Dyeing Is An Art
By Tija Gupta

When I was born, the first thing anyone noticed about me, besides the requisite number of fingers and toes, was my full head of hair. Glossy, black, wavy—it quickly became my signature. In the fourth grade, I had a moment reminiscent of a women’s prison when, while brushing my long hair in the bathroom during a class break, a larger girl came in, saw me, paused and then asked in a voice that still haunts me, "Excuse me. May I brush your hair?" The little girl who was with me at the time quickly excused herself, and I, having no other choice, surrendered my brush to the stranger.

My hair is like another person, a conjoined twin of sorts. It is far more interesting and popular than me, and I can never live up to it. As an only child, my relationship with my hair is the closest I’ve ever felt to sibling rivalry. However, unlike most siblings, I have an inordinate amount of control over my hair and have tried to exert it whenever possible—and then find myself sadly limited. Besides cutting it, there is little I can do. It resists most dyes, and even in terms of haircuts, I am limited by my face shape, low maintenance lifestyle, and my mother’s sense of possessiveness. I could get a Maori tattoo over the majority of my face, but it wouldn’t matter as long as my hair was still long and showy.

But recently, I decided to make a drastic, Sinead O’Connor-type move. A local salon was training some of its newer staff in the art of "corrective color" and asked if I’d be interested in modeling. This is not modeling in the sense that I had to be willowy, beautiful, and suggestible—it was modeling in the "modeling clay" sense of modeling. I was up for it, telling them that I would love to see my hair a different color than black for the first time, preferring a nice dark brown that I thought would make my features less severe looking. They assured me that that was reasonable and I looked forward to my appointment.

The next morning, I was told that I would have to come in earlier than expected because they were going to “strip my hair color.” My hair, they decided, was so tough and resistant that it would take an extra hour to bleach the color out of it. A scary thought at first, but in a way, I reveled in it—I had a Jan Brady reaction to the news, wanting my hair to experience a little suffering, feeling that much resentment towards its popularity and beauty that I almost couldn’t wait to see it in all its nakedness and vulnerability, stripped of color, moisture, strength.

The actual act of the bleaching was treacherous. My scalp burned, and my hair was monitored for breakage. It was in this state that I was introduced to the students, under a garbage bag-looking smock, hair gunked back with bleach, mascara streaking my face as my eyes had been tearing up from the burning sensation and smell. The students examined me with their own eyes, their faces questioning the technique and what they were expected to do with me. The instructor, five feet tall in four-inch red patent heels, extolled the virtues of a certain type of dye, a certain type of color stripper with real diamonds in it, and why you shouldn’t just apply 40 level bleach to someone’s head indiscriminately. They talked about the challenges in red, how to tell if someone is a cool or warm color, and the use of the color gold to brighten other colors. All the while, my scalp burned.

When my hair was washed out, they tried to keep me away from mirrors, as though I were Lon Cheney or Vincent Price and couldn’t handle it. I practically expected bandages to be cut away to the chorus of thunder and lightning, at which point I would demand a mirror and, upon seeing my disfigured visage, would drop it the floor, cackling a macabre laugh that would strike fear into the hearts of every salon student present. That didn’t happen. My hair, on the bottom at least, didn’t lift. An hour of bleach, and the bottom of my hair was the color of raspberry jam. The top of my head looked a bit like a flame. My first impression was that I looked like the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. But, they promised me, I would be transformed.

And I was. Three hours later and I walked out with a shade of chestnut hair that was about 5 shades too light for my swarthy complexion and a hit list of students and one instructor who I wanted to sue for malpractice (except I had signed a waiver. Damn waiver.) I looked like a female rapper with a bad stylist, or like I was having a major identity crisis. Though I generally consider myself above petty matters related to appearance and image, I could barely walk to the bus stop without crying.

My kind houseguest, who I had warned about my hair via a cell phone conversation with psychotic undertones, let me into my apartment and managed to look startled for only a moment before she started in with "It really doesn’t look as bad as you think it does." I called the salon and made an appointment to fix my hair—seven humiliating days later, my hair was given a new lease on life via the application of three shades of black dye. Three. Shades. Of black.

My hair is now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and has developed the power to trap small animals and birds without my knowledge. But I blame myself—I shouldn’t look at my hair as my enemy, or as my better. Every piece of me is a contributor, a team player, and I shouldn’t have been resentful of the star. What had it ever done but show me at my best? Like a child that eclipses her parents, my hair should have been my pride, not my competition. And so I go, and stay—back to black.

——

Tija Gupta just realized that all the hope for her family's future lies in her 15-year old cousin. Good luck, kiddo.

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