Love: Fabulous in February

The wonderful lady behind A Working Mom’s Closet has posted a challenge… to say three positive things about yourself every Monday in Feburary. The goal is to hold off winter blues and get a little positivity and self love happening around the blogosphere. At first this may not sound like a challenge at all, but most of us grew up in a culture where it’s not nice to say nice things about yourself. So, at the risk of sounding like an egomaniac, and defying culture norms, here are my first three things:

1. I love that I’m tall

I can see over people and things, my students never complain that they can’t see me when I interpret, and I can reach the top shelf of stores all by myself. I get comments pretty much every week about why tall girls shouldn’t wear heels (“aren’t you tall enough??”) but heels make me feel sexy and while my height might be a problem for other people, it’s never been for me.

2. I love my hair

I’ve put my hair through the wringer (and the bleacher, the flat ironer, and the hairdryer) and it still loves me back and behaves well. It’s been every color of the rainbow and changes nearly as often as my moods, but in a world where plain black clothes are the norm, hair is my little indulgence in self-expression.

3. I love my eyes

My eyes look just like my dad’s, the same dark brown and the same long lashes (and those lashes got me a modeling gig with Sebastian Trucco when I was younger!). For years, Brown Eyed Girl has been my favorite song, and while I played around with colored contacts for a bit, I just don’t feel right when brown eyes aren’t looking back at me in the mirror.

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So that’s it, there are my three positive things put out into the universe. Post your own at A Working Mom’s Closet!

Lose: Celebrity Blonde Gone Wrong

If you’ve been reading Lust, Love, Lose for awhile, you know a good blonde is hard to come by. Wither it’s roots, brassiness, or just a distinct lack of toner, there’s a thousand ways to gone wrong and so very few to get it right. So I can almost forgive these celebrities for their peroxide atrocities, until I realize they have well paid stylists who let them out of the house like this. Gathered just for you, a list of the top 7 celebrity blonde fails of all time.

Donatella Versace

 

Emma Stone

Drew Barrymore

Amy Winehouse

Kim Kardashian

Lindsay Lohan

Kimora Simmons

The moral of the story? All the money in the world can’t buy you the underlying skin tone, facial features, or secret something it takes to turn Norma Jeane into Marilyn.

What do you think? What are your rules for pushing the boundaries of your genetic makeup for the sake of fashion? And how do you know when (if?) you’ve gone too far?

How To: Go Blonde

Ever since I changed my hair, I run into someone at least once a week who looks in astonishment, reaches over to feel my hair that still feels like hair and asks “how did you do that??” Here’s the thing: there is no magical answer to blonde except to find an expert stylist who knows what he or she is doing and can work with you to get the color you want with a routine that fits your life and budget.

This is the color I was when I sat in Jayme’s hair and decided I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe blonde, a natural medium brown with some red undertones that I had put in with box dye:

When I went in to the salon that day, I thought it would be a one and done, I fully expected to walk out a blonde bombshell. Little did I know that going blonde (and still having hair at the end of it) is a time consuming process.

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One: find an expert stylist and ask to see pictures of their work, ask if they have experience lightening people to blonde, bring in pictures of what you want, and work together to come up with steps and a timeline you can both agree on.

Two: start with highlights, increasing the amount of hair you highlight each time. With Jayme, I started at about 20% highlights, then around 40%, then 60%, then 80%: you can see my process in these pictures:

Three: time for a full bleach blonde! The best color comes from a two-step process: first bleaching and then toning. Until the toner goes on, your hair will be a strange orange-yellow color, take the Hitchhiker’s Guide approach and don’t panic! Plan to make this appointment an all-day event: my process took about four hours to go from ultra-highlighted brunette to full-on blonde.

Four: take better care of your hair than you ever have. I use Garnier Fructis Three-Minute Undo once a week and a hot oil treatment once a month. I also limit the amount of heat tools I use on my hair and go for trims once a month to keep the ends healthy.

With some careful planning and a great stylist, even the darkest brunettes can find a blonde that works for them. Here’s my end result, a level 9 blonde:

Have any questions about going blonde? Want to share your experiences? Post in the comments below!