Smack Me Down: the Epilogue

Mah goodness, do you people ever have strong opinions about Other People’s Hair. Your passion is inspiring, and have you ever thought about starting an advice column of some kind? You totally should. All the advice columns out there suck anyway.
In the end, I sort of pussed out. After getting EXTREMELY JAZZED about the idea of going strawberry blond, I knew those of you who cautioned against it were right. Blond-to-red is a really tough, high-maintenance process, and did you SEE what my hair looked like? You know how it got to that blah, flat, limp, dishwater point? Seven months without a haircut. 12 months (at least) without touching up my highlights.
Clearly, I need to stick with SUBTLE color that won’t announce just how long it has been since I’ve gone to the salon, like those rings on tree trunks, or whatever.
So I went with my usual two-shades-of-blond highlights. I briefly floated the red idea to my stylist, and he pretended not to hear me.
“Please, girl.” he said. “Don’t go there.”
(By the way, I actually told my stylist about this column on Saturday, which I’ve never done before. I’m usually too embarrassed, because saying “I give people advice about hair and makeup and shoes and stuff” means people look you up and down, expecting you to like, look halfway decent. Just because I KNOW stuff doesn’t mean I actually DO the stuff I should. [Exhibit A: my melty, smeary eyeliner.])
(I also told him how many suggestions I got for Victoria Beckham’s haircut. And he also kind of pretended not to hear that. He did want me to tell y’all to moisturize every day though.)
Several people mentioned Nicole Richie’s long-ish bob and side-swept bangs, and Nic actually emailed me this really great picture. Yes. Yes! I showed this to my stylist (oh, his name is Phillip already, I feel weird typing “my stylist” over and over, like I keep him on staff or something, along with my maid and my manny) and he agreed it was Good. I didn’t want to go that short (ponytails are a necessary fact of life), and he wanted to make it a little choppier to work with my fine hair.
(Another aside! While my color was setting he brought me a slew of gossip rags to find additional pictures of Nicole, all of which I’d already gone through at home that morning and already knew that they only had photos taken after she’d added extensions.)
Anyway. This is me, taken the day of my appointment, with the same cameraphone and hideously crappy lighting (I swear I am not really this orange) as the photos I posted on Friday.

(Uh. I wore the same shirt so I could be…objective. Yes. Totally not because I get dressed based on what’s currently on top of the laundry pile or anything.)
And this is me on Sunday, the first day of styling it myself, which we all know can be a fairly frustrating experience.

(Jason was totally making fun of me from outside the bathroom door, by the way.)

I used Pureology’s root lift and Bumble & Bumble’s Surf Spray before blow-drying with a round brush. (I can’t believe how thick the B&B spray makes my hair when I use it before drying. I can’t believe I never thought to use it as anything other than a finishing product all these years.) I really only dried the top layers and my bangs, then scrunched the lower layers and let them air-dry. It’s a little shaggier and flatter than it ought to be, but it only took me about 15 minutes to style, start to finish.

The best part is that Phillip cut the bangs with ponytails in mind.
Anyway. That’s mah new hairdo. I kind of (okay, totally and completely) love it, and wish I’d hacked those extra inches off ages ago. The end, and thanks for playing. We shall return to our regularly scheduled bossing around on Wednesday.