Blonde Bird

Someone asked me today why I dye my hair blonde. I don’t even know if I can answer that question.

My hair is yellow. I dye it myself with Clairol Born Blonde, but since I am naturally a brunette, it comes out orange, gold and yellow hues (perhaps even stripes.) I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m too cheap to pay to have it done. My dear friend has even said to me, “Treat yourself.” This is her polite way of voicing her disapproval.

It happened accidentally. I used to have short hair, pixie short. My hairdresser at the time highlighted it as a gift for my birthday. She assured me that I could do the same thing with a box from Rite-Aid. I, of course, was trepidatious at the time. I had only done semi-permanent. Blonde was a world of its own.

But I took her belief in myself and found the courage to paint my hair in chunky bits just like she did. I was hooked. With short hair, there is a certain freedom, because if you fuck it up too badly, you just cut it off and start over. But I began to like the texture the bleach gave to my fine, silky hair. It was easier to spike with molding mud.

When I moved to California, I started growing my hair out because I grew bored of the same short cut flipping back from red, to plum, to magenta, to blonde highlights. I kept dying it blonde because this was new for me. I had had long brunette hair, but never longer blonde hair. Now I even lived at the beach!

But this stereotype also horrified me. I hate the Beach Boys “California Girls” song. David Lee Roth’s cover growing up was this bizarre male fantasy to a young feminist that was completely foreign to a girl in Michigan. His voice in this song grated on my nerves. The jumping around in striped spandex was one thing, but the women in bikinis lined up on the boardwalk with him weaving in between them—too much cheesy objectification…did people actually find this entertaining?

Furthermore, I didn’t like Marilyn Monroe (until I read more about her pill addiction and misery, that is.) I just didn’t get the whole here are my boobs and blonde hair in the wind manipulating the males with my sexuality. I was more of a brain girl. The granola, Birkenstock wearing, worked her way through college at Greenpeace kind of girl.

But I do love Madonna. So when I read Bell Hooks' essay desecrating Madonna, I thought twice about my own blonde ambition. My black professor had said that I enjoyed the attention from men when stereotyped into “the blonde.” When, in fact, such objectification and projection only made me sad. Didn’t they know that I was more than that? I was valedictorian, graduated University of Michigan with honors, and thought the government was responsible for the assassination of the Black Panthers?

I still don’t know why I stay a blonde. The shampoo I have to use in order for it not to look like complete straw costs an arm and a leg—that alone should be the impetus for au naturel.

But part of me thinks it is the adolescent rebel in me. An associate said in her condescending, critical way, “Why blonde? Why don’t you go back to your natural color? Dark hair with light, blue eyes is exotic.”

To this, I wanted to utter a, “FUCK YOU. Did I ask for your opinion behind your fake tits and nose job?” But I would never say that to someone.

Because if her fake tits and nose job make her feel good, where is it my place to judge?

I like the dichotomy of the blonde bird with the big brain. I like to make people keep guessing. Just like I like to keep searching for the why of my dye.