I'm a 10!

So....all you bitches know that I'm classy, right? I like beer, I cheer like a redneck for the crappiest baseball team in the whole damn American League (let's not discuss that), I like nothing more on a rainy day than an US magazine and a grilled cheese made with Velveeta cheese....and I color my hair with boxed hair color. This is not really so unclassy, I guess. There are many people who dye their hair with boxed hair color, and they are upstanding, wonderful citizens who drink cab and have good credit. It's just when I was younger, I remember riding in the back of the car on a trip from the mall, listening to my mom and grandmom talk. They thought I was asleep, as they usually did, so they really started dishing the good stuff (by the way, this is how I learned about sex, drugs, and Jack Daniels--God bless those midnight car rides!). On one particular evening, they were discussing a woman who had (presumably) once been a prostitute and once beat up her husband before getting on a bus bound for Indiana and the waiting arms of a truck driver. I remember their voices getting extra hushed and my grandmother saying, "Well, she dyes her hair that awful red...that Clairol red. Buys it at the drugstore every month." For some reason, that just really stuck with me. I imagined a sad and lonely woman, trekking out to the drugstore, her streaked red hair hanging loose and whore-like around her drawn face, only to see my ethereal grandmother behind the counter, doling out presecriptions and advice like candy. My grandmother's hair was naturally and beautifully gray, and it laid around her head like a halo--totally the opposite of "Clairol red." So I guess, accompanied with this image of old age done gracefully and the washed up (albeit imagined) old age of the town slut, I decided right then and there that I would never dye my hair "Clairol red."

I guess it is telling that when I first decided to try dying my hair at home that I went for the much more buttoned up L'Oreal Natural Match. No sluts here! However, as it usually does, In Style magazine tempted me toward whoredom. In a feature they did in the March issue, they talk extensively about new products and how they have "revolutionized" the beauty industry. I don't know about that....but anyway, Clairol Perfect 10 hair color was one of them. So, well, if you read this blog regularly, you know that I have no self-control and am horribly gullible and you of course know what I did next. Yup, I bought the stuff, not even really knowing if I would like it, if I even really needed it....I'm really a quite horrible person. I bought it at Target and brought the crap home, along with $70 of other stuff that I neither needed nor know if I truly wanted. Ah, such is the way of the Target. Now, if you don't want to think that I'm a horrible consumerist person, go read that post that I wrote about being a good bargain hunter. Or for that matter, find a new blog. Perhaps something written by a nun?

ANYWAY...so the haircolor...the big hook is that it takes...10 minutes. That's pretty much the selling point. Yup...10 minutes rather than 25 or whatever the other was. That's what sent me panting to Target IN THE RAIN. 10 minute hair color. Hmmmm.... But hold up--I actually really like the stuff. Once I got it on, I determined that it really is more than the fact that it can just be done in 10 minutes. This stuff feels much more gentle than the other L'Oreal stuff. The L'Oreal stuff made my head feel like it was being devoured by an angry troop of fire ants. This...not so much. It was just there. And it just took 10 minutes. So, if you're like me, that's 10 minutes to read In Style magazine and plot the demise of Eva Longoria Parker. Or to make 1/3 of a 30 minute meal. Or to do the last writing section on the SAT. Or to ponder the meaningless of existence. You know, whatever.

And when I was done....pretty damn nice, if I do say so myself. Not only is the color shiny and shimmery and all the things that a good out of the box hair color should be, but it also gives my hair some body. Which, with all the other stuff giving my hair body right now (again, see that other post about cheap stuff), I'm a regular Monica Lewinsky. And yes, that's a dated reference, but didn't you just love her hair? I remember my hair stylist telling me that if I used Redken Body and Bounce, I could have that "Lewinsky bounce." Which sounds like something that you'd find in the Starr report, but whatever. Yeah, it didn't work (the Redken stuff), but THIS DOES. My hair just feels thicker.

So the 10 minute hair color doesn't make you a whore (unless, of course, you want it to, and in that case, I would defs. go with the red). It will just give you lots of body, and you will like it. And it will only take 10 minutes. So that's 15 minutes you don't have to spend dying your hair--15 minutes you can prepare half of a 30 minute meal, 15 minutes to save the world from itself, 15 minutes to go to Target and buy more shit. But ultimately, it's 15 minutes to just bitch about Eva Longoria Parker, because isn't that what you want to be doing anyway?