by Marissa Ellis
I never thought it would happen to me. But we’ll get back to that in a second.
Like every woman out there, I’ve been inundated with advertisements of hair products promising to stregthen and volumize hair to make it healthy and lustrous. I ignored most of it. My hair was healthy after all and I didn’t need to “heal” it.
In the past few weeks, I’ve since changed my tune. I’ve been scouring product reviews to find out which protein treatments, deep conditioners, and moisturizers would help me avoid these daily thoughts of cutting it all off. That’s because a month ago, what I thought wouldn’t happen to me, happened: severe breakage.
Sure, I’ve read about it, but assumed most people were talking about split ends. I didn’t know your hair could really break off an inch from your head, taking fly-aways to a whole new level. In telling my hair horror story, I hope you can learn from my bad experience and be better informed about the dangers of coloring.
Go To A Colorist
The first mistake I made was not going to a “colorist.” I did go to a professional, a very expensive professional in a high end salon at that, but I soon found out that he was known more for his cutting/styling skills than his coloring skills.
I arrived at his salon at 8am on a Saturday morning, showed him a photo of the color I wanted, and he went to work ten minutes later. In essence, there was no consultation, and every good colorist does a consultation. The only question he asked me was when was the last time I had semi-permanent color in my hair. I put in a warm brown rinse in my hair every six weeks to cover my premature grey. So after I told him that I had a semi-permanent color in my hair done about a month ago, he just nodded.
The finished product had me on the verge of tears. After agreeing to pay $150 for a color and cut, I was hoping for the best of course. But my disappointment was written all over my face. I didn’t get the color I wanted, as the highlights came out much darker than I desired. I wanted light brown highlights and I came out with a subtle orangish-dark brown color. My stylist said he couldn’t get the color I desired because of the semi-permanent color I had in my hair. Funny that he didn’t mention that as a challenge in the first place. A thorough consultation, which a colorist would’ve done, could’ve avoided this. He agreed to do a free color correction and I returned two weeks later.
Get A Semi-Permanent Coating?
I returned two weeks later for my color correction. He used a peroxide to strip my color and add lighter pieces. I loved the way the color turned out but noticed that he didn’t treat it with any color rinse/semi-permanent afterwards. Let me explain why I expected this.
I’ve had color done when I lived in Los Angeles and never had any issues. My stylist there would strip my color and then put a Sebastians cellophane (aka rinse aka semi-permanent color) over it because she explained that once you strip color, you need to deposit something over it. Makes sense, right? Contrary to popular belief, semi-permanents are actually good for your hair. They have no ammonia or peroxide and actually work to coat your hair and add major shine.
When I explained this process to the stylist currently working on my hair, he said that it would take too long to do it that, as if to imply that would just be too much for him. SMH. In any case, many stylists on the East Coast, for some reason, don’t use semi-permanents as part of their coloring process but I’ve found that it’s pretty common for stylists in the West Coast to take this more protective approach to coloring.
Hair Breakage
In the weeks following, I noticed my hair falling out in clumps, with the lightest parts breaking off like crazy. Faced with the option of either cutting it all off and starting over, or finding a way to stop the breakage in its tracks and donning head bands for the next month or so, I realized that I wasn’t ready to just give in to this bad experience and cut off my hair. I’ve made an appointment to get an Aphogee treatment, which is an intense protein treatment done at salons and which promises to stop hair breakage, and am moisturizing my hair every night (which I never did before since oil made my hair greasy and limp). I have gotten an Aphogee before and noticed a difference – it was another experience provided by my beloved Los Angeles stylist. Let’s just hope it works to stop my major fly aways from getting worse. I’m guessing it’ll take me a year to recover from this damage, and although it’s been traumatizing, I’ve reminded myself that it’s only hair after all. And now that I know better, I”ll do better.
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