Everyone is born with specific features determined by their genetic makeup. The color of your eyes, hair, skin, and other traits are determined by the recessive and dominant genes your parents carry. Some of these traits can be changed permanently or momentarily and some can’t. The color of your eyes can't be changed, but colorful contacts can be worn to give the appearance that your eyes are a different color. Tanning in the summer, or artificially tanning, can make your skin a different shade, but unless you permanently damage your skin or tattoo it, your skin won't change colors forever. Your hair is something that can be changed permanently or momentarily.
Dyeing your hair is one of the things that you have always wanted to do as a kid. To have a different fun and unique color of hair was always a want of mine and with bleach and hair dye, I achieved the dream of looking like Nymphadora from Harry Potter. The dye that I used was semi-permanent which meant that it lasted about a month before washing out of my hair. Later I used a permanent dye which stayed in until I cut my hair. The reason for the cut was because of the damage it did to my hair. The three inches at the bottom were dry and frizzy and felt horrible to the touch. I had fried my hair. Why didn't the semi-permanent one fry my hair? I used bleach the second time and just used hair dye the first.
Bleach is very commonly used when people dye their hair. On most people's hair, the colors wouldn't look as radiant or really show up at all. If you have black hair and you try dying it pink without bleach you will barely notice the color at all. Bleach strips the pigment (melanin) from your hair shaft with a process called oxidation. The two main chemicals used, hydrogen peroxide and ammonia, work together to very slowly take the color off hair.
Obviously, this does some damage. The bleach leaves your hair without color but in the process makes your hair pretty unhealthy.
(picture c) The bleach lifts the hair cuticles and makes your hair more porous, which means that it is more susceptible to damage with heat or color. It also means that color is more easily added to the hair and will probably stay longer.
Striping that melanin from the hair means it is wayyyyy less healthy and more prone to breakage. Bleaching your hair can leave it fried, broken, yellow, frizzy, and so many other bad adjectives. This doesn't mean that you can’t do it, but it means that if you do, you have to be prepared with the correct products and steps to help heal your hair.
A bond-repairing treatment helps make the hair stronger. Hair is made up of hydrogen, disulfide, and salt bonds. When hair is bleached these bonds become weaker and can break. (picture d) When this happens the hair's integrity is compromised and your hair can just snap.
Bleaching your hair is fun and we all wish that we had Nymphadora's hair so we could change hair colors without the damage, but a bond repairing treatment is the next best thing.
Work Cited
“Bleaching Hair: How it Works & Preventing Damage.” Philip Kingsley, 11 April 2022, https://www.philipkingsley.com/hair-guide/hair-care-and-styling/heat-colour-processing/bleaching-your-hair.html. Accessed 27 August 2024.
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