I finally did it!After two long years of being positively platinum, I’ve taken the plunge and embarked on the treacherous journey toward natural hair. It’s hard to fathom what I’ve been willing to put myself through. Two long years of consistently tolerating the cruel scalp scald that inevitably accompanies platinum locks. Two long years of being tethered to bleach and toners and latex gloves and occasional orange hues that have no place on my agenda. For the last 6 months or so, every time I’d get my roots bleached (by my longsuffering boyfriend—MAJOR kudos to him!), I would say, “OK, after this, I’m done.”
But it’s like sliding down an icy hill, my friends, and realizing halfway through that it’s not as easy as it looks. You’ve already got momentum, so you figure you may as well keep on going. You are fully cognizant of the painstaking efforts it took to arrive where you are, so calling it quits and, in essence, throwing all that work away is difficult to do.
There’s a line between beautiful two-tone (call it ombré call it balayage, I don’t really care) hair and just plain grown-out roots and frankly, it’s not so fine. I knew I wasn’t willing to just grin and bear it as my roots creeped up on me and made a statement to the world. So I decided to accelerate that process while slowly weaning myself away from lavender by doing a root stretch.
I hadn’t heard of one either, but I figured if people with dark-all-over hair can get light tips, people with light-all-over hair can get their root color extended. So I did a little research and saved about 7 pictures for my girl to mimic (I’m pretty sure one of the required skills that make a hairdresser successful is the ability to take nebulous, seemingly contradictory instructions and make magic out of them anyway). Though I was perfectly prepared for a disaster, I'm pretty pleased with the result. And I'm pretty sure my hair follicles are ecstatic!
Here's to making transitions as smooth and un-awkward as possible.
photo by Benjamin Vargas
