It's All Blonde

After dealing with the world's worst haircut for the past month, a friend offered to color my hair to lighten and brighten it, thinking that I would feel better about how awful my hair actually looks. I'm leaving on a cruise in a few days, so we talked it over a bit and I said "let's do it." She bought the same product in the same color choices that she uses on her hair, light ash blonde, and we were off and running on the make-over.

With what little hair there is on my head fully saturated with what looked like a light beige crème, she began to massage the color into the hair follicles. Suddenly, she said, "Hmmm." I asked her what was going on and she said, "This makes your hair look red." When I asked for clarification, she told me not to worry because ... she used the same product that she uses on her hair, and it's an ashy blonde that I really like.

Well, as things far too often go in my life, when we got to the rinse phase of the process, we were both sure that the "red" hue would go down the drain, but that was not to be the case. As a matter of fact, my hair looked even redder after washing out the product than it had in-process.

And when I say it was red, it was R-E-D. No doubt about it.

Of course, she was horrified and absolutely unable to come up with a reason why my hair was now a pretty shade of red with some undercurrents of either blonde or grey. I just laughed: I can count on one hand the number of times I've had something done to my hair and it turned out like it was supposed to turn out! I assured her that it didn't matter as the color will fade -- and I'm going on a cruise (shudder here to realize this is what I'm going to look like on the cruise), so I won't know anyone who will know any difference. Can't change it, so gotta live with it.

The current plan is to wash it with regular shampoo each day until I leave and maybe, just maybe, some of the color will fade. I'm not sure what will look worse: really R-E-D or pink-tinged hair from hoping the color will fade.

Maybe this is the time to investigate wigs?

Updating: the red tinge washed out and my hair is a yellowish ash blonde color. It's bright and really freshened my appearance.