Being Natural

This year, my 26th year, not 2011, is not affectionately being known as the year of my funk. Since about the summer I've been jonesing to wear bright blue nail polish, the color of a crayola blue crayon, so I did.

I usually don't wear bright colors cause it chips and looks horrible, but since July I've been doing my nails once a week, searching through a sea of fushias, oranges, beige, pink, red, silver--a veritable rainbow of hues, and coming back consistently to matte crayola blue.

Since about 2005 I've wanted blue in my hair in some manner. Ever since I got red highlights... I thought, blue... one day I'm going to do blue.

But red is quite an acceptable "unnatural" color to put in your hair... blue is... well... for those people who watch too much anime or are really into yoga and tarot or are ok with having their hair eventually fade to a greenish-blueish-whitish tint of sea foam mixed with lint...

This winter I finally did it.... I officially have blue highlights. They look amazing.

People who I told I was getting blue highlights responded with a kind of mock horror... "BLUE!? but your hair is so lovely..."

My hair is medium length and a dark, rich brown and curly. It has a mind of it's own. When I grow it long, it can be dangerous... lol

It's pretty in a kind of messy, wild, dangerous way... the way you expect a Spanish girl in a western's hair is meant to look as it blows in the dusty Texan wind.

So as I got it done... it looked good... almost a little too good, almost like... it belonged there.

Now I know blue isn't a "natural" hair color. People are not born with blue hair. But let's face it, most people who have naturally colored hair, it's still not natural.

One friend considered dying her hair a slightly darker shade of brown, unnatural... since technically, the chemicals have made her hair look like that.

The blue in my hair looks natural in that it looks like it could have grown that way... it looks like it belongs there... like the blue was somehow a part of me and has pushed itself out of my brain onto my scalp.

Everyone, so far, has liked it... "It looks so good. When you said blue, I didn't know what to think, but it looks amazing!"

I think the blue has unveiled a different layer of my personality in an oddly haunting way that nothing else could of accomplished.

I feel more of myself and I this blue hair is somehow a synecdoche of that in my life.

So for a little bit... I'm going to be blue... because it fits me... naturally :)