Pink is my new aesthetic (and here’s why).
Elementary school—I was told I’d have gingerbread babies.
Middle school—I was told I have no soul.
High school—I was told I clash with bright colors.
College—I’m trying to tell myself differently.
When I was young, I had no clue I had red hair. I don’t mean that in the way that in first grade I didn’t make the conclusion to color the lines of my hair in my self-portrait with the red crayon but in the way that I just didn’t really notice that I was different from the majority of other kids in having red hair. It wasn’t until around 5th grade that I was really told that I was different. That’s when I was told (and convinced) that I was going to have gingerbread babies when I was older. GINGERBREAD BABIES. This seems silly and stupid to me now, but at the time that was a gut-wrenching statement to hear. I can remember countless times coming home and crying into my pillow because I was so afraid of this fate.
Then in middle school, the teasing escalated. People started telling me, “You have no soul”. I genuinely had no clue what they were talking about when they told me this the first time but it seemed to be the insult that everyone knew to throw my way. I just sort of chuckled along but internally was hurt, offended, and confused. I finally had to google, “Why gingers are told they have no soul?”, just to understand the reference. Good to know that the phrase was in fact started by a fellow red-head but it didn’t make it any easier to hear from the mouths of my classmates.
By high school, I was used to the occasional teasing and use of jokes and phrases that could get me going but I was finally trying to shake them off and sort of accept my hair color. So you know, it was high school and I wanted to start fresh and get really into fashion to “impress” everyone with my style like any teenage girl would. (I look back at some of my fashion choices now and I’m like yikes). I tried every trend in the book that I saw circulating through Seventeen magazine. I thought I was really rocking it and doing great until I was informed by someone that I really shouldn’t make some of my bold fashion choices and/or wear bright or warm colors because “I clash”. I was told to steer clear of pinks, yellows, oranges, and reds and that I should only really be wearing greens and blues. “Don’t you know you have red hair and pale skin?” someone once asked me. So again, I’m confused, hurt and offended because I’m basically being told how not to dress (which trust me, females were already getting enough of at my school by the administrators). My closet eventually became a blue and green heaven, my room was painted purple, and I changed my favorite color from pink to blue. All such minuscule things that seem to have no significance, but added up, they meant a lot to me in the never-ending battle with my red hair.
All the while, I’m being told by my mother and countless other women who “used to have hair like mine” to not EVER dye it because, “You can’t get that color from the bottle” and “Once you dye it, it will never go back to being the same”. So it was totally a generational thing of older people telling me not to change, while people of my generation ridiculing me for its color. Finally, I said, “screw it” and decided to take part in the trend of ombré hair during my sophomore year of high school—this was, however, still agreed upon by my mother because it would only be changing/damaging the ends of my hair and not my whole head. And then, I finally felt a bit normal. I had blonde ombré hair on and off for the next four years, only finally cutting it off and not re-dying it during the first semester of my freshman year of college.
So now here we arrive at college. The point in which I’m still figuring out life. In the past few years, I have taken note of more friends and women of my age who will compliment my hair color and I don’t get immaturely teased about it the way I used to. But I still struggle and critique it myself because of much deeper rooted issues of there being other parts of me and my body that I don’t like. My mentality sometimes worsens and becomes, “If I could just change the color of my hair, then I would start to look better all around”. I try to keep up with the styles and trends that are “in”—blush pink, mustard yellow—and think I could try it too until I decide that my hair would just ruin it all. So I end up spending money on one more baby blue Brandy Melville sweater instead. As social media has became such a huge part of my life, I started adding a blue fade to all my photos and then really went with the green look for a while too. I overanalyzed about every photo background, edit, fade, and temperature component to make sure I wouldn’t “blend” in with the warmth or lightness of the photo. Again, such a dumb, basic, millennial thing to be worrying about, but it concerned me deeply because I just didn’t want to look stupid for not knowing how to compliment/dress myself and my red hair.
Then about halfway through this past summer, I got so fed up with my Instagram feed that one day I impulsively spent $70 on an Instagram preset filter package (actually has been the best purchase of my life lol). A majority of the presets in the pack were brighter, lighter, and added pinker tones to my photos. At first, I was concerned like I always am that my pale skin would be flushed out and my red hair would look nasty with the pink preset. But then I posted the first photo with it and from there I have been rolling. Now I’m absolutely obsessed with pink and have officially declared it my “new aesthetic”. Every picture I take, I slap the preset on and make the whole thing pinker. It’s so cute and I for one love it. It used to be my favorite color back in the day after all, so why not finally embrace it?
Now you’re probably thinking what?! How did we get from red hair to a pink Instagram feed and maybe even that I’m so dumb for using pink as my aesthetic to embrace the hair I have always hated. But it’s actually sort of working for me mentally and let me tell you, sometimes it’s just the little things that can go a long way. I hope that girl that told me I shouldn’t wear pink in high school is looking at my Instagram feed now in envy. I hope the boys who teased me about having gingerbread babies now drool over my pink filtered food-grams. I hope those that teased me about not having a soul will realize that my heart is pink and that’s all that matters to me.
Trust me when I say this pink aesthetic has not completely relieved me of my insecurities. There are still days where I absolutely hate my hair and my appearance. No matter how many times someone else tells me they like it, all the convincing in the world has to come from inside myself. Which is why I care so deeply about my mentality and those little things that work to change it. For now, I hope everyone can enjoy my Instagram feed and stories slathered in pink just as much as I do:)
