The Journey to Find My Natural Hair Color
Last Updated (Monday, 05 July 2010 14:04)
The Journey to Find My Natural Hair Color
Written by Sandie Torres
People often ask me what my natural hair color is and my answer was always “I have no idea, dark brown I think.” That was the truth- I really had no idea.
I knew of course when I was a child that my hair was a light to medium brown but once I started adding highlights as a teen I never looked back. My hair definitely became darker as I got older but I colored my hair so much, never letting my roots show for more than a week or two, that I really couldn’t tell how dark my hair truly was.
This past fall I was watching Chris Rock’s documentary “Good Hair” and I decided to take a journey of self-discovery and find my natural hair color. I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach this journey- I sought suggestions and advice from professional hairdressers all over the country, ignored them all and created a complicated process that I like to call “torturing myself.”
A little background on me:
For as long as I could remember I always blended in, never stood out in a crowd and was always mistaken for other people. Once I started to take risks with my hair and makeup I started feeling better about myself and the more risks I took, the more I stood out, and was remembered. I can remember meeting people 5 or 6 times and them still acting like they didn’t know me, I just had a universal dull look. I always felt good about my personality but I was average in looks but always too skinny. I didn’t have one feature that really stood out so I started paying attention to my hair. My hair was something I could work with and make changes to. My hair was thick, but not too thick, straight but I could wear it wavy, it took curls and was easy to straighten. The color…wasn’t great. I used to call is a kaka brown. And so began my hair coloring adventures and soon enough I began to define myself by my hair.
The Journey
Step 1: Tone down my present color and let my roots really grow out
At the time that I decided to take this journey my hair was an insanely intense bright red so I didn’t want to let my roots grow out and be a two-toned mess…actually more like four-toned because I also had some pink highlights and the ends of my hair were blonde…boy does that sound crazy (please watch the video so you can see that I didn’t look THAT crazy). I had my colorist Sheila use a few applications of cover remover which toned down the red. She then put a temporary brown color over my hair just to last a few weeks so that I could ease into the transition (aka look acceptable at beauty industry events and meetings). We were able to keep the blonde ends which I was EXTREMELY thankful for.
Step 2: Just wait (the torture begins)
The next step in the process was to let my hair grow so that I could see what my natural hair color was. It was important that the bottom half of my hair was a different color (important to me) so I could see the clear distinction. The temporary color faded as time went on and my hair actually was a nice auburn/red color, however the dark roots coming in drove me into what I called a “winter depression.” My hair was really long and while I did like the blonde ends on my hair the dark hair surrounding my face made me feel pale and atrocious looking. In the video blog (titled “Winter Depression”), my hair actually doesn’t look that bad and it seems a little funny that I kept talking about the disgusting color. I was referring to the top of my head. I like to wear my hair up and whenever I did that it looked super dark. Not just dark, dark is ok, dark and dull. I have that disease (self-diagnosed) that I am never really happy with my hair color, it’s always “a work in progress” and I constantly need drastic changes. Not being able to get my hair colored at all was…torture for me. I felt like I had to explain myself to colleagues because my hair was looking a little crazy and I just didn’t feel confident. I fell into a winter depression (also self-diagnosed).
Step 3: Chop it all off
My hair was super long, I can’t remember it ever being that long actually. The next step was to bring it up to rest on or above my shoulders so the roots had less growing to do. After I cut it I can remember one of the hair stylists I work with telling me I would still need at least a year before my hair was all one color and that was with cutting it even shorter. My journey was more about being able to see what my natural color was so I became less worried about letting the roots grow out completely. Chopping my hair was like “breaking the seal” as they say. I thought it would help my need for change and hold me over for awhile since it was pretty drastic but instead it made me want more change and immediately!
Step 4: I give up!
About a month later I couldn’t take it anymore so I headed back to the salon to see Sheila so she could transform me and we could begin a new process, my journey back to blonde. Before red I was blonde and I was missing blonde in my life, big time. We had tried blonde highlights but the red was so hard to cut through. For a few years I wore platinum blonde streaks just in the front of my red hair, I actually really liked that look and it satisfied my need for blonde at the time. But this time there was a lot of color in my hair and Sheila and I tried to figure out the best way to gradually go blonde. Sheila is always very careful with my hair. She takes the risk (in design) that I want and insist on without ever damaging my hair. (Disclaimer- I don’t recommend taking actual “risks” with your hair that would have any change of damaging your hair whatsoever). At this point in the process Sheila had a pretty good idea of what my natural color was so she colored my hair with the best match, this time more permanently and to a very dark brown and for a few minutes I was able to see how dark my hair really is naturally, un-naturally. Then of course we started adding a few blonde highlights so that didn’t last long!
Step 5: My Natural Color=dark and dull
According to Sheila my natural color is between a level 5 and 6, very dark brown, and dull. That’s exactly how I started out, in life that is! I always felt dull until I started highlighting and coloring my hair. I am not opposed to going brunette with color but my actual natural color and I ….I hope we never meet again.
My Self-Discovery
I wish I could end this article with some profound statement about how appearance doesn’t make me who I am and how I discovered that no matter what my hair color was, I was still me. That’s what I wanted to happen but that wasn’t the case. I wanted to be one of those women who could shave their head and feel beautiful. I wanted to stand up for women who have illnesses that cause hair loss and say “it doesn’t matter!” Well here’s the truth, to the women who have hair loss issues- you ARE beautiful and what makes YOU beautiful is who you are. Now for me, I have some work to do. What I discovered is that I REALLY have some work to do, on me. This example should sum up how I feel about hair and makeup- when I’m watching one of those Dateline shows and they’re interviewing a women in prison the first thing I think of is about how hard it must be to not be able to wear makeup and get their hair colored. That’s not normal right? I shouldn’t need to hide behind my hair. My hair should not define me. While I can make excuses all day about how I need my hair to be fabulous because of the field I’m in, that’s not really the issue. The issue is I need to be more confident and stop hiding….but for now, while I figure that whole thing out I also want to do what makes me happy. So as a busy working mom who doesn’t get to do a lot for herself, I choose getting my hair done as that one outlet where I can feel good about myself. I will continue to color my hair and I will do my best to avoid wearing my natural color, at all costs.
Happy Hair Coloring!
Thanks for reading, please check out my video blogs of each step in the process.
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