By VAIN client + special guest VAIN blogger Ariel Meadow Stallings
I’m a marketing manager in my mid-30s. I work on the Eastside in a windowless office where I do stuff like social media campaign strategy (zzz), PR planning (*blink blink*) and mulling the return on investment of corporate communication strategies (yawn!). I go to tech industry conferences and speak about public relations (honk-shooo).
…I also have bright pink hair.
Almost three years ago, I made an appointment with my beloved Jenny Slay, who’s been doing my hair ever since I hacked off my rainbow dreadlocks in 2001. In late 2005, my hair was long, straight and medium brown, and I told Jenny “I like it long, but I’m bored with my natural color. But I hate doing root maintenance! I want less boring, but low maintenance.”
Jenny’s solution was to bleach the tips of my hair, and then dye the ends with Special Effects’ Atomic Pink. So, for the last three years, the bottom six inches of my hair has flamingly bright pink.
It’s incongruous, I guess: a 30something professional with pink hair. But honestly, the pink hair fits perfectly into my professional life, and I wish more established professionals would go for wild colors.
Here’s a short list of why:
- Personal branding, people!
Bright hair makes you easy to recognize and remember, which is extra awesome at industry events like conferences and networking thangs. It helps you stand out during job interviews. Personal branding is a big deal, and standing out in a crowded workplace is awesome!
- Gives your coworkers street cred
My boss told me that he actually bragged to some higher-ups that he has a pink-haired employee, explaining that my weird hair makes him look cooler by proxy. Granted, I work in marketing/pr where such things matter. But everyone wants to feel cool.
- When you combine wild hair with solid skills and industry authority, you blow people’s minds
Yes, there are a lot of assumptions about bright hair and immaturity. But when you’re actually good at your job, you can see people’s minds shifting. “You mean … pink hair and 10 years of industry experience can go together? Woah….” I think it’s easier to get away with bright hair if you’re an professional in your 30s or 40s … you’re already established in your industry, and people are forced to respect your experience, even if your hair confuses them.
Despite all this awesomeness, there are definitely a few considerations for professionals thinking of going for bright hair. Here are a few:
People will ask a lot of questions
…and you need to be ready to answer them with graceful articulation. Coworkers will ask you all sorts of silly things (”is that permanent? why do you do that? is upkeep hard?”), and you can’t act like a petulant teenager and huff, “Why can’t they just accept me for who I am?! Why is everybody staring!?” You look different. People are going to ask questions. Deal with it! Think of yourself as a Ambassador of the Funk and answer their questions with patience, tactfulness, and a good natured smile.
Compensate for your weird hair by being hardworking
The best way to get away with being a weird-haired professional is to, well, be really good at your job so that’s what people focus on. You need to be so good at what you do that people are forced into respecting you despite the hair. If you’re more the slacker type who shows up hung-over, then the bright hair may be more of a challenge, because then you’re the scary weirdo with purple hair who smells like gin in the staff meeting. If you have weird hair, you need to to overcompensate a bit with more hardworking awesomeness. The squares with their frosted Rachel cuts can get away with slacking. You, blue-haired assymmetrical bob, probably can’t.
Go for bright hair you can hide
Ok, I’ll admit it. Sometimes, you just need to blend in with the crowd. I had an appearance on The Today Show a few months back to talk about tech issues, and I just knew that if the pink hair was showing it was going to mess with my credibility as a technologist. Thankfully, my pink tips are easy to sweep back into a nice tidy bun — from the front, it’s all business with brown hair and a tidy up-do. From the back, you just see a flash of pink knot. Who even knows if it’s hair? Could be a ribbon or something.
In closing, I leave you all with this video of me answering questions at a PR industry event (zzzz) but look: PINK HAIRED INDUSTRY CREDIBILITY!
In addition to being a pink-haired professional + VAIN client, Ariel Meadow Stallings is a superstar of the blogisphere- check out her Offbeat Bride and Electrolicious blogs to see why.
