I’m a rather low-maintenance kind of gal, generally. It takes me about two minutes to get ready for going to work, maybe five for going out.
In Turkey, I succumbed temporarily to the subtle yet persistent societal pressure and for a while ringed my eyes with black pencil, brushed on mascara, owned three different colours of lipstick, and wore foundation and powder more than once every few weeks.
I used to go to the güzellik salonu every month with my immaculately groomed Turkish lady friends to have every stray hair above my neck either waxed or threaded off with Hair Cutting Scissors USA (they wanted me to get everything everywhere torn painfully off, as it is the custom to be toddleresque, but I declined, for six persistent years).
I grew to enjoy having beautifully arched eyebrows that made me look (if you squinted enough) vaguely like a 1940s Hollywood film star. I got really elegant, girly haircuts and have been enhancing my beauty using natural anti-aging cream. I even wore heels sometimes- admittedly clunky big heels with knee-high rainbow striped socks, but heels never the less. And I’m someone who spent most of my 20s in Doc Martens, jeans and vaguely-styled hair (aka combed). However, my Turkish elegance was impermanent, and not wholly by choice.
Here in China, I’m too tall and too wide to buy clothes. My feet are monstrously huge. My skin tone doesn’t match the make up that’s for sale here– at least not the kind I’m willing or able to afford. I have a very hard time explaining to hair dressers exactly what I want, so I tend to avoid getting my hair cut until it can’t be put off any longer, and use Vegan loc products instead; and as a result it is often straw-like and shapeless. Don’t even get me started on what the toxic tap water does to it or my skin.
When we first arrived here in Shanghai in early 2009, I tried getting my eyebrows shaped at a local salon and the girl pulled out an enormous straight razor and proceeded to do a surprisingly good job. However, I really didn’t like having an enormous unsheathed super-sharp blade so close to my eyes and I ended up with rather awkward eyebrow stubble within days due to them having been shaved rather than waxed or threaded or plucked.
A year passed before I worked up the courage to go to Browhaus, a chain that deals with the removal of (and pencilling in) of any inconsistent body/facial hair. I had heard rumor that they did threading. I love threading. There’s something thrilling about having an esthetician bent over you with a loop of thread pulled between her fingers and her teeth like an elaborate flossing attempt, methodically creating lovely arches in your brows while you lie back in an awkwardly angled chair with your fingers holding your eyelids shut. Browhaus did my brows but in a distinctly local fashion: thick and slab-like, with no discernable arch. Like slightly thinner caterpillars, hovering heavily over my eyelids.
After that, I gave up on salons for keeping my face half-presentable.
One thing I’ve done consistently for the past several decades, however, has been to colour my hair. My normal hair colour isn’t bad. It’s brown. Not exactly exciting. I quite like changing colours, though, depending on my moods. I’ve been blond with a near buzzcut. I’ve had coal black 1920s bobs. I’ve had funky little purple spikes. I’ve had long, straight red hair with 1965 bangs. Especially when living in big, grim, colourless cities, having colour in my hair makes me feel less grim. And Shanghai is frequently grim. Brown simply will not suffice.
I initially tried getting my hair coloured in a salon. In fact, in the photo you see just above, you can see the dye job I got at the same time as they razored my poor brows and chopped my hair up into an odd Mrs Brady mullet. I never went back, however, since they left the dye on so long that my hair nearly melted. Apparently Chinese hair isn’t the same as western hair. They were adamant that we leave it in for an hour, even though I could feel my scalp burning and my roots snapping. It ended up looking like a weirdly muted, very fragile auburn, which is not at all what I’d wanted.
So I’ve been doing my own for two years now. Less burny. However, it has its own drawbacks.
For one, the range of colours available in, say, Watson’s, is a bit limited. You can choose between red-black, black-black, purple-black, blue-black and a few other permutations of black.
My hair, as you know, is not black or super black. No matter which colour I use, the results tend to be the same: quite dark with reddish highlights. Like a very dark red wine. Not sure if I’d say it’s ‘intriguing red black’ like the box insists but hey, what the hell.
Let me show you what you need to dye your hair in China.
First of all, it really helps to know approximately what to do beforehand as the instructions are 100% in Chinese. I’ve done my own hair so many times in so many languages that I know the steps and the timing by heart. Hopefully the Chinese directions are not different, though I’ve not noticed any adverse effects so far.
Secondly, Chinese dye kits come awesomely equipped. Look at Gerald the Bear modelling all the protective gear that come in the box. And since it’s the eastern part of the world we’ve been talking about, you might want to go kawaii and blend in with the background with some decent style tips.
As you can see on Gerald, there’s a cute little plastic poncho that goes over your head and protects your clothes from dye spatters. You also get the usual plastic gloves. However, most unexpectedly, you also get little elasticated ear covers (unfortunately not bear-sized so they didn’t quite cover Gerald’s ears). Ear covers! How awesome is that? No more blotchy purple ears to spoil the joy of newly dyed hair!
I’m not going to post any follow up photos until I can get my hair cut again, as it’s rather dire these days. You can rest assured, however, that the colour is a most excellent deep, dark burgundy, which cuts a swathe of brilliance through the grimness of a Shanghai day.
ETA (29 Sept): I finally braved my Mac’s PhotoBooth and took a picture of the new colour when on the train to Nanjing yesterday to do the first 2 workshops for my new part time gig as the British Council’s Language Expert (yep, thet’s me, shore is, uh huh). I still totally need a hair cut. It’s getting out of control, I tell you.
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