Who actually cares about hair?

Well, I do.

A lot.

Mostly because 70% of it is from immense guilt and regret for how much I destroyed my hair during my college days.

Shall we go on an exploration of my hair journey?

June 6, 1994 – an idiot was born to the world with decent amount of hair. After watching “The Little Mermaid,” her dream was to have hair length reach her butt. She literally wrote that on her “dreams” poster in kindergarten.

However, every heroine has a villain. In this case, there are many. There’s the head lice that she got from some random girl who kept hugging her in day care, leading to an unfortunate boy cut. There’s the dad who insists long hair will kill her during the summer days and also maybe secretly wanted a son because they already prepared the name “Oliver” if there was a willy. Yeah okay, maybe there’s just those two.

Growing up, I’ve always had short hair and my dad was the one to cut it. On my 13th birthday, my mom’s friend graciously took me to “Great Cuts” where I got my first “real” hair cut. I got bangs for the first time and I started to grow out my hair. Until my dad wanted to practice his hairstyling abilities again and gave me a weird mullet. We don’t talk about middle school hair anymore.

I’ve deleted most pics of me from high school to college because I was a mess but I managed to recover some to share

For most of high school, I had a decently thick amount of hair. I never really styled because I didn’t know how and would just cut my hair whenever I went back to China for the summer. As you can see here, not only is it evident I am a product of the Florida sun, my hair looks healthy and pure. That’s because my wise momma said “NO DYEING YOUR HAIR UNTIL YOU’RE 18, APPRECIATE WHAT YOU ARE BORN WITH.”

And so I begged and begged and begged my mom to let me dye my hair (the concept of bleaching was non-existent to me at this point) and because I’m the most spoiled person in the world, my mom let me dye my hair red. But you can’t even see it unless I went out into the sun.

Bonus pic because you’ve stuck with me for so long:

Anyways. As soon as I got out of college, my mom took me to Shanghai and I, once again, begged her to please let me really dye my hair. And here is where my adventure begins!

I got to dye my hair a reddish brown that looked super light in the sun but very natural in person.

Right after Shanghai, I started my first year of college. By the time it was winter break, my roots were crazy long and my mom took me to my first big girl salon at Ulta to fix my hair. There, it started as a disaster as they dyed my hair extremely dark and I was so upset. The nice ladies there felt bad and helped me fix my hair for free and this is where I discovered every asian girl’s drug – bleaching.

NOT JUST A SMALL AMOUNT OF BLEACHING, I WENT BLONDE WITH PINK TIPS BLEACHING.

Pink eventually faded and everything was just dirty blonde. After another long semester, my roots grew once more and I was left with some weird ugly hair.

So I did the only reasonable thing a sane person would do to get rid of roots and dyed my entire head pink and it faded out before I even took enough pics (I was not big on pics at the time…) I only managed to recover a screenshot from my stream

Of course, roots grew out again and this time I decided for a total concept change so I went for purple. This is what most people from the olden days know me for but I didn’t really take many pics and deleted the rest so here’s a blurry candid.

To get to blonde, it took 3 bleaches. For purple, I needed to bleach 2x more including my roots. When it started to fade, the damage it left on my hair was super evident. But I didn’t care because ~*I was like a purple fairy and all cool and I stand out*~ aghaghahga stupid.

And if that wasn’t enough..

Don’t worry.. we’re only about half through college… Let’s see how the rest of it goes..

And that ends my crazy hair adventures.

The amount of hair loss, hair damage, scalp damage, and money that I went through was not enough to justify how cool it felt to go through different hair colors. Even now, my thin hair and sensitive scalp pays for it.

Earlier this year, I cut my hair in attempt to ‘restart,’ truly thinking that I had learned my lesson about bleaching.

I ended up bleaching one more time and lightening as well to get to the light brown color I had around August. It was then I knew that I needed to properly invest in hair care or I’d be bald by the age of 30.

My hair is in a really healthy state now despite all the abuse it went through, hope these tips will be able to help out those who went through similar hair experiences!

1. Try not to shampoo every day! If you must, just use conditioner.
2. Tsubaki’s Damage Care line made my hair less frizzy and super soft! There was an extreme difference after I started using it.
3. Olaplex #3 treatment also helps after you’ve bleached hair. Be warned that it is $28 for a bottle that’s rather small, but mine has lasted me for a decent amount of time. You use it after shampooing as a leave in treatment for about 5-10 minutes.
4. I bought Honeyce Moisture Hair Mask after it was recommended by a Korean beauty guru. I swear it has made a huuuge difference (I used to use it on its own, and now I do a combination of olaplex, conditioner, and this mask to seal it in.) One of the biggest things that the guru said that stood out to me was damaged hair tangles easily and after using the mask, rather than just a conditioner by itself, your hair really should be tangled free. Since my hair has gotten healthier, I no longer need to really brush to untangle any knots.
5. After towel drying my hair to the point where there’s no excess water dripping out, I apply the Mise en Scene serum and blow dry at least my bangs with a round brush.

This routine has left my hair looking really not damaged but my scalp is still not in the best condition. There’s sooo many products to research for scalp and hair health and it’s pretty overwhelming even for a routine fanatic like me. My biggest issues are scalp buildup from the dryness and make sure my hair is able to recover from the years of abuse I’ve instilled on it.

Once I find products that work for me, I’ll update with a complete hair routine and how I do my bangs!

For now, I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years with family, friends or food. Jae and I will be throwing a dinner party with our close friends so that should be the next update on this blog. 🙂

Stay safe and warm!