Comments on: Freaky Thursday: Blue Hair

By: Janet Clarey

Janet Clarey — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:57:59 +0000

Thanks for sharing that video. How timely. I was walking into JC Penney’s last night, Thursday. There was a group of high school kids hanging outside – just 4 or 5. One of them says ‘oh my god!’, looking behind me. There’s a girl walking with (I would guess) her mom. They reach the door before me. The girl with her mom is probably in high school and probably the same age as the others. She has this section of hair standing straight up – reverse mohawk is the best description (ear-to-ear) and it is a combination of pink, caramel, and white. The others kids are rather generic – Abercrombie shirts, size 00 tight jeans on the girls, super-straight blonde hair. Clearly they’re pointing and laughing at the girl with the freaky hair and I immediately feel pretty bad for her. But her mom turns to look at her and they smile at each other. And that simple exchange made me smile. Probably because I had freaky hair 30 years earlier and still do. Long live individuality and freaky hair! Love yours.

By: china

china — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:05:35 +0000

my friend is slowly tattooing all available skin and on a trip to india she found that people had to rub her tattoos to see if they were real, they thought they color would come off.

By: Tari

Tari — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:17:58 +0000

I also totally heart blue hair. If I wasn’t a corporate sellout, mine would probably be some kind of blue or a much more obnoxious red. As it is, I already push the boundaries of corporate acceptability with visible tattoos and funky haircuts.

Yay for Freaky Thursday!

By: Oliver Danni

Oliver Danni — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:55:14 +0000

Wow! Awesome!

It’s really interesting to hear how different our hair color stories are! I wonder why this is. I have had purple hair for 4+ years now and I have literally only ONCE had someone react negatively to it — some random lady on the street who was rather drunk started threatening me, it was really weird, but the weirdest thing about it to me was that this had NEVER happened before. People yell NICE things about my hair, though — all the time! Little kids always have something to say about it. Adults yell “Hey, nice hair!” “Hey, purple hair, that’s so awesome!” “Hey, how do you get your hair that color?” at me all the fricken’ time. Old people often come up and try to pet it. People I hardly know get REALLY upset when the color starts to fade, they want to know “When are you going to fix your hair?!” People who meet me for the first time when my color has faded, and then see me again with it fixed up in all its purple glory often go “Ohhhh, that’s what your hair is SUPPOSED to look like!” I’m often afraid that someone will react negatively to it…but so far, with that one bizarre exception, NOBODY HAS. My own MOTHER knows better than to say anything about it, especially now that it’s been purple for 4 years and clearly isn’t just a “rebellious phase” I’m going through.

I wonder if you have an internal sense of yourself as being freaky because of your hair that people are picking up on and reacting to? Or maybe it’s because you also have tattoos and piercings in addition to the blue hair, which I don’t have? If my hair hadn’t been purple as long as it has I would guess that maybe it’s a gender thing…but when I looked like a girl with purple hair I got the same kinds of reactions as I get now that I look like a boy with purple hair. I have no idea! My hair’s just purple.

I’m worried right now that I’ll be asked to change my hair if I get offered the AmeriCorps position I’m applying for, and I’m kinda freaked out about that because I’m totally not okay with changing my hair right now. I wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror without it and everyone I know would be upset if I changed it!

By: Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:51:00 +0000

I just trotted my pink hair to a networking event (complete with fancy corporate jacket, just to screw with ‘em). Way fun. :)

My favorite thing about having crazy hair color is that it makes small children really happy.

Plus, as this post shows, it makes annoying people go away.

By: Pam

Pam — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:07:01 +0000

There’s another thing that happens too. When I pierced my nose, way more freaky people started talking to me in public. For a while I was able to pretty much walk in both worlds equally well. When I shaved my head, the less freaky people started steering more clear of me. There must be some equilibrium point where nobody thinks you’re so very wildly different from them that you must not be spoken to.