November 12, 2019 - 60 - "Seeing Red"

This is the only picture I could find with my hair at
it's weirdest.  But it looked worse in real life.
It sort of took on an interesting dayglo effect.
 I avoided direct sun like a vampire if
cameras came out.

     A year or two ago I made the effort to use more natural products.  Better for the environment.  Better for me.  Chemical free.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

     I started with my hair color.  A friend said she was using henna.  I thought that was just for having red hair, but she was brunette and said they have all sorts of mixes.   I did a bunch of Googling and YouTube-ing and found a company that got good reviews, and a henna/indigo mix that I thought might get pretty good results.  

    And it did...at first.  The first round or two was, basically, covering my already dyed-brunette hair.  But as my white roots started showing more and more, the color was just turning them a sort of orangey-red.  Like the little old ladies from my church growing up who 'henna'd their hair'.

     The product might be natural...but the results on my hair were anything but.  Definitely under the category of 'colors not found in nature'.

     ...not in hair anyway.  Originally it leaned toward a nice auburn, but as time passed  it more resembled Hawaiian Punch.  


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     The process was very, very, time consuming, and very, very, gross.  You, basically, mix up this mud and slather it on your new-growth hair...and leave it for hours.  Like 5 hours.  Then you put it on all of the hair for a while more.  

    Then you mix up the indigo stuff and start over again.

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    The company euphemistically said the stuff 'smells like nature'.  

    Huh.  Okay, well, skunk spray and cow manure 'smell like nature'...but I wouldn't want to make either one my signature scent.

    It had a grassy scent.

   ...if you put grass in your yard cart along with the contents of the litter box, it then got rained on, ....and then sat in hot weather for a week or two.

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  It recently occured to me I might be predisposed to hate the smell of henna.  

     Michael and I went to a wedding in India in 2006.  Just before the big festivities kicked off I got a dramatic case of food poisoning.  

     One of the many many wedding related events was the mehndi.  That's when the women in the wedding party get henna tattoos on their arms.

     I wasn't feeling well already.  And being sick to your stomach makes even normally nice smells unpleasant.  


     The smell of the green henna mud drying on my arms made me want to vomit.  But I didn't want to be the whiny American with the weak stomach...so I just asked to sit by a window and tried to hold my head close enough to catch the breeze outside instead of the henna smell inside.

     All while trying to figure out how to gracefully get up off the floor, disengage from the two tattoo ladies working on each arm, and make it to the bathroom fast enough to vomit, uh, etc. there.   

     Sometimes international experiences are more picturesque in hindsight.

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   Anyhow, I decided that maybe 'natural' isn't all it's cracked up to be either.

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"It takes a village."  

-Stacy London

 (Waving a hand in front of herself to indicate her appearance.)

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"I have been dyeing my hair since I was, like, 2."

-JoJo Siwa

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"I feel like everyone should dye their hair a weird color.  If you hate it, you can just dye it back." 

-Chris Benz 

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