Say NO to Bleach
June 21st 2007 18:10
To those of you with long, jet-black hair, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been through it too. I’ve also stood in front of my bathroom mirror in frustration with an empty bottle of dye in my hand and wailed, “Why, oh, why hasn’t my hair turned out French Roast?” I, too, have cursed the stubbornness of my hair colour and envied my friends traipsing around with their new blonde or reddish highlights. Several times, they would try to appease me and tell me that the dye did work – if the sun was directly behind me or if I was directly under bright lights. But unless I walked around with a torch in my hand and beamed it at my head, my hair remained black. Boring, basic black. I would flip through glossy magazine pages and stare wistfully at Beyonce and JLo with their beautiful, bountiful honey-coloured hair which seemed to light up their faces. And I wondered : to bleach or not to bleach?
All my life, I had had people telling me to never, ever bleach my hair and to stick to hair dyes you can buy from the supermarkets. Bleach dries your hair, that’s a fact. But surely, it couldn’t be that bad. After all, there are millions of products you can buy that promise to ‘restore your health to its natural shine’.
So, a year ago, I headed toward a hair salon and selected a dark honey colour from one of those artificial hair things shaped like a teardrop. When the hairdresser told me that she had to bleach my hair so the colour would go through, I nodded my head. An hour later, when she told me that she had to put more bleach in my hair because the colour still wouldn’t go through, I hesitated but told her to go on anyway.
Lighter hair colour does brighten up the face, I agree. But bleach IS a murder of lush, healthy strands of hair. It doesn’t matter how expensive the brand of shampoo and conditioner I use, my hair has lost its natural gloss. While serums help out, they only help out temporarily and I kind of get the feeling that they do damage to your hair in the long run.
I miss those days when I would simply wash my hair with cheap products like Pantene, get out of the shower, leave my hair wet and uncombed then wake up the next day with people asking me what hair products I use to make my hair nice, shiny and oh-so-straight. Now, I have to fork out more money to buy salon products because hairdressers have instilled in me the fear that my hair would just get worse with products like Pantene. To get my hair nice and straight, I not only have to put smoothing serum in my hair, but I would have to blow dry it then follow it with hair straightener. Obviously, this whole session will only damage your hair in the long run but unfortunately, there’s nothing else to it without looking like I’ve lived in a cave my whole life.
My hair is so dry, that if you put a strand between two fingers, it’ll squeak like there’s a mouse nibbling in your ear; so coarse, you may as well use it to sweep the floor like a broom; so frizzy, I look like I’m constantly stressed and pulling my hair out; and filled with split ends that I now take scissors with me so during those times when I have nothing to do, I bury my nose in the ends of my hair and snip away.
My hair is probably looking at its most disgusting right now – with the top half jet-black and the bottom half dry, bleached and frizzy. If I leave it hanging over my shoulders, my hair actually resembles a bell.
With this in mind, I made a promise to myself. I am never bleaching my hair. If I find myself getting bored with it and wanting to dye it, I will buy those hair dyes from supermarkets and gladly accept compliments made only where the sun is shining brightly or when I’m standing directly under lights. But for the next six months, I would keep buying those elastic bands and stare in disgust at the pool of cut split ends on the table.
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Comment by Anonymous
trick with bleaching hair/colour correction is lotso f conditioner.
-do deep conditioning treatments
- use leave in conditioner
- where possible let hair air dry
- if u use hairdryer/straighteners, use a serum or defrizz cream.
also, if u dont wanna fork out on salon products, use Aussie hair products, i still use it on my own hair