So you’re on the beach—what now? First things first: chair placement. Do not face the water unless the shadow permits it. Some people place their chairs facing the waves no matter what. That’s a nice view, but do you want a nice view, or do you want to achieve a bit of a tan and drop the albatross of pastiness once and for all? No pain, no gain—or more appropriately: If you sit at a weird angle with your beach chair casting a shadow on your thigh, you will end up with a half-tan, half-pasty thigh. I’m trying to save you from yourself! So place your chair with the shadow casting directly behind you as you face the sun and rotate that chair to follow the sun as the day unfolds. Whoever said that what you learned in eighth-grade Earth Science would never come in handy?26
If you’re at the beach with a pasty friend who isn’t intent on escaping pastiness, she’ll probably encourage you to reapply your sunblock as the hours tick by. Do not listen to her. She knows nothing. Much like how the infamous dating book The Rules tells you not to talk to your therapist about The Rules, do not talk to pasty people about your attempts to escape the pasty prison.27 They want you to stay with them, looking paper-white and ill, but you’re blowing this proverbial popsicle stand and you’re going to get some color. If you reapply sunblock, even SPF 8, you will undo all the hard work (careful initial application, chair rotation) that you’ve put in. So resist the urge to reapply and instead, go get another delicious Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee.28
Once you have read through all of your magazines, chatted with your beach crew about every possible topic of conversation, polished off a few iced coffees, and generally had your fill of the beach, stick it out for thirty more minutes. The sun needs to work its magic, and if there’s one thing that we know about the sun, it’s that it doesn’t move quickly. Well, it doesn’t technically move at all—rather, the earth orbits around it—but you know what I mean.29 When it comes to getting color, patience is key.
Head home and wait for the fantastic results to blossom in four to five hours. In the meantime, you should definitely shower since a day at the beach leaves most people smelling extremely funky. If possible, don’t shave your legs after that day of SPF 8 experimentation, as I have a scientifically unproven belief that you will shave off whatever color you just got. Post-shower, you will enter the second phase of the quest for tan, and it’s a step that is even trickier than the previous one: Apply bronzing lotion.
When most people think of bronzer or tanning lotion, they picture Christina Aguilera on the red carpet, looking like a transvestite cinnamon stick that has been dusted with glitter. She’s an example of bronzer gone wrong—you need not look like an orange disco ball with a wig on top. Other examples of bronzer abuse include George Hamilton, Valentino, and everyone on Dancing with the Stars. Thankfully, great advances in bronzer technology have been made in the past twenty years, and now even the pastiest pasty can achieve a subtle tan thanks to bottled sun. Said sun can either be self-administered at home (using a tanning cream) or by a trained professional in a spray tanning salon (using what resembles a backyard hose filled with filthy water). Since I am a believer in the pioneer spirit (and I’m usually broke), we’ll discuss the at-home bronzing process because every wannabe tan gal should know how to take care of her own business.30
Let’s do what Fraulein Maria of The Sound of Music taught us in the opening of “Do-Re-Mi” and start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. (After all, when Maria was played by Julie Andrews, she had a sweet bowl cut of blonde hair, so she can definitely be trusted.) With bronzer, starting at the beginning means shopping for the proper tanning product. You don’t need to drop a ton of money for a good result—you just need to be informed. From age eleven to fourteen, I regularly stole my mother’s antiquated tanning lotion from her bathroom and conducted bronzing experiments on my own body.31 Back in those heady days, most tanning creams emitted a distinct and foul odor and took hours to develop. Not so anymore. It’s the new millennium, and soon we will be placing our fake-tanned bodies on hoverboards to ride over to the floating Zipdorp shop.32 In the interim, we should all achieve bronzed perfection by using a product that changed my life: L’Oréal Sublime Bronze in Medium. This product harkens back to the carefree days of the late 1990s, when every major cosmetics company released some sort of bronzer product for the summertime. This L’Oréal product is the best of the bunch, and its staying power in the marketplace proves that superiority. The dark shade of the bottle and bold, dark shimmer of the product might intimidate some tan-seekers, but there’s no reason to fret, my pets. If the bronzer is too bronzed for you, simply cut it with any old lotion for a less severe look. Simple as that. Just as you might overseason a curry dish and then dial it back with some shredded coconut for balance, body or face lotion can be added to the L’Oréal solution to exactly match the shade you are seeking. In the wintertime, you probably want just a touch of color to remind others that you aren’t a zombie dancer from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. In the summertime, you probably want to let it rip with the bronzer so that strangers will think that you’re a relaxed, laid-back beach bum who spends her Saturdays in the sun, not at home crying while clicking through her ex-boyfriend’s Facebook photos (or whatever).
Since bronzing lotions have grown into a multimillion-dollar industry (and yes, I feel like I am something of veteran of the bronzer world), every cosmetics company has gotten in on the action, with most offering three bronzer options: a fair/light bronzer, a medium bronzer, and a dark bronzer. Don’t bother with the fair/light option unless you are allergic to the sun, as I mentioned before, though I must ask why you are still reading this chapter, little sun allergy buddy—I already asked you to skip to the next chapter. Move along! The fair/light rarely produces enough tan to justify the expense, so jump into the deep(er) end with either medium or dark. Remember, you can always cut it with lotion to lighten the bronzer hue.
If you start using a bronzing lotion or gel regularly, you will definitely want to be exfoliating your skin regularly, too. Bronzer can build up in weird places and you need to slough off old, bronzed skin cells to have a clean palette for the next application. Also, after you apply your bronzer-lotion combo to your face or body, don’t forget to wash your hands right away. Lindsay Lohan forgot this crucial step once upon a time, and the paparazzi were all over her orange hands. Don’t be that girl—scrub your hands right away and be sure to focus on cuticles so that you don’t end up with creepy orange nail beds. If you are putting bronzer on your body (arms, legs), be careful not to end up looking like a tan girl wearing white gloves—I told you that bronzer application was a tricky science! After you have applied tanning cream to your arms, you should wash your hands, then go back to your plain lotion and squeeze a bit into your hand. Rub your hands together and rub the lotion into the top of your hands, blending from wrist onto hand. This way, your tan arm will blend into your more white hand and you won’t have a distinct boundary showing the edge of the washed hand (the “white glove” look). Rub any additional plain lotion along the soft underside of your arms, where nobody gets tan anyway.
The final step in looking like a tan blonde (despite being a natural blonde who can scarcely tan) is thoughtful clothing selection. Wearing a white bikini on the beach can be a hot look because it makes you appear quite tan, relative to the bikini. The careful use of white need not stop there, though: In the summertime, I’ve been known to rock a white bikini, white jeans, and white purse. While rocking this look, I’ve been told that I look like an extra from a Warrant video, so brace yourself to deal with some haters who can’t handle your hotness. And screw the haters—you look dope!
Keep the light clothes in mind when selecting outfits for work or socializing—white attire can beautifully showcase your tan, however subtle that tan may be. But ladies, I must make a request: Please stop wearing clothing that exactly matches your flesh tone in color. When viewed from afar, too much flesh tone gives the look of complete, sexless nudity, like that weird 1980s TV show wit
h the exposed-organ-and-skin-suit guy, Slim Goodbody (minus the organs—at least those break up the uniformity!). This “ball of pasty flesh” phenomenon occurs mostly on white women—you often see fair-skinned celebrities on the red carpet wearing delicate dresses that match their skin tone, as if a new Pantone called Eastern European Heritage Plus Vitamin Deficiency were created just for that dress. This trend isn’t doing anyone any favors, and every time I see a white lady on the red carpet wearing a getup that Steven Cojocaru calls “petal pink” or “flesh tone” or “beige,” I want to vomit.33 Same with darker-complexioned women—when they wear a color that’s quite different from their skin tone (say, a bright pink or yellow), it really pops, but when they stick too close to their flesh tone, the entire look becomes too uniform.
A final step that isn’t required, but is encouraged, is to maximize whiteness of your white features—eyes and teeth. This is done using the stoner’s favorite tool, Visine eye drops, and the beauty queen’s favorite tool, Crest Whitestrips. Yes, this might seem a bit overboard, but achieving the illusion of a sick tan has a lot in common with fundraising for Heifer International: Every little bit helps. Making your teeth and eyes extra white will make your skin, by contrast, seem more tan, and the wheel of pasty shame and self-hatred keeps on turning and turning and turning.34
Props must be given to celebrities who are fair-skinned and wear their pastiness with pride. I really admire Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Nicole Kidman, Gwen Stefani, and Cynthia Nixon for their willingness to buck the trend and not worship the sun—they are stronger women than I. My bronzer addiction isn’t quite as rampant as it used to be in my teenage years, but it still persists. And so I have developed the previously described rituals for “getting color” in the summertime.
Let’s review your “getting color” checklist:
SPF 8
Beach chair
Us Weekly (or In Touch or People)
Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee
A free afternoon
Bronzing lotion
White bikini or white purse or white pants
Eye drops and Whitestrips
I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a slow-motion-jogging Los Angeles County lifeguard who is bronzed to perfection. But with the help of SPF 8, hours of beachside activities, L’Oréal Sublime Bronze, and white clothing, I just might be mistaken for someone who can tan naturally and who dyes her hair blonde.
CHAPTER 7
RULE: Know How to Work the Weave
At some point in their lives, 75 percent of American women color their hair, whether at home or in the salon.35 Around 20 percent of women are born blonde, but as they age, their hair is likely to turn darker. This means that plenty of natural blondes fall within the 75 percent of American women who color their hair, as blonde highlights are a common request in salons across the country. So coloring and highlights are a big part of blonde culture, even for natural blondes.
Perhaps you wish to join that posse of women who get a boost from a box of Clairol or a colorist but you aren’t quite sure of the correct name for the style that you’re seeking. What’s the difference between highlights and lowlights? Where does brassy end and ashy begin? If you have red undertones, should you be careful of certain potential problems in going blonde? If there is one thing I have learned in my experiences with blonde dye and resultant color catastrophes, it’s that one needs to know the jargon of hair color change. Along with knowing the lingo, it can’t hurt to bring a few photos to the hair salon—hues that you like, colors that you don’t like. Just as my mother advised earlier, don’t feel silly bringing along pictures of celebrities, friends, family, or yourself in earlier eras to show the colorist, especially if you’re popping the cherry with a new colorist. Would you rather feel silly for five minutes before the dye hits your head or feel that horrific pit-in-stomach anxiety as you choke back tears upon realizing that the colorist has given you purple hair?
Hair color is a mad science that combines many variables: your underlying pigment (your natural or “virgin” hair color), the color that you are seeking, the porosity of your hair (how well your hair will absorb and hold color based on how damaged your hair is), the level of developer used (this is what opens up the cuticle and activates the color), the color itself, and the length of time that both the color and the developer are left on your head. After all of those issues are accounted for and calculated, sometimes you still “can’t get there from here.”
To whip up this layman’s guide to going lighter, I met brilliant NYC-based colorist and friend Michael Robinson with the Antonio Prieto Salon. Michael is a gorgeous blonde lady, despite the fact that she shares a first name with my brown-haired father. Most important, Michael is a talented and friendly colorist, so she didn’t mind answering my multitude of ridiculous hair questions. She gave me a crash course in color and taught me that hair color might seem like a nebulous world filled with buzzwords such as “champagne,” “ashy,” and, “hot roots,” but it’s actually grounded in empirical logic: numbers and the color wheel. I hadn’t thought about a color wheel since sixth-grade art class and I have a severe aversion to math,36 so I threw myself at Michael’s feet and begged for enlightenment . . . and a root touch-up while we talked.
The hair color industry organizes natural hair shades on a continuum that goes from 1 to 10. The 1 ranking signifies dark black, usually Asian hair, and 10 is the lightest color that can occur in nature (think Scandinavian blonde beauties). Of course bright blonde is a “Perfect Ten,” natch. All natural hair colors can be found somewhere in this range of ten.
When thinking about this ten-pronged color continuum, something struck me. “Wouldn’t a Marilyn Monroe platinum blonde be more of a 10 than a random Scandinavian blonde? That is, isn’t an almost-white blonde considered blonder than a yellowish blonde?”
“Oh no, that platinum, almost-white color that you see on some celebrities—that is outside the 1-to-10 scale. It’s considered a 12, and those women are called Special Blondes,” Michael explained as she gave me autumnal highlights. She reminded me that the 1-to-10 range is for purely natural hair colors. That 1940s-style white blonde is certainly not a shade that occurs in nature, thus its categorization off the scale as Special Blondes or Special 12. This shade is the ashiest that you can go—it’s practically white. Modern-day examples of this include Gwen Stefani, Elisha Cuthbert, Christina Aguilera, and Michelle Williams.
“So if the range is 1 to 10, and you have Special Blondes that are 12, then what color is at 11? A blonde that is really light, but not quite ‘Special Blonde,’ but blonder than a natural blonde?” I inquired.
“There’s really no 11 on the official scale. Sure, you could make a color that I suppose is considered an 11, but it’s just not recognized in the system.” Huh. So this one doesn’t go to 11, unlike Spinal Tap’s amplifiers.37
Special Blonde or 12 coloring often requires a double process, when the hair must be completely bleached to the scalp to remove all pigment. Oftentimes that process must be administered twice to achieve that platinum hue, thus the moniker “double process.” A single process is half of a double process (fun with fractions!), and it’s a way of achieving the wanted hair color with only one step. When a single process is done, all of the hair is painted with one solid color so the hair color becomes uniform and every piece of hair receives color. It’s mostly used with women who have red hair or dark hair, or are doing gray coverage. Technically, a single process can be done at home or in the salon, but the at-home application of one color all over is what I tend to think of when I think of single process. A double process, which is much more complex and dangerous, should not be done at home. Beware the double process because you might end up with a “chemical cut,” which is what happens when hair is so damaged and overprocessed that it simply breaks off because of the trauma. Sounds horrifying, huh? You go into the salon for some exciting color on your beautiful, long mane, and you emerge looking like G.I. Jane or buzz-cut-breakdown-era Br
itney Spears. I’ve definitely seen a few gals with chemical cuts, but I thought they just had exotic taste and fancied themselves Halle Berry look-alikes who could pull off such an unforgiving look. Turns out my assumption was incorrect and they were just trying to get some color, but things went way wrong.
But back at the natural color scale, let’s explore an example. Say you have a woman who is a natural 3 (medium-brown hair) who wants to try her hand at blondeness (try her head at blondeness, really) and is shooting to end up at an 8. If she’s smart, she’ll make that type of drastic jump at the salon and put her hair in the hands of a trained professional. In my estimation, 99 percent of at-home, brown-to-blonde coloring sessions result in orange hair. Remember Brenda Walsh’s orange dome from Beverly Hills, 90210? At least that was a realistic portrayal of what can happen. That’s more than I can say for The Smurfs. When Gargamel first “created” Smurfette (creepy?), she had black hair. It wasn’t until Papa Smurf stayed up all night making her into a real Smurf that Smurfette become blonde. Apparently, in the Smurf world, “stayed up all night” means “executed a feat of hair color change that can never be done anywhere outside of the drawing room at Hanna-Barbera Productions.” Don’t follow the lead of Papa Smurf and attempt to change black hair to blonde both at home and overnight. Put yourself in the trained hands of a professional: a colorist. Colorists are trained in assessing the underlying pigments of your hair; knowing what can and cannot be accomplished with peroxide, glaze, and timing; and memorizing which color combinations create other colors. They must regularly refer back to the color wheel and the range of 1 to 10 in which they are constantly creating colors.
The New Rules for Blondes Page 6