I had bright hair before it was cool!
Okay, so I didn’t invent it. I was born in the 80s and when I first pinked my hair up in 2010, lots of middle-aged former punks loved to tell me that what I’m doing is nothing new, as if I didn’t know and as if I hadn’t already attempted it briefly in 2003!
I was 23 and at university. I was the stereotype geeky, arty, eccentric [read autistic] woman with weird clothes and hair, who fitted in with the alternative music subculture. I was never tribal. I was never an ‘emo’ or ‘indie’ or a goth, I just wore what I wanted, a mix of all, and well, I just went out of my way to look weird. It wasn’t even about the music I listened to; I just pick what I like.
There were only five other students with bright hair and none were on my History course but two were on my Creative Writing minor course: their main subjects were drama, literature and art. So to my history people, I was the ‘alternative’ person, the ‘kooky’ one. I stood out and received a lot of compliments from those who wanted it, but weren’t brave enough. Back in my hometown, I’d receive abuse in the street for my clothes and hair but I was unfazed. I don’t need people’s approval and affirmation. I’ve always been strong enough to be me.
A decade later, the weird clothes are mostly gone; I became bored with materialistic fashion-chasing, realising that loads of my clothes actually made me uncomfortable and I’d been struggling through sensory issues for the sake of a look. (Nearly everything I wore was covered in punk studs or had odd, scratchy little bits of fabric I’d sewn onto them). But the hair remained. Blues, pinks, purples, reds, yellows, oranges. I had fun.
Now, purple-haired students are as common as muck. Every fucker has a purple side-cut or undercut, a wonky pink fringe and those bleedin’ transparent framed glasses, that I would like, if they weren’t affixed to the gormless face of every other ‘look at me, I’m so zany’, easily offended, joyless non-binary or trans twat.
If you see someone with that style, you already know what they believe and what their personality is going to be like. I don’t like sweeping generalisations, but I’ve so far never been wrong. Clear glasses, gender hair and nose piercings equal transwomen are women. None of you is cool. You’re not arty (your manga and chibi fan art is crap and samey), you’re not rock chicks, you’re not punks, you’re not unique, you’re prissy, prudish Tumblr clones; you’re boring. You’ve made wacky hair colours humdrum and dull. You’ve made natural-coloured hair subversive. You say and do the same things, draw the same, like the same TV shows and share the same opinions on them - usually offended opinions.
I sometimes bristled at nasty remarks about the blue hair brigade - I wasn’t so much offended, because it was true, but I hated that ‘tarred with the same brush’ aspect. I said I would remain strong. Why should I gender clones spoil what I’ve enjoyed doing to myself? When have I ever let others’ opinions of hair dye affect me? But I’m giving in! Bright hair is now the uniform of people rigidly conservative in their views of womanhood and manhood who follow a gender religion and chant mantras and rarely laugh, because every joke might hurt someone somewhere and spend so much time on the internet that they remain virgins well into troubled adulthoods.
So my pink and peach hair goes tomorrow. I hate dyeing it now anyway. I’d rather be grey. I am hella grey (thanks for the premature grey gene, mum, it looks great on my very dark hair… *sarcasm klaxon*). As a present to myself, I’m having what’s called a balayage!
Goodbye gender hair.