Most everyone thinks that people who go into an acting career must be a blank slate. No tattoos, no piercings (except maybe the ears...and nothing extreme), no unnatural hair colours, etc. Especially if you are female, you are meant to subscribe to this kind of blank slateness…to the point where some women won’t even cut their hair short.

I am an acting major. This is what I want to do with my life. But when I got to my orientation, most students assumed I was an illustration major. I showed up to orientation with bright short pink hair, expressing my desire to get more piercings and get some tattoos. Most people, upon hearing I was actually an acting major, were confused but didn’t voice their concerns. However, one girl, a fellow acting major actually, did ask. “How are you going to be an acting major with pink hair?” She was honestly curious, so I answered “I’ll make it work.” To which she replied, after a small pause, “I respect that.”

I’ve been dyeing my hair since I was in the 10th grade. My first dye job experience was in a hotel room in London, with a friend of mine. We were on a school trip, which my parents happened to be supervising. I did it without my parents' knowing, the bleaching and putting purple dye in, though it was only my bangs. The dye was from the pound store (British equivalent to the dollar store) so it didn’t show up super well, but it was noticeable. I was nervous about showing my parents, but they were fine with it.

Since then, it’s been a dyeing adventure. At first it was just purple or magenta and only in my bangs. After that I went through a period of time where my hair was incredibly short and had no colour in it, but I picked up with dye again the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. I bleached sections of my hair, and then dyed it a dark blue. Then I moved on to red for senior year.

The summer before going to college, I bleached my hair completely and first had orange dye (the dye was called ‘blood orange’ but it was more orange than red), then I bleached it out and dyed it a bright blue, and then, the night before I moved into the dorms, I wanted to dye my hair red. But the dye I got…well, let’s just say it wasn’t red. I went to move into my dorm the next day with bright pink hair.

Later my first year, I got a nose ring and some more piercings on my ears and then second semester I shaved all my hair off. I’m now thinking about getting tattoos.

I know that there is definitely something to be said about being a blank slate, especially if you are in such a competitive career such as acting. This is why I haven’t gotten too many extreme body modifications or anything. But my hair is different. My hair is the way I express myself. I never wanted to be part of a match set. I didn’t want to go to a school that had cookie cutter actors.

I’m not being an anxious teenager when I say I feel ‘different’ inside. Everyone is different from everyone else, that’s true. We are all unique individuals, each with their own form of expression. Mine happens to come out in my hair as well as other things. I use the colour of my hair to express myself. For so long I felt like I faded into the background, no one really noticing that I was there. Whether or not this was true is besides the point. Dying my hair enabled me to feel like I was finally being seen.

Once I started dyeing my hair, it felt similar to when I cut my hair short for the first time. I felt like because it was such a drastic change, people finally saw me. I naturally have very dark hair, so to have a bright colour made me feel like people finally noticed my presence. And for me, that meant the world.

I was seen, and I felt like I actually had a place in the world. Which is what everyone wants, isn’t it?