I dyed the underside of my hair last Sunday. I have dark brown hair, let the record show, pretty long but not quite waist-length. I’ve had bright colors in it before – pink, purple and blue before a school trip to Peru, indigo during a hippie phase, cerulean streaks that came out more seaweed than striking. Lately I’ve been bored with my routine, so I trekked to CVS on Saturday night to buy some grade-A dye material. I wanted green but they didn’t have it. I chose red. There was no particular reason for this.

That night I wiped toothpaste foam off my face and turned around to see a sizeable chunk of Crest hanging in my hair. I stared at it, knowing all the while I was only pretending to decide what to do. I turned off the light and went to bed.

The next afternoon I began by rediscovering that lump of toothpaste and brushing it out in a snarly, flaky mess. I then set about flattening and arranging and parting my hair until I decided how to handle the red. As cool as I think all-over color looks, I, one, have a thick mane that would require at least three boxes of dye, two, don’t want to risk bleaching my whole head/inducing chemical burn, and three, consider my skin tone barely suitable for brunette, much less an unnatural hue.

I decided to halve my hair and dye only the longest, bottom-most layer. Fast forward two hours and I made a mess. Typically, the more uncertain I am about whether or not I should be doing something the faster I do it. So I blasted Everclear and convinced myself smearing bleach and red goo all over my head was the right thing to do. I stopped dancing only long enough to curse the wayward glops that resulted from my dancing.

I waited the directed amount of time – 60 minutes for the bleach, 30 for the dye – and literally hopped in the shower to rinse everything out. Beet-colored water ran down my legs and pooled in a pale fuchsia puddle (we have a drainage problem). It felt right for Easter. Unfortunately, the fuchsia tub-pond left fuchsia tub-residue, which I knew neither my roommates nor university housing would be very pleased about.

Fresh red hair in a sopping bun on my head, I scrubbed the tub with our kitchen sponge until I realized I needed bleach. I returned to CVS. I let everything soak. I sent my parents a picture of my “new do” and captioned it “Easter project.” I otherwise stewed in the aftermath of my actions.

My dad replied that the red was “unimaginative” and that I was usually “more discerning” with my rebel whims. He said it was something high school girls might attempt with Kool-Aid. My boyfriend, who lives in Minnesota, said he liked it, but has since forgotten I dyed it at all, I think. My roommates thought it was cool. A girl yelled “your hair is awesome!” out a car window as I walked home with the bleach. Little did she know I was a dweeb who stained both her tub and her neck trying to get awesome hair.

All this made me think: Is it possible to make any significant physical change without it being tainted by other people’s real or perceived opinions? When I chose the red I couldn’t help but wonder, vaguely, if I could pull it off, if it was even cool enough to be worth pulling off, if girls would assume I got the idea off Pinterest, if people on the T would assume I wanted attention, if I did in fact want attention and yeah, Dad, if it wasn’t a bit overdone.

But those thoughts were fleeting. For one, I was just too lazy to care. So I grabbed “Raspberry Razz” off the shelf and decided all I wanted to “pull off” was dyeing my hair red and not thinking about it afterward. And also not destroying the bathroom, though deep down I think I knew that was impossible.

When I consider the red now, I remember that I don’t want to try to be original anymore than I want to try to fit in. I just want to be honest about what I feel like doing and do it, even if that means going to bed with toothpaste in my hair.

– Emily Huizenga can be reached at [email protected]