Beauty propaganda

Ok, so I'm dying my hair, and after a long hiatus from conventional, drug store dye (meaning natural colors that are trying NOT to fry your hair) I was totally amused at Natural Instincts' new product copy.

The first step of hair dying is mixing the pigment with the activator. In this case, however, the activator is labeled "gentle activating creme." That makes pretty decent sense. It is, in fact, activating, although the non-Anglo-Saxon spelling of "creme" is a bit silly. On the other hand, I am very enthusiastic about it's purported "gentleness" which is totally why I bought Herbal Essences in the first place. Because if you can't trust a brand that asserts it's wholesomeness while not actually being organic, well, who can you trust? For serious.

So I can see what the somewhat superfluous words gentle and creme are trying to get me to think: that this slimy, strong-smelling concoction is actually going to be good for my hair. Punk rock. Actually, wait. Scratch that. Punk rock would be that time I slathered my hair in magenta Special Effects, wrapped my head in a dry cleaning bag, and slept on it.

The pigment ingredient, on the other hand, is definitely pushing the boundaries of redundancy with the extraneous wordage. It is renamed "color-enhancing colorant." Now, correct me if I am wrong, but the colorant IS supposed to be COLORING my hair, right? Am I really supposed to be impressed that the colorant is doing some coloring? And what is this "enhancing" business about? I don't want my hair enhanced, I want its genetically-determined color to be permanently burned away by nature's finest chemicals as if I am some all-powerful hair color goddess exacting my sweet revenge on melanin. Or at least like the chicks in "the Craft." Come on.

Ok, so maybe if you've never dyed your hair before you might fall for this, but keep in mind that you always get a small 2oz tube of conditioner with your dye. This coloring kit it trying to convince me that I am getting "a once a week" month supply of conditioner with my box of dye. Well, guess what, Herbal Essences, I might be an art major, but I still can fucking read and this "once a week Color Treat" is still 2 fucking ounces. Nice try. And no, it's not a TREAT. It's conditioner. And for your information, I'm going to completely saturate every ammonia-licious strand of my hair with the WHOLE THING of "color conditioning treatment" like I always do. How about that!

And what is with throwing in the word color one last time? Which words are even modifying it? The conditioning treatment isn't coloring my hair, I just did that. It's not conditioning or toning the color itself either, because I happen to know it's just a treat-- I mean, just conditioner.

I think what this all means is that I'm going to have to put some Manic Panic Nightshade streaks in to cancel out the hippiness.

You can take the girl out of the goth scene, but you can't take the goth out of the girl...