Sometimes in life when things get rough people turn to illegal substances to let out their anxieties. When things get hard in my life, I dye my hair.

It’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, besides the decision to seek higher education. Here are a few things I’ve learned since dying my hair purple:

1. Children are weird, but wonderful.

If you needed another reason to love children, dye your hair an unnatural color, and you will love them even more. I’ve gotten many different reactions from children, but a few of my favorites would be:

-Being called a unicorn

-Being asked what planet I’m from

-Being asked what superhero I am

-Getting told they want to dye their hair too (and seeing the look on the parents’ faces)

Children are the most precious, innocent things in the world, and I think we should value that a lot more than we do.

2. People base intelligence on appearance.

I dyed my hair during Christmas break, so when we started second semester I had a whole new set of professors to meet. Upon walking into class the first day of second semester almost every professor stared at me, gaping.

After midterms, three professors had approached me congratulating the writing skills I exhibited on papers. All three of them continued to admit that they thought I would struggle passing their class, because apparently most people who don’t conform to social norms (i.e. weird hair and abnormal piercings) have a harder time passing classes. Why must society judge our personal qualities by outward appearances?

3. Elderly people are incredibly worried about your soul.

This one pertains mostly to my grandparents. They are both incredibly kind, Christian people. My grandpa, in particular, has always worried about my relationship with God. However, there was a definite correlation between how often he stressed the importance of religion and when I dyed my hair. He talked more about God and how he thought I was losing faith when my hair was dyed purple. Me changing my hair color definitely did not have a negative impact on my faith life, and that was really difficult for him to understand.

4. Self love (at least for me) is internal.

If I was looking outside myself for approval and love, I wouldn’t have been comfortable dying my hair. I knew that I would get negative reactions probably more often the positive ones.

Every day when I looked in the mirror, I was happy with myself. I then realized that I literally do not give a shit about other people’s opinions of me, or my hair. As long as I love myself, I can do anything that makes me happy, including dying my hair, wearing weird clothes, wearing no clothes, marrying someone (not gender specific because if I was into girls I would marry a girl regardless of what my parents and society would say), or not marrying someone.

Ostracize me if you’d like. I’d rather be happy living with decisions I readily and happily make, than living a lie. Thank you very much.

5. People feel more comfortable harassing you.

This is a particularly frustrating concept for me, as I have always looked for the good qualities in human beings. Unfortunately, not all human beings have good qualities. Apparently, having an unnatural hair color seems to be an invitation for people to yell things at me, objectify me, and touch me.

Not all of these have to be bad. For example, it doesn’t freak my out when someone yells “I love your hair!” or if someone asks to touch it, I mean, I like to touch it too. But when these turn into gestures that make me uncomfortable, I have an issue with it. Men in particular (sorry guys) seem to have a need to catcall women, and I’ve dealt with this my entire life. The catcalls and potential groping got more persistent after I dyed my hair. To me, any unwanted and uncomfortable groping is harassment, and if you disagree with that, you should reassess your opinion.

6. People (especially store owners) base the likelihood of law breaking on appearance.

There were two instances when I was confronted with this. The first time, I was in a jewelry store with one of my best friends and her boyfriend. We were walking around for a bit, and then I noticed the shop owner was following me everywhere.

The second time, I was in a Coach store looking at wildly expensive purses for absolutely no reason. Almost as soon as I walk in, a sales associate walks up to me and asks me to leave. When I ask her why she looks directly at my hair and goes, “We don’t serve people like you here.” This subject is one I find humorous more than offensive, but I see how it could be taken either way.

7. Self-esteem can be tied to confidence levels.

I have never had a high self-esteem or a high level of self-confidence, however when I dyed my hair, my self-esteem definitely got higher. After a few days with a higher self-esteem, I began to do things that I wouldn’t normally do, leading me to believe that there is a correlation between self-esteem and self-confidence levels. I was able to speak to people in public despite social anxiety issues and was open to doing things I wouldn’t normally do, like wearing shorts and ordering things through a drive-thru window.

8. It made my parents extremely uncomfortable.

My parents, especially my mom, have supported almost all of my decisions, including my decision to dye my hair, even though they didn’t particularly like the idea. After awhile, she admitted she liked the hair.

However, in public, it seemed to be a different story. We live in a very small town where everyone knows everyone. People that we would run into in town would make (mostly snarky) comments about my hair, and my parents would awkwardly defend me with backhanded remarks like, “She likes it…but I don’t know…at least it washes out!” This was slightly hurtful because I regard my parents’ opinions very highly, but after talking to them about it, they apologized.

9. It made me feel more independent.

This kind of goes along with gaining self-confidence, but when I dyed my hair purple it was easier to make decisions by myself without the approval or support of my friends and family.

10. Professional situations were awkward, but only if I didn’t curl my hair.

I only had to go through a few professional situations including two job interviews and a couple professional presentations in school. I found that people took me more seriously as a professional if my purple hair was curled and looked cute, opposed to flat, natural, or straightened.