The Sequel: My Journey to Ginger
Sequels are always bigger and better.
Okay, maybe not always better. They’re actually rarely better than the first. Sequels are usually more expensive, but have considerably less drama.
So, with that said, this is a very typical sequel.
The sequel I speak of is when I dyed my hair red again, using Loreal’s Casting Crème Gloss Semi Permanent in Berry Red. It’s the one with Cheryl Cole in the ads, making us think she did it sitting in an empty bath naked and didn’t once manage to accidentally dye her ear lobes. Yeah, right.
The instructions are basically a list of things that could give Pinocchio a facial erection. I’m not being rude, I just mean it’s full of porky pies (please don’t take my words as gospel, I obviously just mean they lie, not pie, sorry). The first fib being “CLEAN AND EASY APPLICATION”. It was neither clean nor easy. I have patches of floor in that bathroom that will never be white again, even with an extra pair of hands in the form of my mother.
I didn’t want lopsided colour like the last time, so the Mothership was wearing the latex gloves (‘cause she sure as hell wasn’t staining her hands with red dye. Once again, I ended up looking like I’d committed homicide) and ensuring the back was as red as the front.
The instructions said wait 20 minutes for the colour to sink in, but at what point does the 20 minutes start? It takes quite a while getting all that dye all over your head, so what, are you supposed to start timing from when it’s all in? That means there’ll be parts of your hair that have had dye on for, like, half an hour, so you’ll still get random patches of hair that are brighter than others, IS THIS MAKING SENSE TO ANYONE ELSE?!
I thought about this. To ensure that you get even coverage, you’ll need to employ a group of minions to take a section of hair each, and massage at once. It’s logistically impossible to dye your hair in the exact way hair dye boxes suggest. It’s dirty and difficult work.
With red dye, your bathroom ends up looking like it has had messages from the heir of Slytherin scrawled all over the tiles. You can’t sit and chill on your sofa reading about Harry Styles’ latest cougar conquest in trashy magazines while the goo works it’s magic: you have sit in your bath, stay still, develop chilblains, with drip stains down your back, a cup of tea going cold, and nothing but a ticking clock for company.
In the end, the colour was okay. Nothing at all like the box promised, but I’m quickly learning that looking like the girl on the box is probably less likely than Kerry Katona becoming Prime Minister.
I’ve had a few nice compliments about it. Now that it’s full on red, I feel like my first endeavour is to front a rock band (applications welcome).
From Superdrug, Loreal’s Casting Crème Gloss Semi Permanent in Berry Red costs £6.49. I’ve currently hit the 18-20 washes mark, and it’s fading quite nicely. Another 2-3 showers and it’ll probably have disappeared.
Tune in next time when, dun dun DUUUUN, I try out a full-on PERMANENT colour. Yikes.
Read Part 1 of My Journey to Ginger.
By Lizzie