I’ve been looking at the book “Color Me Beautiful” by Carole Jackson on Amazon, “looking inside” it as much as I can, online that is. I don’t own the book, never have. I’m familiar with the concepts since the early 80′s through many sources at the time.
Anyhow, I reached my “limit” in how many pages I could “look at” in the ‘surprise me’ mode, but can still “search” in the book and I did find this reference, but can’t see the whole page about it, and wanted to comment on it here.
Summers most often feel drab and want to enliven their looks by doing something to their hair. Often they were blonde as children, and their hair turned mousy as they entered early adulthood
Bingo, that was my experience. But …
I experimented with hair coloring and at one point tried to “go back to being blonde” and got a horrid orange yellow instead of the supposed “what should happen” color. I had the help of a thank-goodness-she-s-visiting-right-now sister and dyed it a light ash brown and that made it look better. My hair then, over the space of time, turned a light blonde, so very nice it was, but then … it grew back in darker, and with red in it, but not “red hair” but with sort of metallic red strands here and there, and some hairs were auburn/brown and the rest just some sort of whatever color it is to hold it all together into a strange looking mix, that is thankfully also curly since my early teens and discovering the wonders of hair gel and humectant conditioners. My timings of what I’ve done in my teens may be mixed up, the point being it did get funny colored when I tried to go blonde, and it was fixed with an ash brown dye. I am thinking now that my hair did grow back in darker and with the red stuff in it, and I used light ash brown dye a few years later to cover any brassyness that I’d attained from the South FL sun, and when I went to CA to visit with another sister for a few weeks it’s THAT rendition of hair that turned a lovely highlightless light blonde, that really did suit me then, I thought. I’ve been looking for a photo snapshot from that time, and I can’t find it, but I can see it in my mind. I know exactly what it looks like, but it’s lost in the mass of unorganized pre-my-own-camera photos in a photo “shoebox” or elsewhere, in fact, perhaps.
Since all that I’d embraced my darker look, and THAT went on to always confuse those who wished to place me in a “color season” saying with green eyes and “red” hair I had to be autumn, though I disagreed with them highly because of how sick the colors made me feel to wear, though admitting that they DID make my hair look good, to some extent, but then I was only hair and a clothing color and the “me” was invisible and gastly feeling interiorly.
All along I’d felt my hair was actually darker than I truly now think it really has always been. I have to admit that the red is there, surely it is, but before I was 13 it wasn’t there. I was blonde as a child, with a bit of body or slight wave to my hair. The blonde darkened through my childhood until in my puberty year it was mousy dark blonde/lt. brown. I suppose I have to go with saying it was really what is considered dark blonde. It’s at that point that the “curl” came in as well, but I didn’t work with it, I worked against it, blow drying it to death usually, hair spraying it further to death, and doing a worse thing twice, chemically straightened it at home in my bathroom –ugh — it never made my hair straight, that’s for certain, and I’m foturnate I didn’t lose my hair — I still remember how it stretched as I combed the goo through it as directed in the instructions. I could nearly faint remembering it.
So it was from all that which somehow my hair got red in it, or it naturally would have happened anyhow, whatever. I have a sister with very red hair, deep auburn red. She’s an Autumn, or “should” be though I can’t confirm it since she doesn’t live around me but she seems to be one, but I don’t know if her eye pattern is the “autumn” one that I speak of in the next paragraph. I have another sister that wasn’t red to start out with, but turned from blonde to what I would call “chestnut” quite early, from how I remember it being told. I don’t know what her color season is. I was blonde into my tweens (which is not what we called it then) and my hair to darken to that mousy brownish color at 13 to 14 years of age. My other two siblings, both I bet are Winters, dark hair and light skin, cool toned, distinctive. Maybe all of us are “blends” –which I am probably, but based on how I put it, being a Summer/Autumn blend isn’t really understandable from my perspective, as all that “autumn” stuff is wacky looking on me.
So anyhow, my skin tone is blue undertoned. I love silver, muted silver (banged up stuff), platinum, sapphires, etc. I used to live in denim –my “favorite” color to wear, especially the well worn look, faded washed denim. I love the idea of the seaside colors, to wear, to look like that. Just my hair is weird. Also then my eyes have the supposed “autumn” pattern in them, but I see a “cracked glass” sort of ring around my pupil, and I haven’t gone deeply into “eye pattern” info enough to understand that yet, and blended patterns … but I have my husband, a Summer, to look at, he has classic Summer eyes with the cracked glass look, and the blue outside with the changeable inside color sort of yellow. And my eldest child, boy – 11 yrs. old, has the classic cracked glass iris too, except his coloring is blue over all with a teeny weeny hint of yellow-ish around his pupil, one eye more than the other, but barely noticeable unless you look decidely, deeply, hunting, and a light blond (hair). My two middle children, girl almost 9, boy 7, have Spring eyes and coloring. They have similar eyes to each other, both golden and green and brown in such a different way than mine or the other two I’ve mentioned above, both are blonde/blond but a darker blonde/blond than their older brother, and the girl has a goldener color that is turning redder by the year for the past few years definitely. Then there is the newborn — he has lovely dark blue eyes, with the same design as me … a flower like pattern, but inside that, by the pupil is a “cracked glass” sort of ring. He appears, thus far, to be very fair and blue undertoned. His hair is looking to be fair, light blond, though he’s only 4 1/2 months old right now. It’s different hair from his newborn hair though. He looks awesome in blue, like his eldest brother did and does. Like I feel like I do, and like I feel my husband does. Blue –the color for each of us, over all others. The two middle children, they aren’t primarily blue oriented, nope, they are a spring palette sort, and look good in lots of other things. I know my boy that’s 7 looks good in orange, but it’s not an “autumn only” sort of orange (I’m not entirely certain he’s a full Spring either) it’s bright and that makes it more akin to Spring as it seems to be right now.
The “autumn” pattern is called “aztec sun” in some places, and I’ve always called what I have a “flower” –like I and my baby have, but the photos I’ve seen online don’t look like my and his eyes. Mine are green with gold sort of colored “pattern” and his are blue with “white” colored pattern and we have that area around the pupil that is just the same, pattern-wise, but his eyes are blue and mine are green. Both darker than lighter, but not super dark.
So then, over the years I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of lightening my hair some, but never so much as since I’ve been thinking of color seasons for the past couple of weeks. I know that in the past I’ve really liked my hair more when I “ash”-ed the red out of it, even though I sometimes “like” the red in it, but I really feel more “me” without it, even though it’s “naturally” there. I have some white hairs showing up the past year or so too, not much, but enough to know I will have to do something about it, and going lighter may just be the thing. Dark ash blonde, if I can manage to get it that way without a huge hassle/ton of money. I will attempt this myself, and only go to a salon if it is too much for me, if I can afford it. Otherwise, it’ll have to be a deal where I use a light or medium ash brown to cover up horrid mistakes. I know that I abhor the idea of getting it done at home and looking great, and then having to deal with lightening roots appropriately when they come in, and get it to match. THAT is where I feel not quite up to the challenge.
I’m not doing this in a vain way. I want to look right for who I am as I get older, not brassy, and I do not want to be dying my hair red or auburn when I do feel so much more my introverted Summer self with lighter (than I have now) ash non-highlighted hair, which was one of my childhood editions, since I went from lighter to darker in stages as I grew up. All in all, just my hair as it is ash-ed to mask the red would be a welcomed change (and cover the white/grey that comes in.)
