Split-Ends

My Control Hair

In the few years coming out of COVID, my hair was entirely untouched, apart from the products I finally learned to use to control the frizz. This is what I call my ‘control hair.’ Given the year and a half I had spent locked up in my room, I was itching for anything exciting, and, newly sixteen, my mother had officially given up on trying to tame my desire to burn off my hair.

Split Dye

After spending far too much time online in my year-and-a-half-long hiatus from the world, I collected an unholy amount of hair inspo pictures. Most of them were extravagant fashion colors and complicated color blocking; however, in an effort to simply dip my toe into the realm of hair transformation, I settled for a slightly understated split dye. 

This hair witnessed me fail my driver’s exam twice, it supervised the transition from my grandmother’s SUV passenger seat to my best friend’s, and the inside of the barbecue restaurant I worked at as my first job. As my sixteenth year of life came to an end, I was looking for a transformation worthy of closing out my first year of teenage-hood proper. 

Full Blonde

I was obsessed with the idea of turning seventeen. To me, it seemed that mainstream media had decided that this age was THE age; from songs to movies to TV shows, I was determined to make my seventeen exactly as it had appeared to me. And for that, I needed a drastic change. While I briefly considered a full buzzcut, I ended up landing on bleaching my entire head of hair. I was already halfway there, but I was admittedly also inspired by the idea of blondes having more fun. While I’m not entirely sure if my blonde hair was particularly conducive to more fun (my seventeen-year-old angsty hormones might be mostly to blame for that), I had lots of firsts with my blonde hair. My blonde hair carried me through two junior proms, half a dozen concerts, and countless bottles of purple shampoo. 

Purple Accents

Like many seventeen-year-olds, my friends and I were prone to impulsive hair dye parties, and with my perfectly blank canvas, the demons of bright colored hair dye spoke to me especially loudly. My purple accents were the perfect youthful change. They helped me live out seven-year-old me's Avril Lavigne fantasies, and for the sake of bonding with my high school friend group, I refreshed the pieces at every one of our impulsive hair dye sessions. 

Bob and Brown

My hair went through a quick progression of blonde bob to brown bob. Just a month and a half out from my eighteenth birthday, I became completely panicked by the idea of becoming a legal adult. While being seventeen, it seemed like my independence had increased tenfold. I had traveled across the country solo, gotten myself to school and work, and had impromptu sleepovers with my friends on random weekdays. Despite this, the feeling of losing the legal protection of childhood had me in a complete spiral. My reaction was to give myself what seventeen-year-old me considered to be more ‘adult’ hair. It was a tragic choice. 

Purple Hair

Very quickly, I realized that adulthood is a construct and my brown bob was entirely wrong for me. Deciding to go completely purple was a reclaiming of myself, a statement that I can be both fun and adult. In a time full of change, from college applications to high school graduation to moving out of Texas and into my first-year dorm, my purple hair felt like a silent commitment to stay true to myself. Regardless of the many double takes I received when having electric purple hair, I was happy to be able to live out my childhood dreams of fun colored hair. The biggest hurdle, however, was the difficulty of maintaining dyed hair in a dorm shower. Eventually, my purple hair washed completely out to the bleach blonde I had hidden underneath it, and for the pure purpose of practicality, I had to lay my purple locks to rest. 

Split Dye

In mourning my purple hair, I briefly thought that I might return to my former ‘adulthood crisis brown bob’, but I ultimately knew better. In thinking of how I could maintain my whimsical spirit in spite of the less-than-optimal conditions of college living, my split-dyed hair of my past came to mind. Perhaps it was a combination of nostalgia and practicality, given that my split dye would obscure my outgrown roots, but I decided to turn back to my old faithful hairstyle. While I may be saying this simply because the hair is currently living on my head, it feels perfectly natural and true to me. I’m sure this won’t be my last hair transformation, but for now I am happy to settle.