To Dye For

My biggest beauty disaster happened last year. I am 42 years old and blond, but I decided I was going to lowlight my hair — something really different. Well, my hairstylist decided she wanted to go a little dark, and when all was said and done, I looked like a purple oak tree during the fall foliage. Now every time I drive by a maple tree in autumn, I think of my hair.
Charlene Deroche
North Reading, Massachusetts

“Blonds have more fun,” they say. Well, not always. While in college, I went from brunette to blond overnight, thanks to a very bad hairdresser. To undo what she had done, I went to another hairdresser. The chemicals he used turned my blond to red. Yikes! Brunette, blone, then red, all in one weekend!
Roberta Lockwood
Columbia, Missouri

Weeks before I entered my freshman year of college, I decided that I needed to darken my hair. I used a black henna that had a peculiar reaction with my home-permed hair and turned it green. Not even a fresh grass green — it was as if my hair had grown a sheen of mold. Then I pulled a pen cap off with my teeth, chipping a perfect half-moon out of them and had to start college as the chip-toothed leprechaun.
Mychalene Giampaoli
Washington, D.C.

My biggest blunder comes down to a simple mathematical equation: Gorgeous platinum bottle-blond bob plus swimming in the pool all day equals the swamp creature.
Jessica Nabozny
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania

My sister was going to help me add blond highlights to my mousy brown hair. Thanks to a miscalculation on the timing of the bleach, I got brown roots with carrot-red ends. Suddenly mousy didn’t seem so bad.
Tina Oakland
Sherman Oaks, California

From A to Z

The entire decade between 1986 and 1996! It was the era of too-toos for me. Too-tall bangs, too-tight perms, too-heavy makeup. These days, since I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old, my only instruction to my hairdresser is “Don’t cut it too short for a ponytail.” My makeup most days consists of moisturizer and mascara.
Alisha Denton Loftin
Tulsa, Oklahoma

High school. Four years of bad hair, braces, huge weight fluctuations, and acne. I can say that I survived it, though not unscathed. There are decisions that haunt me to this day, like smiling in any pictures during the metal-mouth years, allowing my mother to give me a home perm, and wearing jeans rolled up tight at the ankles. Luckily, my teeth have straightened out, my hair is much more flattering, and I have a better sense of personal style. I seem to have learned from those early disasters. There is hope for me yet.
Erin Prais-Hintz
Plover, Wisconsin

As a tennis player in high school, I was always battling tan lines that cut my tan off at the ankles. I decided I wasn’t going to have shockingly white feet ruin my Spring Fling Dance. I bought a self-tanner and applied it to my feet, hoping to match the nice bronze of my legs. Impatient after the first application produced only a slight change, I slathered on a few more coats and hopped into bed. In the morning, I was horrified to see two neon orange feet peeking out from under the covers. To make matters worse, I hadn’t spread the tanner between my toes, so I had orange-and-white Creamsicle feet for a good two weeks. Needless to say, I never let a “tennis tan” bother me again.
Gena Chung
Columbia, Maryland

Mixed Signals

My worst beauty disaster was picking up the wrong spray can. Below my bathroom vanity is a cabinet that holds various aerosol cans to maintain the cleanliness of my bathroom. The assortment includes my hair spray and one can whose unpleasant-smelling contents repels insects. Can you guess which spray I used minutes before my date arrived? Hint: My dog had fleas — not me.
Dorie Niemann
Dubuque, Iowa