pink hair, the road to ruin?
edition 1 of dear cecilia: my advice column
Dear Cecilia,
Should I spend $400 dying my hair pink again or should I like, invest in my future?
Dear Pinkie,
The most pink-haired-behavior in the world is dying it yourself with a $13 box dye in your sink, and better if it stains the porcelain and all your pillows. The few times I’ve had pink hair, this is how I’ve done it, besides the one time I befriended a professional stylist who made me raspberry for free. I ended up regretting this, because it happened right before a trip to New York and I felt like an anime character in the airport.
It goes against my personal sense of aesthetics to spend a ton of money on your hair unless you’re a mormon. Mormon women get to spend thousands on technically precise blonde balayages because it agrees with their personhood. If your hair is pink, you ought to be DIY-ing it, finding a friend to do it, or bartering.
I’m a cheap-o, but good hair is still important to me. From the Fleabag bible: “Hair is everything. We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think that it’s a symbol of power, that it’s a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your fucking bills. Hair is everything.”
One work-around for me has been visiting many Aveda salon schools (and requesting a senior), and trolling salon apprentice. I very famously (well, famously among people who know me) have A Guy, who I met years ago on that website, who understands exactly my POV and always does an amazing job - to the point that when I was 26, he gave me such a good haircut, more than one woman flagged me down in the street to get his number. And he’s the guy I recommend to all my friends. It’s expensive, but not outrageous and well worth the money because it saves me every time from post-haircut regret, as well as the time I would otherwise waste planning and hunting down another stylist. I think when you can afford them, a service that saves you time and gives you peace of mind is the best thing you can spend your money on, which is also why I’m pro- occasionally getting your house cleaned, getting your nice shoes cobbled and seeing a therapist.
So, ya know, is $400 pink hair going to alleviate some pain? Or will it feel frivolous, like wasted money, to you?
Actually, now that I think about it, I recently made a tradeoff similar to what you’re describing: to better myself or to have nice hair? I’ve been wanting to take French courses and after my research, found a book with audio lessons that actually seems like an effective way to learn a language (ask me how a few months of Babbel premium and binging Rohmer movies helped me navigate Paris… not very well). But the book and the method are expensive- some $forthebookitselfandsome$ for the audio lessons. I was prepared to shell it out, but the high seas of my pirating days beckoned to me from the past, and I remembered to check reddit to see if I could find the files for free. And I did! And then I looked at the library catalogue. They had a copy of the French book! I didn’t do the math, but I decided this saved me about $80. So, once I started my lessons, I decided to spend $50 on Malin + Goetz shampoo and conditioner. As a treat.
That’s a whole nother debate - if expensive hair products are worth it. If you’re a person of fine-hair experience your shampoo is pretty important. For other types, I think it matters less.
Anyways, maybe there’s a way you can balance the books to justify spending crazy cash money on an expensive hair treatment. So, if you spend $400 in a sort of frivolous way, maybe you have to make some commitment to your future that’s equivalent in your eyes. Maybe you figure out your hourly rate and devote $400 worth of your hours to a project that gets you to where you want to be.
I guess it depends what else the $400 could be put toward. My hunch is that it’s a lot more important to you. Saving money is hard because we don’t get the little rush and pay-off of spending it. It’s nice to come home with new things and a new look. It’s kinda meh to move that same dollar amount into a savings account, or do your best not to touch it. Perhaps there is a way to visualize spending it on your future in a really specific way. Here’s one way around that adult feeling of austerity and tightening coin purses. Take out an envelope and imagine what you will purposefully spend the $400 on, something concrete, and write on it: “flight to (place you want to go)” “money for (the specific college course you want to take"). Now, write yourself a check for $400 (please don’t take out cash, I’m afraid you’ll lose it) and put it in the envelope. Now you can stash it in a drawer where you’ll see it every once in a while, and it will remind you what you’re working toward, and you’ll get a little rush knowing your money is going to be used for something important and exciting. Not just bills and groceries and rent.
Money is a resource and it’s a tool. You can always get more of it. But you can’t get more life. I learned this from my friend — because I love jamming in irrelevant detail, he was was a carpenter and once cut his finger off at work. Wise guy perhaps but also, he didn’t understand that I was joking when I gave him a butterfinger with his get-well-soon card, so, grain of salt, as always.
I don’t think you need to compromise. You can get whatever you want if you think of things in terms of a sliding scale. I think about this idea related to wealth a lot. We spend a lot of time earning money and dreaming about the things we’ll do once we’re rich. Once I earn x amount of dollars, once I’m living in this city, once I have the space to do this, once I’m invited to this type of party, then, finally, I’ll be able to afford to buy some parcel of happiness. But you know, you have that little parcel of happiness today. I used to dream about owning beach-front property and what it would be like to wake up in the morning and walk directly to the beach. Then I realized I could just drive to the beach in the morning from my little modest apartment. I have it already! I’m rich! We’re rich!
Thoreau asserted that the fastest traveler is one on foot. When you factor in the number of hours you needed to work to afford a train ticket in his day, he figured he spent less time in total walking the entire way, because he didn’t have to waste hours working for the ticket. And he got to enjoy the countryside and not participate in the violence in the creation of the railroads (people died). Idk if this is relevant, it’s just something else I recently learned from youtube (in addition to how to learn a language). I think it was this one but I’m not rewatching that shit.
My final verdict: I do think it’s more rocknroll to just spend $13. However, if there’s a way to maybe spend closer to $100-250 on a dye treatment, you can *purposefully* stash some away for whatever it is you are planning, so you can have both.
-Cecilia