On Hair Dye and Morphing Into Mom
After reading this Racked piece on Mom Hair, I’ve been thinking about my mom’s hair. Growing up, my mom had the updated look depicted by “Mommy” in the Family Circus comics right down to the dark color. It was the mid-90’s after all. She was on-trend.
What sticks out most about my mother’s hair is her habit of dyeing it. I’d perch in her bathroom and watch as she delicately applied the dye with gloved hands. The bathroom was large — my parents had it renovated from an attic to a bathroom sometime in my early childhood — and it was complete with a jacuzzi tub, beige tiles, and gold faucets. The smell of potpourri always hung in the air and it was easily the most luxurious room in our home.
Without coloring it, her hair would be gray. The act of dyeing hair was so foreign to me, and therefore, fascinating to me. I couldn’t imagine myself ever wanting to change the color of my hair.
A friend’s mother with long, beautiful, and extremely not “mom hair”, once said to me, “I don’t know why your mom dyes it, her gray hair would be so beautiful.” I resolved then to never be ashamed enough of my natural hair to resort to dying it.
Until fifteen years later.
By my mid-twenties, the usual long brown hair look I’d had since high school — with a few brief detours into having bangs — had grown…
