I got balayage for the first time in 2019 or 2020. Can’t remember if I was wearing a mask at the appointment. Whatever. The results were undetectable and the stylist was a bitch.
Unrelated to her miserable aura, though, she changed my life forever. We were choosing the shade and I said, “I still want to be a brunette, just with more dimension.” “I would never call you a brunette,” she noted, stony, aloof, “you’re truly a dark blonde.”
Bridges collapsed. Buildings burned. Cicadas swarmed. An apocalypse of self was imminent. I pushed my alleged dark-blondeness to the back of my mind, hoping it’d disappear among old song lyrics and middle school mnemonics.
Two years later, I was back in the chair—this time with a wonderful stylist, the same girl I see today. Keri knows a blonde when she sees one. I pilfered her contact info from a girl with the best hair I’d ever seen, a cascade of waist-length, honeyed blonde. She could have told me she uses kitchen scissors and shampoos clients with Alberto VO5 and I would have been like, “fuck me up.” (It’s worth noting that she’s married to the heir of a very popular fashion retailer and could fly to Paris just to get her hair done if she wanted.)
So Keri and I are shuffling through those first sesh conversations. How long have you lived in the city? Any fun summer plans? Face framing pieces, or more of a curtain bang? You know the drill. I decide to get balayage for the first time in two years since that (dis)appointment. While she’s foiling me, I go, “yeah, the last girl to give me balayage called me a dark blonde, ha!” I paused, waiting for my sarcastic chuckle to echo back. Instead, I got a sobering, “She’s right.”
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For a brief stretch of time, I thought I might “get into” TikTok. I was digging what the kids were doing on there (*boomer voice*); it seemed like the only way for one’s art to blow up these days.
My new content creator ambitions surging, I bought this light you clip onto your phone. It’s actually a cool product. It resembles a small solar panel, and has a good range of brightness with warm, cool, and neutral settings. I didn’t end up TikToking really, but I have taken a few selfies with the light. This thing makes you look airbrushed. And it revealed colors in my eyes that confused me, lots of greens and golds. Was this new? Can your eyes change? I thought I was a sad puppy but here, I saw a mysterious cat.
After posting a few of the photos, my girlfriend texted me a screenshot saying, “your eyes are not brown.” I told Andrew, who agreed right away. “More of a green, hazel-y color,” he confirmed. I’d never honestly known what constituted hazel eyes. Like, it was so remote for me that I thought hazel was gray?? I don’t know. I have little concept of color beyond chartreuse because it feels impressive to be able to see a piece of clothing and say, “what a great chartreuse.”
I Googled “hazel eyes” and saw myself for the first time.
I’m not so obsessed with my appearance that I can’t walk by a dirty window without trying to squeeze a reflection out of it, but I did develop a brief preoccupation with how I looked in different lighting. I’d catch myself flipping the front-facing camera on in random moments: candlelit bath; golden hour in our concrete slab of yard while the dog peed. I was studying myself, seeing what other new stuff I could find. Real anthropological shit. Shockingly instructive.
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There was a time in my life when I thought I’d title my first book, a collection of essays, All My Friends are Blonde (dibs still). I’d spent my entire youth worshiping blondes, begging my mom for Sun In and Baby Spice-style mini dresses to no avail. I accused every single boyfriend of being “into blondes” and therefore dating me under suspicious motives. I even went blonde for a little and looked like shit.
The price you pay for wanting to be something you’re not is the inevitable reckoning. You begin feeling hopelessly left out, trying to conform. Then comes the petty resentment. And eventually, you build an identity around embodying its opposite, if only out of spite.
I have carefully crafted my essence around being a brown-eyed brunette. This means nothing more than subscribing to various cliches, but I found comfort there. The safety blanket of a black turtleneck, red lipstick, a top knot with some pieces hanging down, speaking Italian, knowing it simply wouldn’t hit the same as a blonde. I relished every “you look like (insert sultry brunette celebrity)” and thought I owed it to them, and to every Mediterranean woman from Morocco to the Levant, to twirl my “rich” tresses and overline my “dark” eyes, to embrace my features, to lead with them. After all, a dark blonde was really just a non-committal brunette. And me, I was all in.
So what do you do when your entire concept of your own beauty unravels? You get honest. About everything. You start posting photos with visible cellulite, or your bump-nosed side profile that you always tried hiding. You don’t just accept that you’re not a size 2, you drink it the fuck up, extra cream and sugar. You tell Keri to make your dark blonde blonder and fade into the background of every Philadelphia sports bar, sandy and nondescript. It’s not revolutionary by any stretch and you don’t stop caring what you look like, but you are liberated from this feeling of playing a role. Of being a caricature of your own imaginary features.
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The Bloomsburg Fair is the largest agricultural fair in Pennsylvania. For nine days, you can see the biggest cows in the world and get drunk off sugar and try foods you didn’t even know could be deep-fried. I was fortunate enough to get back home and hit the last day with my best friend. On an unseasonably hot afternoon, both of us in all black, I couldn’t take my sunglasses off even for a second. She glided freely, her perfect brown eyes gleaming with nostalgia and contentment. I whined, “how are you doing that!?” She replied, “I think it’s just because you have light eyes.”
Leave it to those who love you to see what you don’t.
Life update: I just put in my notice at a long-standing side gig to dedicate more time and brainpower to writing. I’m super sad, as they’ve been a joy to work with, and a little nervous financially, but so looking forward to that renewed focus on my passions. That said, I’m really just looking for the right moment to launch weekly poetry for paid subscribers. I’m treading lightly knowing folks signed up for this newsletter expecting a certain format. I hope you’ll stick around and maybe get an appetite for my collection once it’s done. :) If you want to support my work for $5 a month, that’s gorgeous. Sharing with a friend is equally appreciated. I’m just glad you’re here.