During covid, at home hair transformations were trending everywhere. I would watch the videos for hours, having nothing better to do, and wishing I could dye my own hair. All throughout quarantine, I begged my mom to dye it, but she refused since she thought I would regret it. 

When school went back to normal, I was in sixth grade. That was two years straight of wanting to dye my hair. So, after years of waiting, my mom finally said yes. Even though hair salons were now open again, I thought it would be way more fun to do it myself, with the help of my mom. I thought it would be a piece of cake! My mom didn’t think it was a good idea to dye it ourselves, and she tried to convince me to go to a hair salon. However, with the help of my dad, who was very on board with my plan, (aka the cheapest option), we convinced her. 

 After school one night, we walked to the Walgreen’s down the street from my house. I had been scrolling through Pinterest the night before, and had decided on dying my hair red. I chose red because the school I went to at the time had a rule, “no unnatural hair colors”. So I figured red was as close as I could get to “unnatural” without getting in trouble. Not knowing at the time that red box dye is pretty much the hardest thing on earth to get out of hair. I picked out the red hair dye I wanted, and bought two bottles of it. Being extra careful I had enough to cover all my hair.  I was happy with how my hair turned out for a while, but during the summer before seventh grade, I decided I wanted my natural dirty blonde back.

It took a year to get the red dye out of my hair, and the dye is still not completely out towards the ends of my hair. I went to many different salons until I found my current hairdresser. My hair had barely changed before I went to her. She got me to an even lighter blonde than my natural hair color! I am so grateful I found her, and that my hair is not bright red anymore. 

The lesson I learned from this experience is to trust my mom when she tells me not to do something. I also learned not to think I can do everything I see online. The people I was watching were professionals, and I had no experience dyeing hair. I should have researched the type of hair dye I used. If I did, I probably would not have stained red hair to this day.