History of Hair

Rock Chef of the Rock Chef's Warren blogged about his hair a couple of hours ago and I decided to blog about mine too. Not the one now, but the one I coloured a long while ago.

Look at the character on the left... This is Iori Yagami of the King of Fighter, an arcade game franchise very popular in the late 90s. He happened to be my muse when I was in secondary school, 16 year old me, who was already seeped in irony, fights and evil. Much like his hero. <--

So during the midyear holidays that year, 1997 I coloured my hair with Clairol's 'Burgundy' hair colour. I did it myself and was rather lacking on the 'never let the dye touch the scalp' direction. I paid for ignoring that direction... but that comes later.

My hair was flaming red in the sun! Back then, in a society of 100% black hair, I stood out like a lighthouse! People pointed and children stared. It was not a natural colour for anyone.

My dad, who was always the silent one, one day remarked that he was now FAMOUS, having a son with bright red hair. Everybody in our small town knew about me he said. My mom, believing it was only teen-angst, left me be.

I returned back to boarding school in anticipation... My school mates were shocked, but never dared to comment (I was brutal back than to criticism). I was only worried about the reaction of the teachers.... as I thought the sun and moon of them, i.e. very highly. If they reacted badly, I would be so downcasted.

The first school assembly with red haired me, I admitted that I was so afraid they would call me up to the front and have a row. But NOTHING towards that happened. The teachers were aware of me (the gossiping escalated a notch at their seats), as I stood right in the front of my class row. The Principal and Vice Principal noticed too.  I had my heart drumming like crazy, but NOTHING happened...


On the third day of school, at last I dared to ask my History teacher (who was quite chummy with us) about the why. He said, yes, the teachers saw me and right after that assembly they went searching inside the school's rule book about hair dyes... and they found there was NO RULE against it. No rule, so I was legally safe. (Synthetic hair dyes were quite new to Malaysia back then). So there will be one in the NEXT YEAR'S rule book.


Sometimes I didn't believe those days happened, but they did. The only boy in school with red hair. Unfortunately I didn't have pictures, (no camera rule) :P But I did look good back then.

Now to the part when I ignored the direction... As I coloured my hair myself, it was a messy and sticky job and I might have used too much colouring too. And my scalp was totally seeped with it... My red hair lasted for almost TWO YEARS because of that one time of colouring. Fortunately I didn't get bald or I'll kill myself for my own stupidity. The reddish tint disappeared by the second year gradually.

Talking about long lasting hair colour...


So that's all folks. Now we can see people with colourful hair walking the streets with no one batting an eyelid. The world has changed.


What colour is your hair today? :)