Beloved subscribers, you might be thinking to yourself, “Wow! Another BriZigs LLC dispatch so soon! The last one was only a week ago! Can we expect more frequency from you, BriZigs LLC?” and the answer is no, sorry <3
When I dyed my hair for the first time, senior year of high school, I wanted to do something funky but I didn’t want to bleach my hair (and I still never have), so I bought Manic Panic turquoise hair dye from Hot Topic and I begged and pleaded with my mom to reluctantly coat the lower half of my hair in the goopy, stinky mud. My parents were very against any kind of body modifications on me when I was growing up, but softened to it as I became an older teen, perhaps realizing my acutely my autonomy as I came closer to adulthood (my mom ended up paying for my first tattoo, my 18th birthday present). The result was a murky, but vivid, teal — to this day, I only apply dye on top my naturally red-tinged hair and because of this, the colors never come out quite right. But I spent a lot of my adolescence resenting and destroying my beautiful curly hair with hot irons, so now I avoid doing any excess damage to it when I know that I don’t really have to. I would rather my hair come out ugly black instead of purple than fry my curls with peroxide.
The teal undertones weren’t the best dye job I or my mom ever did (she continued to color my hair for me while I was still living at home), but it catalyzed my fixation with dyeing my hair. Always varying shades of purple, pink, red, and once or twice an almost-but-not-quite black. I like that I’m a natural ginger, so I always wanted to stay closer to dyes with red tones. I’ve been clown crimson, and deep violet, and cherry flamingo, and dark auburn, and my favorite and probably most consistently-used color was Medium Intense Magenta from Garnier Fructis. People would literally stop me in the supermarket to compliment my hair. Stylists always gravely warn you never to color your locks with box dye, but I’m half convinced it’s less about ruining your hair with drug store dye and more about getting you to come in and pay them to do it for you (hair stylists: do not interact). I consistently dyed my hair magenta for two whole years, and every time — I’m not kidding, every fucking time — I went to get a haircut, the stylist would ask me “Did you do this dye job yourself?” I would tell them I did, with box dye, and they would reply varying lightly shocked iterations of “Wow… you did a really great job.” I never feel more smug than when this happens.
I changed my hair the most during college. That makes sense — I’m in my early twenties and I don’t know who I am or who I want to be. It’s a stereotype that weird, fickle girls like to change their hair, but I never saw myself as one of those weird, fickle girls that liked to change their hair. I always felt very grounded and stable, and I wasn’t dyeing my hair yellow or blue or green or anything really crazy, so I wasn’t really like them. Do you know what I mean? I just wasn’t satisfied with myself I guess, but now I’m 28 and I’m still getting restless when I haven’t done something new to my hair in about a year. I can’t cut it short again, I already did that and hated it. I think every girl with lifelong long hair wants to just chop it all off eventually and see what happens. I’m glad that I did it and got it out of my system, because I never want to do it again.
I got bangs a few years ago that I loved depending on the day, and decided to complement them with a shag cut towards the end of 2020, which I also loved, but required more maintenance than I am willing to put in when it comes to my hair, and I added in the magenta dye shortly after going shag. But after about two years of this, I said I’d grow it all out, and I’d stop dyeing my hair magenta, and stop trimming my bangs, and I’d just go back to being very nearly dark strawberry blonde-ish, whatever my hair color is at this point, and let my hair go long and curly.
It was about a year ago that I made this decision, and about a year later, like clockwork, I started getting that same feeling. I have to do something new to my hair, it’s like an animal impulse at this point that feels like nails digging under my skin. If I can’t do something different to my hair, I might as well just pull it out. But I didn’t want to dye it again, and I didn’t want to cut it short. So, I figured, it’s been six months since my last trim, let’s just get another trim and freshen it up. That will do it. But that didn’t work. This was in January. I tried going back to a side part instead of the middle part I took on when I got bangs, but then I went back to a middle part, and then side part again, and back and forth. I was still dissatisfied and restless and agitated. I got a deep conditioning treatment at a salon that brought some moisture back into my hair and better defined my curls, but that didn’t fix the problem either. I felt like I was going insane.
I was wearing my hair up in a bun all the time because wearing it down made me feel bad. I didn’t like how it looked, and I didn’t like how it felt — the layers were long now, and my hair felt heavy and unwieldy to have on my head. I have loose curls, something between a 3A and 3B curl type, which I feel makes me look messy and unkempt and scraggly when worn long. I’ve always been jealous of people with tight curls. I’m convinced they just give off a classier appearance. I feel like my hair makes me look like a person who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
I had been debating for a while just chopping my hair a few inches, going back to short layers to take some weight off and give me more volume, and doing another dye job. Ultimately, that is what I ended up doing, despite advice that I shouldn’t and that it looks nice as and that I should just leave it. But I wasn’t happy, and I felt like these feelings mattered. I read somewhere recently that if you’re feeling unhappy with yourself, changing your hair is a good way to help. I always think about Sortilège telling Doc “Change your hair, change your life,” in Inherent Vice.
My hair fell in tight ringlets as a toddler, then loose waves to very nearly straight in elementary school, then becoming more curly as I entered middle school, and curlier ever since. At 28, it’s curly but not ringlet curly, and varies depending on if I decide to scrunch, wrap, or diffuse it. It’s fluffy and usually a little frizzy, which I don’t always mind because it adds a little height, but once I sleep on it and coil it into a bun to keep it out of my face, it smooths out, flattens and bends strangely, and I’d have to wet it again to bring the curls back. My hair used to be thicker when I was younger, but there’s still a lot of it. I had always been told by adults that it was beautiful, but I began to think otherwise as I got older. A memory that I hold onto is of sitting on the bus home in 6th grade when a boy behind me grabbed at my hair — then long, a little frizzy and loosely curly; think Mia Thermopolis in the before picture — and mockingly said “you’re hair is so beautiful, I just want to touch it.” I can still hear exactly how he said it, and how, for a moment, I thought he was being genuine. I briefly even convinced myself that he was. I had never really minded that I was the before picture in TV and movies.
That was 6th grade, and in 7th grade I began straightening my hair obsessively, unhealthily, every day; fearing humidity in the early mornings and even bringing a miniature straightener to school for quick touch-ups. This was until around college, when I realized that I had effectively destroyed my hair and that, you know what, I actually liked the hair that I was born with. So, I went completely natural, but I never really got over that itch to change it. To make it fun and different, to be slightly not itself. By the time I cut it all off late in college, most of the old, ironed-out hair had already been trimmed away, and the hair that grew back as I fervently abandoned the short ‘do was 100% healthy and beautiful. Yes, I know some of that health has been compromised by dyeing it so much since then. Yes, I know, you don’t have to tell me. Withhold your impulse to “well, actually” me about anything I’m writing here, because I don’t care. Otherwise, I think I take pretty good care of my hair.
I don’t know if this newsletter is going to end up with any sort of meaningful catharsis, like a normal piece of personal essay-writing from a normal and well-rounded writer — readers of the last BriZigs LLC dispatch will recall my newfound commitment to forcing myself to write more regularly (especially for this newsletter) so that I can reclaim the spark of creativity that I’ve somewhat lost (ah, the tortured artist!). So, I’m kind of just writing this to write something, and this is a thing that’s been on my mind, and I’m not planning on polishing these thoughts very much. I don’t need to contrive my hair problems into some greater meaning about deeper issues with my inner self. You can piece that together on your own, if you’d like. Think of this paragraph as a disclaimer, but it’s more like a cop out.
The cut I ended up getting recently looked good — I had the stylist go a bit below shoulder length and cut my layers fairly short, the topmost of which actually looked a bit odd (like a weird hair hat, I’m not quite sure why; I think the shag style eliminated this shape from happening) and required me cutting an even shorter section of little bangs to frame my face better. Then, after stupidly (STUPIDLY) attempting to dye my hair again for the first time in a year and managing to fuck it up, stupidly trying to remove it with box color remover and fucking that up too, and panicking thinking I’d have to spend hundreds of dollars to fix my hair which was now hideous light pink-orange, I quickly realized I could just (CAREFULLY THIS TIME) recolor everything with a new box of dye for $13. Whatever, probably not great to do all this to my hair, but I ultimately did fix everything, and I finally have my hair in a place where I am pretty happy with it.
My next plan is this: I’m done dyeing it (for real this time!!!), and I’m keeping it this style — around shoulder-length, short layers. I’m not paying to get the color lifted when it starts to fade, I’m just going to let it fade and grow out and get regular trims until my roots have grown out to about shoulder length, and then I will cut the rest off, and be free of the dye. I hope that having experienced this horrible bullshit will actually work in keeping me away from too drastically changing my hair during the time that I am waiting for my roots to grow. I don’t want to get restless and re-dye it, forcing myself to start from scratch, or worse: cut it very short out of impatience over my roots growing out, and look like a little boy again. Maybe putting this in writing will finally make it mean something.