Midlife Crises

Back in my late 30s, I decided that after age 40, I’d stop coloring my hair. (Prior to this, except during my pregnancy, I had been pretty manic about changing haircolor, sometimes going very extreme, on a fairly regular basis.) My reason was that there are a lot of older women around – women with, shall we say, “aged faces” – who dye their hair to a dark color and look wrong as a result. I didn’t want to be one of them.

From age 40 to 51 I adhered to that rule. My only fall from grace was a light dusting of blonde highlights in the fall of 2013, but they were almost unnoticeable, so that doesn’t count.

But for some reason, last month I suddenly had a very strong urge not just to color my hair, but to go fairly extreme again. After waffling for a while, I decided to do one last haircolor hurrah, and be done with it. Tonight this extravaganza took place, thanks to Andrea at the Regis salon in Sammamish (she’s been my on-and-off stylist for about 8 years).

First step: coloring the hair red-violet, except for the places where the color streaks would be; those were bleached out at the same time.

Second step: applying the color for the streaks.

Third step: cut and blow-dry. (Normally I let my hair air-dry, so this very smooth look is not something that’s likely to reoccur.)

Here are the results. I absolutely love how this turned out. I’m sure at least one reader is going to think of the ‘circus pony’ analogy, but I don’t care!