The Advantages Of Fake Hair: Funkiness for Everyone

I have always been obsessed with my hair color. The height of the blond tip, new wave hair happened while I was in high school, and like any new wave trend, I was all over that. I begged and begged my mother to allow me to bleach out the tips of my almost black hair, but she refused. She said I was much too young for dying my hair. I knew that wasn't true, though. C., one of my best friends, was about to dye her hair. She had gotten this really cool stuff called Sun-In and was doing it over the weekend. Monday morning C. would get on the bus with her brand new hair color and I'd still have my mousey brown. She'd get all the attention, while I sat by. That was how it always worked with C.

C. did, indeed, get on the bus that Monday morning with her new hair. Her new, bright yellow-orange hair. It was awful. It looked dry and frizzy, and not like any color I'd ever seen. Don't get me wrong, the kids thought she was the coolest girl ever, and so did I, but even at that age, I realized the damage she'd done to her hair.

Not that I learned my lesson when it came to hair color. In the years that followed, I've done all sorts of unthinkable things to my hair color--through my late 30s. Blond tips, pink streaks, purple highlights, red highlights, purple all over, etc. I even bleached my whole head so that I could dye it blood red. But before I put in the red, I left it bleached for a couple of days to let it breathe. I had always been told that if I bleach my hair, it will fall out, and having that in the back of my mind, I only bleached it almost all the way. (Just go with me on that hair dying logic.) I looked like C. on the Monday morning, but not nearly as cool.

So I finally got the red in and it looked kind of cool. So did my red hands, red spotted bathroom walls, and red pillowcase. Maintaining that color over bleached hair was a nightmare, and after a few weeks, I stopped trying. Once I got enough of the red pigment out, I dyed it back to my failsafe black.

Did I learn my lesson? Of course not. Was I happy with my hair? Of course not.

About four years ago, a friend introduced me to the world of hair falls and hair extensions. I was in love. Love. The Guide to Synthetic Hair Extensions became my bible. Doctored Locks, the Hair Extension Forum, and I Kick Shins my most visited sites. I joined fake hair communities on Live Journal. I could not get enough of this fake hair that looked funkier and at times even more real than anything I had ever done to my own hair color.

Here was this whole world of hair color and hair style possibilities that I could just clip in or strap on like a pony tail holder. Where was this stuff when I was young and frying my hair? Where were all the cool things when I was growing up? Oh, anyway...

I started off slow with the yarn falls and eventually progressed to dread extensions braided into my own hair. I was even going to wear the latter to my wedding, but that is an entirely different story.

I started making yarn hair falls and clip in streaks. I sold some at a company craft fair of all places, and later to clubbing friends. I'm learning to make my own dreads. I'm now even in the process of setting up an Etsy store.

I have a chest full of fake hair supplies in the corner of my bedroom and stray pink and purple fake hair everywhere. It drives my husband nuts. Tonight I'm running to a craft store with a friend and know I'll come home with some supplies, maybe some rexlace or tubing.

You might say I'm still obsessed.

But that's okay. Because there are so many advantages to wearing fake hair, it's perfectly okay. One, I can go to my 9 to 5 job in my most professional attire and then when that quitting bell rings, come home and put up my hair into a dread fall for a casual evening look. Or I can clip in two or three purple strands of hair and I have the color without the bleach and purple pillowcase. At the end of the night I can take them out and then the next day have pink. For someone with my attention span when it comes to hair color, this is a dream come true.

And with well-made pieces, you can't tell that they aren't real. My streaks are actually made from real hair. The dreads, okay, not so much--you don't see too many folks with real hot pink dreads walking around. But then again, with hair like that, looking realistic is not the point, looking good is. And a well-made dread looks goooood.

So if you are thinking about switching up your hair a bit and don't want to make a huge commitment, visit the glamorous world of fake hair and extensions. It'll be a whole new you--but only temporarily, and then again when you're ready.