Skeptickle

I swear I’ve been wanting to do something crazy to my hair ever since high school. Crazy specifically in the form of crazy unnatural colors. I was always jealous of the girls who got away with or got permission from their parents to dye their hair all sorts of colors from the rainbow because my mom would’ve disowned me if I had. And boy do I love rainbows! Then after high school I was dating someone who was really conservative in regards to appearance and discouraged me from doing anything drastic to mine. Then I was working in a workplace that prohibited anything “unprofessional-looking”. Then I was totally into school and didn’t have the time to eat, let alone keep up a high maintenance hair schedule. Then there was the wedding….and on and on! So now that I don’t have all those constraints, I told myself that I gotta do it before I’m so old that it won’t look appropriate anymore. Just do it! Actually, I personally think it looks cool at any age and you better know that I’ll be doing this when I’m in my 70s. My grandkids will call me the cool/crazy grandma. Take that all other grandmas!

Okay enough of my spiel. It was surprisingly difficult to find pictures of Asian ladies with purple/pink-colored hair. I guess we all had pretty much the same type of parents. Here are the inspiration photos I managed to dig up to show the hairstylist:

I basically wanted a panel in the back to be blue/purple and a large streak in the front on the side in pink/purple. Here’s how it turned out:

Sorry for the blurry last pic. It’s the only one that illustrates the dark purple peaking through in the back the best. So yeah, I was happy overall with the results but the pink was a little too “pink” for my taste.  I wanted it more of a raspberry color, so I’m fixing it myself with some Manic Panic. What do y’all think? Btw, Rob loves it and was totally encouraging the whole time. I knew I married the right man!

Image borrowed from Brian Scott Berkovitz Photography via Flickr.

Love this quote, via Wide Open Spaces:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and that as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.  I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.  Life is no “brief candle” to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” 

-George Bernard Shaw

The late Dr. King has always been one of my heroes and a strong inspiration in the colored community. I couldn’t pick a favorite MLK quote so I’m posting all the ones that have the most meaning to me:

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

-Above quotes are from Strength to Love, 1963

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“[I]t is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain.”

-Above quotes are from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

I’ve used the following from time to time to remind myself:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”