Cause and Effect Final

Bad Hair

            My hair is bad. Recently I have had to shave my long mane down to my skin, in a desperate act to save face. Before I clipped it, my hair hung past my shoulders like a limp unwound rope. The tresses were dry, torn, and, had an odd assortment of colors within the layers. And if you burnt a stand of my hair, it would melt like plastic, rather than sizzle, as it should. Now my hair has the ugly, mullet shape, typical of its newness. My bad hair is my own fault, though; having treated it cruelly, throughout the years. It is thanks to my own abuses of; bleaching, coloring, and unhealthy living habits, which made my hair, became a strange grass that I had to plow away.

            When I was young, I decided that I wanted to have hair in the rainbow colors of my favorite cartoon characters. But, since I have hair that is naturally only a step above black in color, I quickly learned that I would have to bleach my hair to a lighter shade, if I wanted any other color to be noticeable.  The process took usually around forty five minutes to complete, depending on how long my locks were at the time. Mixing a creamy, hydrogen peroxide developer, used to open the hair follicles, so that the color can be pulled out from within the hair shaft; with a powdered potassium persulfate lightener, which did the actual pulling out of the color. The concoction had to cover every stand of hair, and stay for a half an hour; all the while, I waited in a well ventilated space to prevent suffocation. The scalp would tingle and burn, leaving me later with a numb feeling and a headache. Then, as I washed off the chemicals, small clumps of my hair would fall out, sacrificed for the cause. In the end, I would be left with a head of blond that still darker in some places, and white in others, depending on how many times previously it had been tampered with.

             As if the bleaching process wasn’t bad enough, I would right away go on to put in a new color. In the past, I have been every color of the rainbow for some amount of time; reds, blondes, greens, blues, purples, pinks, and even lighter brunets. Again I would mix the hydrogen peroxide, to again open the hair follicle; with a new chemical color, to put into the hair shaft. And again, the concoction would stay in my hair for a half an hour, as I would sit in a ventilated space to avoid the toxins. The only reprieve was that no more hair would fall away as I washed out the chemicals. All of the work leaving me with brightly colored, but at the same time, lifeless hair.

            Lastly, smoking, my unhealthy diet, and sleeping habits are not helping to improve my hair either. To grow speedily and strong, hair needs beta carotene, and other such vitamins. The body also needs energy charged by sleep, so that it can convert the proteins into hair. However, fighting against the body’s natural functions is the poisons from cigarettes. The smoke stunts the progression of hair growth, making the new hair as limp and lifeless as the hair that has been damaged by the bleaching and coloring chemicals.

            So, learn from my past. Be kind to your hair, and don’t abuse it with chemicals both inside and out. Hopefully, I will have learned my lesson, though I can’t positively say that I will. Because despite how bleach, color, and other habits make one’s hair into straw, they are all very addictive habits. So I guess that I will have bad hair.