The Plaid Pladd

I’ve had pink hair for a little more than two weeks now, and it is pretty great.

The only bright thing on a gray day

I smile every time I look in the mirror. It’s hard to be sad or annoyed or worried when you look one wardrobe change away from being a cartoon superhero or really punk. Unfortunately, I don’t own any clothes like that, so I just end up looking like me with hot pink hair. Which is still awesome. I knew it would be awesome. I also knew people would generally stare at me, but there were some other things I didn’t expect. Clothes is one of them. I’ve been dressing myself with blondish hair my whole life, so I wasn’t really prepared for a change. Pretty much every color looked okay with my old hair. I guess except yellow or orange, so I don’t own anything like that. With hot pink, there’s more things to consider. Anything pink is probably out, since shades of pink clash, and red generally looks weird too. Even certain purples can look strange, which is unfortunate, since you know my closet is a purple-based ecosystem. It’s also just so bright. So even though my favorite turquoise jacket might look okay next to it, color-wise, I’m then wearing two incredibly bright things at once. It turns out, I own a lot of brightly colored things too, so getting dressed is suddenly a lot more complicated than before. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

My dad pointed out that since my hair is already over the top, why do I care about the rest?

Maybe that’s true. At a certain point, I just reach a critical mass of colors and it probably doesn’t matter after that. Unfortunately, Cary is no Carrboro, so people don’t randomly compliment how cool my hair is in the street as much, but children make up for this. There were no children in Carrboro, but here they are everywhere, and they freaking love my hair. One girl in the frozen food section of Food Lion just screamed “PINK!” at me at the top of her lungs. One boy followed me around the library, refusing to speak to me, but silently grinning. The only child I’ve encountered who’s not ALL ABOUT this was my cousin Caleb. He’s only 8 months old, and spent a lot of time staring at me warily. Steven wondered if an 8-month-old girl would have done the same, or been more inured to pink being everywhere. I’ll report back when I find some more children to freak out.

BFFs!!!

I’ve also gotten to know a lot of people since dyeing my hair, which I love! It’s definitely a conversation starter, but it also makes me instantly memorable, so two trips anywhere makes me a regular. Even running errands is fun when you have pink hair!! Pretty much everything is fun when you have pink hair. Probably my favorite reaction has been from the senior class that meets at the same time as my aerobics class at the community center. You would think older people would be the most disapproving, but a lot of them seem to like seeing me. “What are you doing today, Flamingo Girl?” They remind me of my grandpa and how he was always friendly with everyone he met. Like him, they just seem to be enjoying life and all of its variety, which includes me and my electric flamingo hair.