What Is It Like to Have Blue Hair?

Amani with blue hair and sunglasses.
Blue hair, don’t care – while it lasts!

I was in high school and college during the new British Invasion of punk and new wave. I was fascinated by London’s King’s Road and longed to saunter along the street with brightly colored hair and a quirky but cool thrifted outfit.

After years, okay decades, of being too timid, I finally dyed my hair blue!

I’m happy with how it looks (or I was once I started paying for a pro to do it). But there are some things to know before you take that plunge.

  • High maintenance. Some stylists recommend only using “cool water” when shampooing your hair – translation: cold showers.
  • I forget that I have it when talking to people and wonder why they are looking at me strangely.
  • Your employer may not like it. I waited until I was preparing to leave anyway.
  • If you have never bleached your hair before, cough up the money and pay someone to do it. I didn’t lighten enough my first time and my hair ended up so dark it looked almost black with blue highlights. I’ve just barely gotten the darkest parts cut off finally.
  • My natural color is dark brown with gray mixed in. I think white hair showing at my temples looks good with the blue, but only a few weeks after coloring my gray roots show up in my part like a skunk stripe in photos.
  • One of the biggest hassles is the color leeching or bleeding onto my white sink, my fingernails, and shirt collars. If so much as one tiny hair gets left on the side of the sink for too long, I may have to scrub with Clorox to get the tiny blue outline off.
  • Cost of touchups is over $200 plus tips. Maybe it would cost less if I did it every 6 weeks, but then I’m paying more often.
  • How you feel about yourself before you change your hair is mostly how you’ll feel about yourself afterwards. After the novelty wears off, you’re still you.

The Bucket List

I used to have a written “Bucket List” – a list of things I want to do before I die. It is probably still in a notebook or in a stack of papers, between an advertisement for cheap internet and a paid bill that needs to be filed somewhere. I do know some of the items off the top of my head: milk a cow, direct a music video, and fly in a helicopter. Thanks to the “Why Not?” attitude of my friend Anna, we got a free, five-minute ride in a helicopter yesterday. We had to be videoed saying how much we were enjoying the Holi festival we were at, and how much we liked the sponsor who was offering the free rides. I was ready to back out when I heard we had to do a video, but Anna said it wasn’t a big deal, so we did it. As a result, I checked another thing off my bucket list.

During the flight, I took a few photos and a short video, but then I purposely put the phone down. I wanted to be present and really live it, not just review it later through the camera lens. The sensation I was most aware of was a sort of looseness in my lower legs – like when you’re on a carnival ride and your feet are dangling down, even though my feet were planted on the floor of the helicopter. It was like I was aware of that space under us as we flew.

I’m proud of the fact that there aren’t many things on my bucket list. I guess for some people that would mean they are content already. For me it means I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone many times to see places or have experiences that I longed for.

One more item will be checked off this summer: “Publish a Novel.” I’m going to self-publish first on Amazon and then with other publishers. I will update you here as we get closer to the release date. Once that is done, I guess I’ll have to start looking for someone who owns a cow!

Amani (left) and Anna with the helicopter.