My Life as a Blonde

I was born blonde, but by the late grade school years, my hair was slowly getting darker and darker. My Aunt Pearl urged my mother to put a rinse in it, to try and keep it light, but Mother would not consider it. At any rate, she would have been fighting a losing battle, and by the time I was a teenager, I was definitely a brunette.

Within weeks of our marriage, my husband decided he would really like to have a blonde wife. His Aunt Alice owned a beauty shop, and we went over to see what she thought about it. She took a look at me, and decided that she thought blonde might look all right, but she didn’t have time to do the job. She gave us a bottle of peroxide and some booster, gave Jerry some instructions, and off we went to my parent’s home. I can’t remember why we went over there, but I do remember spending most of the evening in their bathroom while Jerry bleached my hair.

At the end of the allotted time, we rinsed out the bleaching mixture, but the hair was still pretty dark. The time, however, was getting late. We packed up our supplies and returned to our own apartment, and there we gave my hair a second treatment. This time, at the end of the allotted period, my hair was blonde, but not exactly as we had pictured. I learned where the term, ‘brassy blonde’ came from. My hair was a bright yellow, the condition was very dry and my scalp was burned and red. I spent a very painful, uncomfortable night, and then had to go to work the next morning.

A coworker took one look at me, and said that what I needed was a toning rinse. She called a friend at the shop where she had her hair done and got me an emergency appointment for that afternoon.

“Oh dear” said the beauty operator when I walked in her door. “Don’t worry about your scalp”, she said. “ A virgin scalp always burns the first time you bleach. It will heal, and then you won’t have trouble with it burning again.” The color rinse she chose for me was an ash blonde, and I must say, the results were a huge improvement. I took the bus home, and when I got off at my stop, my husband was waiting for me in the car. I walked over and got into the front seat beside him. “Boy”, he said. “I was just thinking that that was a great looking blonde getting off the bus, and then she walked over and got into my car.”

I never quite got used to being blonde. I was working at Frederick and Nelson that summer. I would walk down the aisles of the store and catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirrors. I always was startled by my image, and often took a second glance. I had worked at the department store for several years, by this time, and I had never before had a customer comment on my appearance. That summer, lots of people noticed me. No one ever said anything about my hair. They would say, “You know, you have beautiful eyes”, or “My dear, you have really lovely skin.” I began to love being blonde.

Jerry’s best friend, Chuck Hazen, got married in September. Jerry was his best man. After the wedding ceremony, I was standing on the steps to go down to the church basement, where the reception was being held. Jerry came down the stairs to get into the receiving line, and he stopped and gave me a hug. At the bottom of the steps, a family friend stopped him, and wanted to know just whom he was hugging. “That’s my wife”, he said. “I thought she was a brunette”, she said. Then she found my mother. “I thought your daughter was a brunette”, she said. Mother wouldn’t admit to a daughter who bleached her hair. “My other daughter has much darker hair”, she said. Finally, the woman found me. “I thought your hair was brown” “It is” I said, and told her the truth.

In October, it was time to go back to Pullman, and finish up my last year at Washington State. My hair was beginning to show dark roots by this time, and I really did not want to go through bleaching it again. Reluctantly, I had it dyed back to its original color. I was doing my student teaching the second half of that semester, and by Christmas time, the color had begun to fade rather badly. When we went home for Christmas break, I had my hair cut, and the color retouched. The first day back at school, one of my students saw me and exclaimed “Oh, Mrs. Jensen, you got your hair……cut.” I laughed, and told her the truth, too.

I have never been a blonde again, but I have been tempted. I think the hair color was really flattering to my complexion, and I felt really pretty that summer. I guess the memory of that painful, weeping scalp was one thing that stopped me.