In my family going prematurely grey is genetic. My great grandmother was grey at 28 as was my mom... and so, it's not surprising that I am half grey at the age of 26. Yip, for the past year or so I have been waging a war on the grey highlights that insist on permeating my naturally brunette locks. I've never been a high maintenance Sandton girl. Sure, I like high heels and am the first to climb on many a trendy bandwagon (even the 80s leggings and neon trend that's invading the Northern suburbs at present), but I've never been one for weekly nail appointments and I've never been for a facial. I've never really had the urge (or, truthfully the budget) to look polished and 100% put together every day of the week...
Which is why having to go to my super-fabulous hairdresser every six weeks to cover the grey has been an expensive (and time consuming) thorn in my side ever since my wedding day over a year ago. Where am I going with this dull, dye-job monologue you may ask? Well, I took a brave step a few days ago... I summoned up all of the courage I could and teetered over to Carlton Hair last Thursday afternoon to make peace with the fact that my days as a full-blown brunette were coming to an end. It was time to throw a few blonde highlights into the mix to act as camouflage for the ever increasing grey ones.
So I sat down in the chair, had a heart to heart with my stylist and gave him the green light to cover my head in foils and slap on half a head of blonde highlights and caramel lowlights. As I sat under the dryer thingee listening to the timer 'tick, tick' down from 30 minutes, I grew increasingly anxious... by the time it came to rinse I was so nervous that I refused to look in a mirror and not even my stylist's 'ooh-ing' and 'aah-ing' and 'It looks fabulous, daaahling' could stop the thud, thud of my heart galloping in my chest cavity. What had I just done?!?
Obviously I was in good hands and it was a choice that I had made, but it felt like a massive step – brunette to blonde in just under an hour – and there was no going back (at least not until I could afford to have it reversed) *gulp*
Anyways, as Carlton's best towel-dried my locks and started to blow dry each section a wave of calm washed over me. It actually looked pretty good... the girl staring back at me in the mirror was a little unfamiliar, but as the minutes ticked by she looked more and more like me – only blonder, A LOT blonder. I liked it but was a little dubious about how my hubby would react. This is the man after all who took two weeks to adjust to my fringe...
I thought it best to give the poor man fair warning so I snapped a quick pic (a bit blurry, but he'd get the general idea) with my Blackberry and sent it along the airwaves to him. The five minutes it took to get a response was pretty nerve-wracking... but eventually I heard the 'you've got mail' beep, beep and his response was this: "You look HOT. Best you hurry over before my wife gets home."
Perhaps, blondes do have more fun after all?
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