I don't think I thought through the process of dyeing my hair purple very well. I expected that I would look exactly like the girls I had been repining on Pinterest for the past month. I expected it to take two hours and then I would be on my merry way with flowing locks of lilac hair. I expected it to last for months looking just the same as how it was during that first weekend of vibrant purple. Worst of all I expected my personality to shift with my newfound boldness.

Let me just tell you, expectations are not reality. I didn't look like those girls on Pinterest because I don't have the time or the want to cake my face with perfect contouring and look flawless each time I leave my bed. The whole process of bleaching, coloring, cutting and styling took around six hours, making the amazing stylist (shout out to Hunter Goergin at Aveda Institutes) and me incredibly hungry. No, not just hungry, hangry. Just as Hunter told me, the color fades fast. So each time I take a shower it’s a surprise what the shade of light purple will be. Which is actually kind of awesome... I feel like I am a mermaid with Mood Hair or something magical.

I am not sure if I thought by dyeing my hair, my personality would change or that people would see me differently but neither of these things happened. I may have gotten a few surprised remarks from my uncle on Christmas day, and coming back to campus after three weeks made some classmates do a double-take but no one treated me differently. I was the only one that was treating myself with any sort of negative thoughts. During the first weekend, I would look at myself in the mirror and think how I was trying to change to be a different person. To be a person who always is dressed to impress or to be a person who says what ever she pleases. To be a person with confidence exuding from every aspect of her being. In those moments, where I was face-to-face with myself in the mirror, I told myself I wasn’t worthy of having such a bold identifier because each day I doubt my actions and worry if I am pleasing the people around me.

I have now had purple hair for four weeks and each time I look in the mirror I get more and more excited about how I am treating myself and my body. I am the kind of girl to exude confidence but I do deal with self-doubt as every human does. I don’t say every opinion that I have because most still need more time to be processed in my brain before I spew them out. I am a badass but also have been called a cupcake more than twice in the past week. I am not one of the girls on Pinterest because first off, I don’t know how to take esthetically pleasing pictures with my phone and second, because that’s not my priority.

Dyeing my hair purple has taught me a lot about matching my external self to my internal self and how people perceive me. One of the biggest comments I have gotten about this big change is that it suits me and my personality. I have realized I can get all the compliments in the world from any number of people and still the one that matters the most are the ones I tell myself as I catch a glimpse of my reflection.