My hair has always been my pride and joy. Hairdressers would fawn over how long and thick it was. It was glossy, healthy and an unremarkable shade of light brown. But it never really felt like “me”. As a teen I dyed it purple, pink, red, blue or all four, trying to find the magic shade that would make sense.
Until disaster struck. When I was 18, I damaged my hair so badly with bleach that no colour would stick to it. After I spent two weeks as peroxide Barbie, my hairdresser saved what she could of my hair by dyeing it back to its natural mousy brown colour and chopping a good 14 inches off into a blunt bob. Much to her dismay, again bored with brown I bleached it a week later. It seemed I was in a permanent identity crisis that only a box of bleach could fix.
Accepting that I was maybe just one bleach job away from my hair falling out, and wanting to return to the glory days of healthy, luscious locks, I started researching natural ways to restore my hair. After sampling every haircare product and trying DIY hair masks made from eggs, it seemed the best long-term solution would be to use henna, a natural dye. I thought I would try to keep it interesting by going for auburn, a dark red/orange that would fade so I could easily slather shocking pink over it.
‘Auburn’ was a little misleading and I ended up with bright ginger hair. When using henna the result can vary depending on your natural hair colour. But the second I saw my new hair colour, I finally recognised something in myself. My mum has naturally auburn hair. (Her hair used to be dark orange or red depending on the light. Some people, like me, would say ginger. She would disagree. It’s up for debate.) She rocked this look in her 20s, when I was a young child. At 26, when I look in the mirror, I now see her looking back at me.
For the past seven years I have been dyeing my hair ginger every month and I still get the same feeling of relief as I did the first time I saw those fiery strands. Everyone thinks it’s natural. And it makes sense with my Scottish accent and pale complexion.
My hair colour has become part of my identity. At an old job, I was even referred to as Ginger Rachel. When I told them my original hair colour was light brown, one co-worker very seriously told me it was an insult to his childhood struggles with being teased for being ginger. Another called me a fraud.
The outrage has only confirmed that having ginger hair suits me. If I had never told anyone I wasn’t naturally ginger, they would never have known. I even forget myself that it’s fake until I have to dye it again. I’m committed to being Ginger Rachel for life.