Makeup & Beauty

Call Me Red

Having a baby isn’t all that dissimilar from going through a breakup, in that both of these life events frequently result in haircuts. (Usually not especially well-advised ones, but that’s beside the point.)

Last time I had a baby, I got bangs. This was actually a less terrible idea than one might think, because the cool thing about bangs is that if you just take five seconds to blow-dry them and pull up the rest of the hair, you look pretty “done,” so they’re actually a good solution for the time-strapped. I’ve let them grow out since, but ever since Goldie was born I’ve been feeling the need for something new.

And then, a couple of days ago, I was paging through People and saw this photo of Emma Stone, and thought: OOH. See, I’ve always wanted to try out being a redhead, but never got up the courage to make the switch. Except…it’s just hair. Change is good and change is fun and fall is a good time for a change, no?

But I still wasn’t sure what, exactly, I’d be getting into. So I went home, and used InStyle’s Virtual Makeover Tool to see what I would look like as Emma Stone.

Bad, apparently.

So bad.

But by then I’d created this elaborate fantasy in my head of surprising Kendrick by walking through the door with fire-red hair and started feeling all deflated at the idea of doing nothing…so I went to my salon and asked them what they thought. Their suggestion: do not go completely red right away, because if you hate it it is a miserable process to reverse (you need to first dye your hair brown to get all the red out, and then highlight it, and it takes forever and is expensive and not especially good for your locks. Instead, they recommended that I ease into the look by dying the light brown underside of my hair (the “virgin” hair that’s never been highlighted) red, and then adding red lowlights throughout to blend.

The result:

jordan red hair

red streaks

This. Sort of a two-tone effect that feels very autumn-y to me. I like it, and I especially like that I don’t think it’ll be all that high-maintenance, since the red bits should fade out to gold over time if I decide not to keep them.

So now I guess you can call me Red. (Or Half-Red, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

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