Depends how much you want me to fall in love with you.
Possibly not the only deciding factor, but I totally instantly fancy just about anyone with an unrealistic shade of hair colour, particularly if there’s more than one tone or a particularly asymmetrical cut.
And even if you mean ginger you’ve still got a chance.
It’s one of my more odd shallownesses. My head turned from a few hundred metres by a splash of colour. Purple in particular, and blue some, red’s almost too common, but not quite. It needs good hair to make me make that slightly disgusting bitey motion that I seem to make whenever I see someone utterly stunning.
It’s shallow and problematic I know. Instant snap appearance based attraction is probably objectification, and even a well hidden bitey movement (it possibly just makes me look tourettic) probably contributes to a lecherous patriarchal environment.
So I try not to. But I do like seeing pretty people, and there’s something about a splash of colour that makes me see pretty.
Of course, it doesn’t apply to everybody. For example, me. If I dyed my hair red, then I’d end up looking like Ronald McDonald (Does anyone know if he’s still around? Ever since they started ‘loving it’ and started positioning themselves as a lifestyle brand, I’ve not noticed the weird old clown. Laws about promoting obesity to children haven’t come in yet? Pre-emptive? Or just focus groups started to acknowledge that clowns are even freakier than burger headed thieves? ANYWAY).
Colourful big hair seems excessive. Unless its big downwards. And still you then walk a fine line. Elfin cuts, bobs and asymmetries, streaks and splashes, contrasts to face, all potentially utterly gorgeous.
But then, it’s not really about me, and that’s what makes this whole rant troublesomely objectificatory.
I am not some arbitrator of gorgeous. I have no right to state what is pretty and what is not. I know what I like, and I like it however I do. But I can’t judge people on the shallow, and I can’t expect anyone else to care what I think. And I should be careful that people might care and so feel pressure.
I don’t know why they would care, but still, it’s something to worry about maybe.
Let’s see. Increased visibility. High impact. Striking. Recognisability (a close friend of mine died a few years ago. She was incredibly tall and had huge red hair. It was awesome. But now every time I see a flash of red in the corner of my eye I expect to see her and get sad when I don’t).
These are things you may want. It can definitely be positive to have an additional impact and be remembered more clearly.
But then you’d also always be ‘the red one with the viola’. Do you want to be simplified down?
To be fair, you will be anyway. That’s how people remember people. Tiny icons of huge depths.
Do whatever; hair always grows back.
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Illustration by Jaime.
