By Raminta Paukštytė
What's so hot about redheads? Rihanna, Cheryl Cole…
What woman would not want to look like them?
Redheads claim it is worth trying. "I'm never allowed to dye my hair a normal colour as the redhead was what attracted my boyfriend to me!" said Sarah, 19. "Red hair makes me feel more attractive", said Ashley, 25. Only one out of five redheads I've interviewed admitted that no celebrities influenced her decision to dye her hair. Such an obsession followed by an exaggerated aim to become a celebrity lookalike or by thinking 'if it worked so well for her, why not trying the same thing?'- is an obvious example of how the celebrity cult has grown during the last years.
It would be fair enough to say that bright red hair colour is an unnatural look.Today's woman is already missing that naturalness, as she wears make-up daily and uses tons of other beauty equipment. She straighten her hair if it used to curl, she curls it if the reverse, she sticks on artificial nails sometimes even daily, and now, she decides to minimize her naturalness even more by masking her hair with such a bright, unnatural-looking colour like red. Not yet green, luckily. (Special thanks, Rihanna?)
One telling comment popped up on YouTube recently, soon after Rihanna's video clips from her new album appeared. According to one anonymous woman, Rihanna should be proud of herself, because while she was at the hairdressers, she heard three women asking for 'Rihanna's red color, please'. Equally unsurprising is that this comment got the most thumbs-up during the day. And, certainly, there's no chance now of not seeing 'Rihanna's red' heads while going shopping.
Rihanna is an artist, though. She has to reinvent her image over and over again. There's nothing else to do but to feel sorry about all new redheads around- trying to become someone else is ridiculous, it never really works.
However, does bright red hair create for its wearers a certain image of personality? "It's all about confidence, you know. I have had a lot of compliments where I work from customers saying the colour is fabulous", said Ashley. This is the extent to which it has developed: submit to the obsession for red and become confident, sexy, wild and extremely attractive.
Breathtaking looks, manipulated, attention seeking styles, obsessive following of fashion trends... It seems these are the only important things for a woman to think about in her daily life. Living in a cliché- "What to wear?" and how to improve the look rather than just to think of some more objective business has become an obvious, celebrity inspired lifestyle. It'd be difficult not to follow, though. Consumerism has teamed up with fashion, which is why being self-confident and self-satisfied has never had so much in common with fashion as it has now.
Is it a new fashion, which occupies women heads? While hairdressers Pat, Lisa and Amanda at Hair Salon Xpress Hair, Sunderland, are nodding "Yes, yes it is", others might be considering, or buying, new cheap red hair-dye for some drastic experiments at home. Naturalness is all gone, but fashion is on top as never before.
