[Amaranth]

Okay, no one ever thinks of this, so I'm going to throw this out there.

When I was 17 I began bleaching my hair, using professional products (Matrix) and going to a salon. My hair was shoulder-length, and I didn't do it ALL platinum, I had blonde with platinum streaks. Now, I'm Russian so I've genetically inherited very tough hair...it's extremely thick and fairly coarse. My hair never showed any signs of damage AT ALL...until I went away to University. So I was 20 at this point, having had my hair bleached for the past three years. Plus, I use a flat iron every single day, so you'd think that if my hair was naturally prone to damage it would have shown by now, correct? Well after about one month of living in residence, my hair broke off until it was approximately one inch long, even shorter in some areas. Not all over, but mainly in the front, where it had been platinum, and wherever I had platinum streaks. I almost died. They broke off a little more day by day until I had pretty much no hair left where they had been dyed platinum. They didn't look like bald patches, they just stuck out directly from my head in little tufts unless I hardcore gel-ed them down. That was over a year ago, and I have since dyed my hair back to natural colour and then gave up on dying completely. For a few reasons: one, to keep from damaging it further, and also because once the hair is stripped, it cannot hold any pigment. So about three days after getting my hair dyed back to normal, the dye completely washed out of the damaged tufts of hair, so I just had these blonde tuft thingies all over the place. My hair is still not back to normal, though I may be able to get the last of the damage out with my next haircut.

Now, please don't think I'm telling you this just to freak you out and talk you out of getting blonde hair. I LOVED being blonde. BUT my point here, is that no matter how tough you may think your hair is (I mean...I'm pretty much genetically predispositioned to have tough hair meant to keep my head warm), it can come down to some other factor you may not have thought of. And I have to admit I had never thought that after three years of being blonde, water quality would be what ruined my hair for a very long time. When we tested the water, we found that it was very high in iron, and it was also very hard. It never dawned on me to check it before washing my hair with it, I had assumed it would be fine.

So basically the moral of this novel I just wrote you is the following: if you are serious about becoming blonde, please be very careful in taking all factors into account, including water quality, how much time you spend in the sun, the food you eat, etc. Maintaining healthy blonde hair takes a lot more than simply using good shampoo and having naturally tough hair (though that definitely helps).

Good luck with the hair, and PLEASE test your water!! I felt so ugly for a very long time, and I really, REALLY don't want this to happen to someone else if it doesn't have to.