co-worker of mine used it to describe me. I smiled and nodded and said, "Oh, thank you very much, you are too kind, you're making me blush." Then I got home and looked it up in the dictionary:

ob·se·qui·ous : /əbˈsikwiəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uhb-see-kwee-uhs] –adjective

1.	characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.

2.	servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.

3.	obedient; dutiful.

I was pissed.

"SERVILE? Do she think I act SERVILE???" I thought. "Maybe at my waitressing job, where I literally am a SERVER, but in my professional, 9-5 desk job? Where I wear high heels every day and use words like 'corporate restructuring' and 'P&L statement' and 'Q3 and Q4'? Is that really how I seem to my bosses and colleagues? At their beckon-call, ready FAWN over their achievements or honor them with the likes of an OBSEQUIOUS BOW?"

Sadly, she was right. At that point in my life and at that point in my career I'd developed this awful habit of "YES-ing' everybody to death:

YES, I will send that fax for you.
YES, I will pick up your lunch.
YES, I will take on the work that you should be be doing because you are too "busy" (a.k.a. incompetent/lazy) to do it yourself.

I YES-ed myself into over-working myself at all times and wondered why I constantly felt taken for granted.

After spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on therapy, I have learned to be less obsequious with people. It's a constant battle for me, but I've gotten much better about it. I use little words like "NO" a lot more often:

NO, I cannot get that done by 5 o'clock.
NO, I cannot work extra hours this week.

And it has been difficult, but I have even found ways to work this less-obsequious persona into my servile waitressing job:

NO I will not cover your shift for you so you can go see the Red Sox.
NO I will not give you separate checks.
NO you may not have another drink, you are shut off.

As a brunette especially I felt the naturally obsequious woman inside me melting away. She was replaced by this whole other kind of woman, a brunette woman who didn't feel pressured to smile all the time, to laugh at other people's bad jokes, or be super-duper friendly to people who were being rude to her. She was reserved and conservative and she had this way of commanding respect from people, all people, even those seated at her tables at the restaurant. She was poised, polite, and friendly, but she was never obsequious. She knew that a straight, serious facial expression which only broke into a bright smile if you earned it was just as effective with people as the bright, bubbly smile that never left her face when she was a blonde. She was confident that her natural demeanor was quite enough.

Now my blonde hair is back, and all of that obsequiousness is back right along with it. Last night at work, for example, I kept hearing myself say things like:

"Oh, I'm so sorry! We're out of the ribeye. I'm sorry for that, really. I should have told you that earlier. Sorry," and,

"Oh, you want one glass of wine split between two glasses? NO, no, no, that's fine!!! You don't need to do that here at the table, it's quite alright, I'll have the bartender do it for you, or I'll do it. Really, it's no trouble at all!" and,

"Thank you guys so much for coming in! Really, it was a pleasure. Enjoy your night, and enjoy the rest of your week! Thanks very, very much!"

All night long I heard phrases like these coming out of my mouth, and each time, I felt shocked at how over-the-top they sounded. Seriously, when would I have told them we were out of ribeye? Before they came in to the restaurant? Should I have called them at home? And one glass of wine split into two glasses? Who does that? They wouldn't have minded pouring it at the table, why did I make such a fuss when I knew the bartender was slammed? And who was I, imploring these strangers to have a great night and a great week and a great life...they were nice enough, but seriously, who cares? 'Thank you' is certainly a plenty friendly way to say goodbye.

But I felt even more shocked by how naturally these words spilled from my lips.

And at the end of the night I felt exhausted. Really, it's tiring, showing this SERVILE COMPLAISANCE all the time, and FAWNING over people left and right.

Where did that sassy, no bullshit brunette attitude go?

I'm back...

Well, it happened. I'm blonde again.

It happened suddenly and without warning. I walked into the salon for my cut & color appointment at 3 p.m. yesterday, thinking we'd brighten me up to a light chestnut-y color, maybe even work in a few highlights if that was at all possible. I walked out 6 hours later as a blonde.

I was not ready, I am in no way mentally prepared, and I'm kind of freaking out right now. And I don't think I'm ready to talk about it.

But, I thought you should all know...

lucky

The other night at Toro I banged my head so hard that I made myself cry. Anyone who know me well knows, I have an immense threshold for pain--it's surprising, really given my girly nature. So suffice to say, if I'm crying it hurt pretty goddamn bad.

It happened while I was crawling around in the basement, stocking printer paper and decaf espresso. The "basement" is actually no more than a wretched, dusty old crawl-space that measures no more than 5 feet tall at it's tallest spots. The "ceiling" is a virtual spiderweb of exposed pipes and beams covered in many places with screw and bolts and sharp hardware. You can't move around down there without bending over and walking with your back at a 45 degree angle, which places your gaze constantly at the ground, meaning that all of these treacherous items are nearly impossible to watch out for. I've banged my head down there countless times...but never so badly as I did last Wednesday, when I whacked the crown of my head on an exposed beam that was obscured by a mountain of chef jackets.

I ran into that beam so hard that my head and neck wrenched to the left at a whiplash angle. The blow knocked me to the ground, where I fell on top of that evil pile of chef jackets, and burst into tears like a four year old. I lay there, tears streaming down my cheeks, nose running like a faucet, for 10 minutes. When I could finally collect myself enough to crawl out of the basement, I had to spend at least 15 more minutes in the bathroom trying to collect myself, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop crying. It was like I whacked the sobbing spot in my brain or something. I felt dizzy and kind of nauseous for the rest of the evening, and have had a dull headache on and off ever since it happened.

As I lay there, bawling and pathetic on top of the chef coats last Wednesday, I somewhat ironically couldn't help but think of how lucky I am. It sucked--I mean, it really really fucking sucked, but I knew that it would be only a matter of time before the pain and the crying passed, and I would get up, go upstairs, and wait tables like a trooper, as I have done a thousand times before, no matter how sick, hungover, or bloody the wound. It got me thinking about how infrequently I experience physical pain, how sturdy and solid my body is, and how sheltered I am from physical danger in this life. I thought instantly about my mother, whose arthritis has been slowly eating away at the cartilage in her hands and feet as long as I can remember, making every step she takes at times a painful struggle. It made me think about my good friend Alexander's sister in Holland, who nearly lost her life in a severe bike accident last fall. She was hit by a car that was driving very fast, and she wasn't wearing a helmet. She's likely going to fully recover, thank god, but I know she's been going through physical, and mental hell due to the traumatic head injuries she sustained. So while my mind may torture itself with notions that my body isn't good enough or perfect enough, with thoughts that I should eat less, be thinner, and work out more, at the end of the day, my body is a wonderful, competent machine that functions well above par and has for my entire adult life.

That same night at Toro, I overheard a table of pretty, lightly dressed girls say to the waiter they'd been flirting with all night. "Oh, we're just talking about how lucky and spoiled we are," one of the girls said, twirling a lock of expensively bleached blonde hair around her finger, "how our parents were, like, poor, and they had to, you know, work like really hard. And how we just, you know...come to Toro all the time."

I think I may have thrown up a little bit in my mouth when I heard her say that, but I couldn't help but think that these girls were okay, to be acknowledging their own luck and feeling thankful for what they've got. For the most part, I feel far more aligned with the hard-working parents than with their spoiled, vapid spawn, but the reality is, I'm just a profoundly fortunate. I spend most of my time here, in the decadent, artistic, cerebral sphere, writing a blog about hair, aspiring to be a writer, thinking constantly about art and meaning. I'm lucky, too. Very lucky.

I guess all it takes is a good thump on the noggin to remind me as much.