How Becoming a Redhead Helped Me Find My Personal Power

I have a not-so-secret secret. My most distinctive physical feature -- my bright red hair -- also just so happens to be my least authentic. However, that's exactly why it's the feature I like the most -- because it was something I chose for myself at a time in my life that came without many choices to consider in the first place. I chose it because it was loud and colorful in the same way I strongly suspected I might be loud and colorful.

I've kept it over the years because it showed me how right I was in ways I never would have expected from something as simple as a little box of drugstore hair color. However, that's often the way life works. The decisions that seem the smallest and least significant at the time sometimes turn out to be the most important, especially in retrospect.

I remembered how to be curious.

I was never the type of little girl that charmed the pants off of strangers. I wasn't extroverted, or beautiful, or outgoing. I had a busy mind filled with questions and ideas, but my parents weren't the type of people that liked being peppered by "why"s and "how come"s, so I learned to keep mine locked up inside my head. I also learned to be shy, to keep quiet, to sit still, and not to bother anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. I inevitably grew into a silent young woman who did the same because she didn't know any other way to be.

But there was always a version of me in there somewhere that knew better. That dormant, unborn version of me watched cartoons through my eyes when I was a child and chose Jessica Rabbit and Ariel the little mermaid as role models. She would fall in love with the music of Tori Amos as a teenager, because Tori's songs had a way of explaining life in a language that made stainless, perfect sense at the time. She'd read about Queen Elizabeth I and quietly admire the fact that a mere woman had gained such power and respect so many years ago when such things were unheard of.

These icons were everything I wasn't at the time - confident, brave, and gracefully defiant - and I was convinced it was because they had hair that seemed to exist on some other frequency as compared to brown, or black, or blonde. When I decided to dye at 22, I thought I chose red simply because it was pretty and might be a fun change of pace, but I know better now. I chose it because I was ready to join that precious, secret club full of redheaded women that I kept locked up in the place where the questions used to be. And it worked. Suddenly, I wasn't afraid to ask why anymore, nor was I afraid to look for the answers on my own.

I learned how to say"no".

When I was a little girl, I used to read stories about fairies that stole human babies and left strange changeling children in their places. The parents of the stolen babies would, of course, be duped into raising the changelings as their own, always wondering why those odd children were as they were. I used to wonder if that's why I wasn't more like my parents - because I didn't actually belong to them or with them. They wanted things of me I wasn't able to give, and they insisted that I be things I simply wasn't. And I had no idea that saying "no", or "I won't", or "I refuse" was an option, even once I grew up.

I wasn't alone the day I bought the dye. I was shopping for everyday essentials with the abusive man I lived with at the time - my first adult relationship - and I decided to cruise down the hair color aisle on a whim that blew in from nowhere like a strange, desert wind.

"You know… I think I want to dye my hair," I said as casually as if I were talking about serving lasagna for dinner instead of spaghetti.

Mr. Abusive lit right up like a Christmas tree, because he thought I must have finally recognized all his backhanded comments about preferring blondes to brunettes for the pointed hints that they were. He then made an eager beeline to the blonde section, grabbed a box of Jane Mansfield platinum, and said, "I like this one. Do this one."

"No," I said in a voice that didn't sound at all like my own before planting my feet in front of the red section and grabbing the brightest, jewel-like shade of Rita Hayworth red I could find. "I like this one."

That was the first clear, concise, undiluted "no" I ever spoke out loud to any of the many bullies that populated my life at the time, but it wouldn't be the last. I said it when Mr. Abusive insisted I take on more hours so I could fund his drinking and drug habit for him. I'd say it again when he tried to convince me to run away with him and get married, and again when he tried to talk me into getting pregnant with a hypothetical baby I absolutely did not want, and one last time on my way out the door when he ordered me not to leave him after smacking me across the face so hard I saw stars.

I've been saying it as needed ever since, because that's what Rita Hayworth power redheads say when they don't want to do things. Not "maybe", or "we'll see", and certainly not "yes, sorry, I don't know what I was thinking", but "no". Defiantly, loudly, and always clear as a bell.

I learned to like being visible.

Mr. Abusive may have been my first adult relationship, but he wouldn't be my last. After leaving him, taking a new job, and allowing my newfound confidence to grow some roots, I realized that new people processed me differently now that my hair was red instead of the dark brown it had always been before. Prior to that, I'd always thought of the notion of "blondes having more fun" or "brunettes being taken more seriously" as complete nonsense. A color is just a color, right? Surely people knew that.

Well, logically maybe they did, but that doesn't stop a crimson head from standing out in a sea of browns, and honeys, and tawnys. Prior to this part of my life, I was used to only being noticed if I'd just done something weird or asked for attention from someone who genuinely didn't want to give it to me. Now people seemed to notice me simply because I was there. They wore different faces when they addressed me and spoke a language I was unfamiliar with. "You're so weird" started sounding a lot like "you're so interesting". "Excuse me, you're in my way," became "excuse me, but you look lovely today". "I can do better than you" was replaced with "please love me".

That hair color was like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak on Opposite Day. People stopped trying to walk straight through me like I was a ghost. They'd move aside as if I were a person who had every right to be wherever I was, and occasionally they'd stop to see what I was all about. Of course, introverted as I am, I wasn't always in the mood to be talked to or approached, but the choice was actually mine to make now, and choice is everything.

I learned that life is an adventure (if you allow it to be).

Of course, the hair color wasn't truly the reason people paid more attention to me and treated me with more respect. It was simply an external catalyst for deeper, infinitely more important internal changes that I sorely needed to make. My red hair made it easier to see myself as someone who deserves to be part of things, to have opinions, and to call her own shots in life. It also gave me a stronger sense of pride in my appearance, so I took better care of myself and walked tall everywhere I went instead of trying to take up as little space as possible. People could sense that I saw myself as someone worth knowing, so they simply took my word for it and began to see me that way too.

Having red hair - like Ariel, like Tori, like Queen Elizabeth - was like getting to dress up as something I really wanted to be for Halloween as a kid, especially at first. I was me, but not me all at once. I believed that having red hair made people sexier, more confident, more resourceful, and more confident, so I took it for granted that changing my hair made me those things as well. Now I realize that what it really did was help me get back in touch with the person I always was. The little girl that asked "why" and "how come" was now a woman with what felt like a magical, bottomless bag full of answers.

Once you make that transition, there's nothing left to stop you from doing whatever you want in life, and I became fearless in my determination to do exactly that. I became someone who was an expert at setting and enforcing boundaries, not to mention speaking my mind. I became the type of person who moves 3,000 miles away from home on a whim for love. I became someone who runs her own business and earns a full-time living speaking up, sharing ideas, and helping others do the same. I grew into myself in a way I never thought I would or could, and it started the way such transformations often do - with a small, superficial decision made on a whim in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.