First I must add the disclaimer that this was almost two years ago. Today, I am happy to report that my hair is my natural shade (what I have now is finally all “virgin” hair, with the exception of a few highlights) and anything that was ever dyed has long been cut off.

That being said, there was a time that I wanted my hair to be that beautiful blinding Gwen Stefani blonde.

I mean, who cared about damage? Since it was short at that time, I imagined curling it and looking like Marilyn Monroe. I imagined being a bleach blonde—not a BEACH blonde, but an artsy sort of blond. I wanted to be a brown-eyed blond, and since nature didn’t make me one, I was going to do it myself.

 

I bought the bleach from the drugstore (Feria I believe), mixed together the ingredients and powders and sat for for an hour or whatever time-limit it was, reeking of ammonia and hoping it would work.

I remember my hair beginning to turn orange, and me getting excited for it to become platinum. But the orange never faded, and the darker parts of my hair were still almost dark red. I eventually showered the dye off because time was up.

Oddly enough, most people (including my parents) liked it and only a few were turned off by the weirdness of it. I myself SORT of liked it but thought it was weird. See, nobody told me that you have to have dark hair STRIPPED before you bleach it, or that it might take more than one time, or that it’s simply best to leave the bleaching business to people who are already blondies. The box certainly did not tell me this. I was a victim of beauty naivete, and suffered the consequences tenfold—-it seemed every single person was shocked by the blinding yellow-orange of my hair.

I’ve added some clips of my hair from photos:

This, friends, was my natural shade. Dark/medium brown.

And this is Garfield-orange. What happens when you bleach dark hair one time.

The end result was that I dyed it brown again the next month and tortured my hair in various ways until it is finally mostly natural, short, and free of split ends. I will never dye it again and will most certainly avoid the blond fever.

Has ORANGE ever happened to you?