I don’t watch New Girl with Zoey Deschanel, but well, we can’t talk about the glasses trend with out seeing her adorkable ways!
When I worked at this designer/hipster store in Toronto a few years ago, I really saw the trend for wearing glasses go up. It was a way to look cool, smart and cute, and it completed a fashion look. Girls were all wearing big glasses with dark rims to look cute in an fringe way, but I was always left out of this trend since I have perfect vision. Yes, by default, I never had glasses growing up or anytime because I didn’t need them. I was not achieving my lack of eye apparel look by wearing contacts either as some people assumed. The truth was the only glasses I could ever wear were non-prescription “fake” ones that didn’t come out until recent years.
Rewind even further back in time to my art college years, when I was quite shy and not very confident. I worried sometimes about how I would be perceived by classmates. I even contemplated then, before glasses were in, to wear fake glasses to help me to look “smarter” among my peers. So now that the fashion trends have given their permission to wear fake glasses, I have recently bought a pair of optical quality non-prescription glasses, they are scratch resistant and uv protecting. And well, I kinda like them. I really have to get used to wearing them though. I have been naked faced all of my years!
So, these are not really the black rimmed glasses I saw everyone wearing a while back, but I kinda like their boldness and colour. (:
I read somewhere that eyeglass wearers always get protection from glare and uv because they wear their prescription everyday for vision. Us visually perfect people never get that kind of protection on an ongoing basis. We get all the rain, wind, snow and sun in our eyes, and the full glare of our computer screens. So o ther than glasses giving a fashion boost and vision correction, might they also give a health advantage too? That’s not fair to those of us that face the harsh world with an unprotected naked eye day in and day out!
Glasses are seen as cool, but on the other hand, I also think back about how that is not always the case. Most gorgeous gals in mainstream movies/music today and in the past don’t wear vision corrective apparatuses. I think technically, not wearing glasses is still seen as the norm when describing a good looking person. But still, it is nice for me to see the success of hip and happening fashionistas that are just cool enough to pull off the glasses look and propel a trend that has fringe beauty appeal. And with fashion’s green light, I can now participate too with my fake eye glasses on days that I feel like it!
What do you think? Do you like the look of glasses? Are they fashionable? Or would you rock no glasses/contacts any day?
On the left are products loaded with silicones…hey, they give the results, but are they evil? On the right, silicone free products from Tresemme.
As you all know I craft handmade cosmetics on a regular basis to give my face and hair a rest from the chemical stuff that is out there at pharmacies today: hair spray, lotions, shampoo, conditioner–they all have preservatives, cheap synthetic additives and little to no healthful ingredients. At home, I stock up on things like organic natural coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter and use it in all kinds of handmade natural products. But as much as I believe in the benefits of natural stuff, I know the limitations, cosmetically, of what natural products can do. I also know that some synthetic ingredients such as silicons are often over vilified based on the fact that they are not naturally derived.
Silicones, the good news and the bad news…
The most common forms of silicone are dimethicone and cyclomethicone. The actual ingredient name may vary from product to product, but you will see some form of “icone” at the end of the ingredient name if it is a silicone. The higher it is on the list of ingredients, the more there is in the product. Now to explain why it has a bad rep: It is a synthetic product that is derived from sand by chemical means and is very processed; its manufacturing and the washing of it into drains is bad for the environment. When silicons are used in hair, it fills porous areas, giving only the “appearance” of healthier stronger, more hydrated hair. But the actual effect is cosmetic. Your hair is not really stronger, healthier or more hydrated. It is shinier, and thicker because silicons coats each strand with a seal that is water resistant, oil resistant…and makes hair unable to breathe because of that seal. This is the good news: Hair is not alive, it doesn’t need to breathe. Hair is made up of an organic protein called keratin. A coating of silicone on the hair is not suffocating the hair, like I hear so many say, but it actually tames it and makes it shine like diamonds! It becomes unhealthy when it builds up, and prevents natural oils from penetrating the inner hair shaft, making it dry and brittle. Over use can turn a little beauty trick for softness and shine into a dependency for function.
Going au naturale…
I often hydrate my hair with coconut oil in salve form on dry hair and also as an additive in my conditioner to give it more conditioning power. Coconut oil has been known to be able to penetrate into the hair shaft and really strengthen hair, not on just a cosmetic level. But coconut oil also makes my hair limp, greasy, dragged down, and if it builds up, it takes away shine, actually. But my hair is actually healthy, and hydrated, even if it looks dirty and unstyled. I have been able to grow my hair longer these years by using coconut oil and just shampooing and heat styling less. But boy did my hair love, love, love soaking up all the silicons in this hair conditioner I tried after coloring my hair the other week. My hair was thicker, bouncier, fluffier, shinnier, and just more smooth feeling after using the silicone heavy conditioner included in the color kit. I saw first hand how silicones are more powerful at giving an appearance of health than using natural products, even if it is a “fake” look of health, and I couldn’t believe how soft my hair was after using the silicon loaded conditioner.
This was the ingredient list for the conditioner in the box kit. Wow… amodimethicone is the second ingredient. Amodimethicone is a heavy silicone, and is hard to wash off…No wonder my hair shone like the sea after this…
So should we avoid or embrace silicones in hair products?
Silicones are not inherently bad, but if over used, they can cause your hair to form a dependency that is bad. Also, their use and manufacturing causes damage to the environment, lakes and wildlife. So perhaps the solution is to cut back and rely less on silicons to have healthy hair. Get healthy hair it the hard and true way by not over heat styling or over chemically processing. Condition hair with nutritious oils. Also, avoid shampoos with silicones! Removing build up is key to hair health, so it baffles me why so many shampoos have silicones in them?! It is like peeing in the tub, you’ll never get clean. Use hair conditioners with less amounts of silicone (lower on the ingredient listing) and/or only use silicones in finishing products as a means to cosmetically boost shine and maintain a style, as a last touch to give your hair the fake confidence it does need!
Shampoo is supposed to clean build up, right? On my fave shampoo I found two silicone ingredients! Not in my shampoo too! I say, try to cut back.
I like doing things myself, and for the longest time, I used to go to hair dressers to do my haircuts, my colouring…etc. But for the last couple of years I have been doing everything myself. And I’ve learned so much from this. It wasn’t easy. Doing your own hair means making a few mistakes here and there, and taking time to correct it. But don’t fret. Doing your hair yourself also means you get what you want, and you don’t have to pay hefty fees to stylist that sometimes make mistakes too! They are professionals, but they are not flawless.
Back to Brown
I recently decided I wanted to go lighter than my natural black again. I used to rock a dark blonde way back when, but this time around, I decided I wanted to do an ashy light brown instead because it is healthier since it is less levels of lightening. My hair had grown out at the roots and was virgin black hair to my ears, and below was pre-lightened brownish hair stained with a tinge of purple from when I rocked purple hair. So here begins my misadventures. I want to tell you right off the bat that if you have hair that is not uniform in chemical treatments, this is where colouring gets tricky. I mean really tricky. But still, I am not bowing down to the professionals yet.
So I grab the light ash blond colorant I always use when I used to do a dark blonde. It has a base of dark blue toner, to combat any orange colours in hair that arrive when trying to lighten hair. I know this time I was aiming for brown, but I still wanted the toning effect to get rid of excess brassiness, so I thought the same colorant can be used, but to get brown, I would just use weaker volume peroxide for less lift. Okay…so guess what? I was right about using a weaker peroxide, but wrong about the blonde ash toner in my colorant! It saturated the middle shafts of my hair–the parts of the shaft that were the most porous, and when I washed out the colorant, I had stained the mid sections an ashy green! I also still had some purple tint on the very ends, and my roots were a warm brown colour, because it was healthy virgin hair that resisted the stain of the ash green. I basically had 3 colours in my hair! Not what I wanted at all.
I don’t know if you can see it. Photos are deceiving. But my midshaft was green, my ends were ashy, and my roots/top was a warm brown!
Trying to fix Tri Coloured Hair!
So not happy, I start researching how to get rid of the greenish part in my hair. I figured that I could live with a bit of uneven hair colour tones, but just not ashy green. I heard remedies from bleaching again, to ketchup, to salt! I decided on using a lemon juice soak to get it out. After an hour of soaking the bottom half of my hair in a mixture of lemon juice and conditioner, I washed it out to find little to no change.The ash colours were still there. And I was still unevenly coloured.
After the lemon juice: I still had a lot of ash to my mid section, and if anything, the lemon juice just lighted everywhere. Still tri-coloured! Yikes.
Emergency Box Colouring:
I don’t usually use box colour kits from the pharmacy, but waking up to tri-coloured hair was bothering me a lot. Warm roots, grey/green mid-shaft, and greyish purple tips was driving me mad. I walked to my corner pharmacy to fix this once and for all! Two boxes of colour kits since my hair is long. I figured where I had gone wrong was in using a colourant with a ton of toner in it to begin with. The ash blond colourant was made for people who were aiming for blonde, not brown, so there was no darker colour but bluish toner to fill in areas that I had pre-lightened before, therefore staining it green. The science of hair colour finally hitting me in my face. Every hair color has a tint of either red/gold/green. But there is also a base colour of different concentration depending on how dark you wanted to go. Ash blond does not have any base colour. Where as if I wanted brown, I would have to use a brown base especially where I had pre lightened before! Too complicated for words. After the redo in a light golden brown colour from the store, the green was finally covered. But then a new problem presented itself. Dull brown hair!
I got rid of the greeny part in the middle, but now the ends were stained darker than the top, making the colour flat. My roots/top was also still warmer than the bottom!
Clarifying to remove the over dye:
I put lemons into my hair again to remove the over-dye. When hair has over dye in it, the strands are too saturated, they can’t shine because of it and are weighed down. This is when one can use different remedies and products to remove some of the dye. I used lemons, because I had some, but I think clarifying shampoo works too. After this I shampooed twice. The result the next day was this:
My ends are still darker, but at least it doesn’t look like a different colour in the middle. With more shampooings, I think the colour will lift a bit more to be more even.
So at the moment I am rocking a slight reverse ombre, which is lighter at the crown, and gradually darker in the ends, which is not the worst thing. If it really bothers me, in a few weeks, after my hair has rested from all the peroxide, I can always lighten the ends and recolour. But my main point is still true. DIY hair colour may require tweaks done over the course of several weeks to give your hair a rest. So no, the professional stylists have not won, but I know now to have a bit more respect for how hard hair colour chemistry can be.
