basically blonde

subheads taken from lyrics from BLONDE by Raffaella.

I became a fake brunette in November 2021.

Dying my hair was a way to try something new, I lied. Because dying my hair was an attempt to give up something old.

Broken.

Split at the ends.

And perhaps split at the beginnings, too.

You would be a lot happier if I were blonde

Everybody's thinking it everybody's saying it too

Up until November 2021 I had always been blonde. Or, basically blonde. Most blonde adults are basically blonde and not actually blonde because no matter how moon-headed we are as toddlers, we undergo gene changes that darken our hair with age. I wasn’t a moon-headed toddler—my tonnage was warm—but I was bright. Golden. Like sunshine, maybe, if I want to flatter myself.

I do want to flatter myself because I loved my blonde hair as a child. Blonde was beautiful, people told me, so I was beautiful too. I took this sliver of vanity and harnessed it, knotted it around my ponytail, and fastened it above my skull—tight—locking it there until the organ below it programmed itself to hate my body.

Just give me my money, my time, my new salon

I became a fake-brunette after a nightmare I had while I was blonde before November 2021. I don’t remember the nightmare but I remember waking up from it, sweating.

I booked a hair appointment in the morning and told the stylist I wanted to be dark and deep and different. “Okay,” she lied. Then, “I didn’t think you wanted to,” she added, after her blow dryer revealed a mound of sticky caramel swirls.

Two cents and confidence, I'll get it ready for you

I went to Target after that. Purchased a box of powders and potions and mixed them together over my scalp in the shower.

My neighbor Gus can do it for pretty cheap

He used to do bad, bad, bad drugs but now he's gotten clean

People looked at me differently as a fake brunette. Sometimes, they didn’t look at me at all.

But after years of relying on others’ gaze to determine my beauty—and relying on that beauty to determine my worth—I relished anonymity. I let myself disappear.

You'd be a lot sluttier if you were blonde

I became a fake brunette shortly after I became someone’s girlfriend in November 2021. I felt bad for my ex. He had signed up to date a blonde.

You'll kiss somebody and they're gonna get mad at you

“You are really pretty?” A man asked me in the park a few days after I became a fake brunette in November 2021.

I had just used my laptop to sign him up for his driver’s license test because he didn’t have a laptop because he didn’t have an income because he didn’t have a job because he didn’t have a driver’s license and he didn’t have his driver’s license because he failed his last test because he ran through a stop sign because he was turning his head to tell his proctor that “she stank,” he said. “You don't stink, though,” he told me.

He meant to say “thank you,” I think.

Sticking out like a sore thumb at the bar

If I bit the bullet, I'll take the shots

I moved to a new city in 2022 where my new neighbors didn’t know my new hair was new. They just knew me. For whatever reason, I wanted them to know more.

Everybody's gonna ask how much it cost

This summer, I hosted an old roommate in my new city while they got a new tattoo. They told me they liked my hair and I told them I liked their tattoo. We told each other that sometimes the changes we make to our bodies are less about enhancing what we look like than they are about allowing ourselves to look away.