The Collegian

Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: William Clayton

They're not trying to make a statement by coloring their hair. It's more about getting the experience and a small taste of adventure.

"Just looking in the mirror, you can see, 'Oh, that's different,'" senior Tristan Van Maren said about his colorful hairstyles.

Van Maren is part of a small contingent of people at Hillsdale College who routinely dye their hair in a variety of colorful shades. Van Maren isn't new to the hair-coloring scene, having tried most of the spectrum since he first started coloring his hair during his senior year of high school.

For Van Maren, dying his hair started as a somewhat practical decision. He was playing Oberon in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night's Dream," and his friends told him black hair would suit the part.

"People told me it would look cool. I know it is cliché, but it's completely true," he said, explaining his desire for the experience helped persuade him more than the insistence of his friends.

Before coming to Hillsdale, Van Maren bleached his hair to get rid of the black. When traces of the dye remained in "vaguely orange-ish streaks," he tried again.

"[It] completely killed my hair. I had to use a lot of conditioner for it to be like normal hair," Van Maren said. "You couldn't run your fingers through it or it'd clump up. It felt dead. It was amazing."

The coloring only progressed from there, changing from red his freshman year (which faded into "peachy orange"), to blond his sophomore year, to bleach white, to blue. This all took place before his junior year, when he took time off from his dying adventures.

"Some people kind of got after me last year for not coloring my hair," he said.

This summer, he dyed his hair purple for a friend's wedding.

"It matched the bridesmaids' dresses," he explained. "She didn't actually think I'd do it. She was pleasantly surprised."

Sophomore Nora Wood first dyed her hair the summer after she graduated from high school, coloring it with streaks of pink all through her hair.

Before this, she had grown her hair out. She knew she wanted to donate hair to Locks of Love but hadn't planned on adding color.

"I was just going for a completely different look," she said.

Continued...

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