I am a girl

I dyed my hair last week. Black. “Liquorice” to be precise (wow, that’s a hard word to figure out how to spell). To me it was a shocking change, but to others it wasn’t very noticeable at all.

This week, though, EVERYONE sees it. Everyone is complimenting the colour and telling me that it makes my eyes pop. Everyone is telling me it’s great on me and that my other hair colour (my natural one) is nice but a bit “meh”. “This” they say, “is the perfect colour for you”. Thanks Garnier!

When I was a teenager I dyed my hair all sorts of different colours; blue, pink, purple (sometimes all three at the same time) and that auburn colour everyone seems to try once in their lives. Over the past few years I haven’t really been interested in dying my hair at all, although I have become more “in” to makeup.

In high school I wasn’t really big on makeup. I don’t think I wore any, actually, save for my grade 9 “maroon Wet n’ Wild lipstick” experiment that, upon reflection, was horrid. University was much like high school: jeans, hoodies, pony tail. When you go to uni in a small town and all your classes are theatre classes, you don’t really need to dress up/care about how you look. I moved to Toronto, though, and found myself changing. I wanted to look nice. I wanted to wear nice, fitted clothes and a bit of mascara or lip gloss. Slowly but surely I worked my way up to foundation (after a free makeover with the product really made me love it!) and last year I spent $20 on a tube of lipstick.

-- okay, I realize $20 is a shit-load of money to spend on one tube of lipstick, but here’s my justification: I don’t wear a ton of makeup so I don’t buy a ton of makeup…this lipstick will last me forever since I rarely wear it, and I want it to be nice and good quality so that I *do* want to wear it on special occasions. I buy cheap mascara and lip gloss, so it evens out. JUSTIFIED! –-

I wear dresses and skirts, always have some sort of product in my hair, really like the colour pink, get my eyebrows waxed, always throw a bit of mascara on before I go somewhere, am considering getting another box of “Liquorice” dye so I can keep this colour up…in short, I have become a girl. A far, far cry from the hoodies, jeans, XL men’s t-shirts and occasional Chapstick of my youth. And I like it. I like looking nice, and I like that it doesn’t take me more than five minutes to look nice. I don’t obsess over things or spend half an hour on my hair and makeup each morning, and I couldn’t care less what I wear when I’m grabbing a morning walk and coffee on Saturday mornings; I’m pretty easy most of the time.

Most of the time. Sometimes it takes me 45 minutes to decide on a shirt to wear before I go out. I’m hoping this disappears when I finish my ‘50lbs by March’ goal. Skinny girls don’t stress out about what to wear, right?