“I can’t really remember what you looked like brunette.” “It looks really natural,” one colleague tells me. I remind her, and everyone else, that this sandy blonde is not the hue I’m going for, but they ignore me. “You are so much blonder than you said you’d be after one session,” she says, staring at my head in disbelief. Everyone has something to say about it, particularly my deskmate (and editor-in-chief) Lisa Smosarski. Working at a magazine means everyone notices when you switch up your look, no matter how small, so this big change becomes… well, it becomes news. The next morning, I lift my complexion with a rosy blusher, pile on some mascara, and head to work. He cracks a few jokes about Draco Malfoy, but quickly realises this could result in his being murdered, and stops. My boyfriend does the same when he sees me, eyes widening in shock. We book another appointment in for two weeks time (“this one will be shorter, I promise,” says Tracey), and I head home, dramatically double-taking every time I see myself reflected in a window or mirror. “You’ll only need one more appointment to get to that icy shade of blonde you want,” she tells me. She also provides me with a purple-toner shampoo, and tells me this could help remove a little of the brassiness in between appointments, but sternly warns me not to go nuts with it. It feels rougher, stranger, but Tracey tells me this is just a reaction to the bleach, and hands me a pot of conditioning hair masque to use at home. I tentatively raise a hand to my head, run it over my locks.
How to bleach hair skin#
My new hair makes everything look different: my skin tone, my clothes, even the texture of my hair. I sit on my hands to keep from scratching, and squint my eyes against the ammonia fumes that seep out when I’m planted under the dryer hood. Tracey reminds me that it’s up to me how much pain is too much, and that she can take it off when I give the word, but I decide to stick it out. The last part quickly proves true: it feels like someone has poured red-hot ants on my head and that they’re going to town on my scalp. And that sitting with it on my head for an hour or so is going to burn like nobody’s business. That it can be incredibly damaging to the hair. That the finished effect is pretty much unpredictable, especially when it’s going onto pre-coloured hair. I know that the process of going platinum requires removing the colour from the melanin in the hair shaft by softening the hair cuticle with bleach and dissolving the colour molecules through a process called oxidation. She warns me, once again, that the bleaching process is not going to be fun, but I don’t need to hear it: I’ve done my research. I’m barely awake when I step into the salon, but Tracey’s excitement at getting started on my hair transformation perks me up, as does the seemingly endless supply of tea and biscuits at my disposal. When planning this appointment, I failed to consider the fact it would take place the morning after an all-night news shift. Tracey tells me my first appointment will last at least six hours (eek), so I take a look at my calendar and arrange to come back in two weeks time. But if you’re up for it, I’d love to work with you on this!” I just want to make it clear that we can’t do this in one appointment. “It’s absolutely not impossible,” she tells me firmly. Embarrassed for wasting Tracey’s time, I start to apologise for the impossible, but she laughs. “It’s going to be difficult,” she tells me eventually. She spends an age looking at the multi-layered effect of a decade’s different dye jobs – painfully obvious, under the salon lights – and takes note of the few inches of root regrowth (almost 70% white, if you’re wondering). “Right,” she says, gently pushing me into a chair and taking a handful of my hair up between her fingers.