The Household COO

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve always wanted to dye my hair.  My Dad, being the typical Chinese man, didn’t like the idea of me dying my hair.  He always thought that Chinese girls who dyed their hair another colour did so because they were ashamed of their heritage - which I think is totally ridiculous.

It appears to be a very typical “China-man” thinking to prefer undyed hair because the hubby wasn’t particularly impressed with my new red mop either. 

For me changing the colour of your hair (much like changing the colour of your eyes with coloured contact lenses) is like entering a world of “Let’s Pretend” - a game I loved to play when I was a kid. 

Just as you can change how you feel about yourself by the clothes you wear, changing the colour of your hair or your eyes achieves pretty much the same thing.  Or at least, that’s how I feel.  I think a lot of other women must think so, too, since so many women get caught up in dying their hair or at least giving it a drastic haircut as part of the “getting over the ex” ritual. 

In my case, it’s part of an attempt to feel like a young, hip Mum.  I think I’ve started to slide into that bad habit of “letting myself go” by wearing my “house clothes” to go out.  I mean, house clothes were the sort of clothes that I wouldn’t have been caught dead in when I was a teenager. 

The funny thing is that when I was in the height of my climbing, I didn’t mind wearing my torn climbing pants and grimy t-shirts out to the shopping malls to get dinner straight after leaving the crag.  But then, dressing like that, for me, was like making a statement - kind of like how some people pierce their eyebrows and get tattoos.  Wearing my “house clothes” out is like neither making a statement or looking good.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to try being a redhead.  In fact, I was going to do this before I got pregnant with Gavin.  It turned out that I discovered I was pregnant just before I got around to dying my hair so I couldn’t use the hair dye until recently. 

Here’s what it looks like, although I don’t think the picture really does justice to just how red it really looks.  It was a bit of a shock even for me when I first saw the colour of my hair…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Mum, beauty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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