On this week's 'So You Think You're An Adult', one listener needs help as to what to do about her hair, after an unfortunate lockdown mishap...
The listener's problem
I made a mistake in lockdown and to be honest, I don’t really know what to do. I gave myself an at home hair cut and hair dye.
My hair was in an absolute state and I really needed to cut my ends and my fringe.
I’m blonde and my roots were a disgrace too. So I decided to bleach my roots and cut my hair.
I followed YouTube videos but clearly I looked at the wrong ones.
I cut my hair and fringe when wet and it looked a grand length but when it dried it got a hell of a lot shorter.
My fringe especially is now at a right angle to my forehead no matter how many times I straighten it to try flatten it.
It is horrific. But that’s not the worst part. My roots turned out orange. Like, Bozo the Clown orange. While my mids and ends are blonde.
It’s made me so upset. I’ve been lying to work and saying my camera is broken on the laptop so they don’t have to see me. When I go to the shops, I wear a big woolly hat which at this stage is too hot to wear.
What do I do? How do I face people? I’m so completely embarrassed by it.
I know people will say it’s only hair but let’s be honest it’s what defines us all. No matter what people say, we are all extremely judgmental of each other and I am not able for the jokes and private remarks behind my back that I know will happen.
Has anyone else done this to themselves? How do I fix it? I’m devasted that I feel like I need to hide myself away even further.
Barbara Scully's advice
"Our hair is an important part of how we present ourself to the world, and it does matter.
"It's one of the things, among probably 100 million among other things, that I think our Government doesn't just get.
"I think if there was possibly even just one woman on the COVID committee, we might even have a date for hairdressers to open again.
"It's not causing me stress, but I can understand how it is causing a lot of stress out there for people - especially who are still working, who can't just hide themselves at home and nobody see the fact that their hair's gone to s**t altogether.
"I've one piece of advice, which is born out of bitter experience because this time last year my grey roots were beginning to become a problem
"I didn't want to use a box dye because, like this listener, I had done that before when I decided that in order to give people the impression I perhaps wasn't as old as I am, I thought if I had purple hair it might give me some kind of youthful vibe.
"I ended up with the colour I wanted at the very end of my hair, and then the top of my hair was kind of pink and... the roots went orange.
"But what I did do last year... I bought yoga hairbands - those thick yoga headbands - and they work as hairbands.
"They will hide the front of your head... Now you have to be careful with them, because if they start to fall off like mine did you look like a bit of a mental nun.
"But if you put them on right and you keep them on right, they may help - particularly as the weather's getting better and the old woolly hat thing isn't good.
"I'd say this listener is not on her own by a long way".
"Do you what is really refreshing? It's so refreshing to see so many women out there now with silver hair who are in their 40s and 50s.
"We've associated, in our heads, that silver hair belongs to women in their 80s - certainly in their 70s.
"And it's lovely to see so many younger women happily sorting silver hair: I'm all for that".
