Is There an Appropriate Answer When Your Child Asks to Dye Her Hair Green and Black?

I am the mother of two children: Colton, who is 7, and Katelyn, who is 14. My children have very different personalities, likes and dislikes. In fact, at this point, pretty much the only thing that they have in common is their distinct dislike of each other. Katelyn firmly believes that Colton was put here on this earth solely to cause her pain, misery and discontent. Colton does everything in his power to further this belief. This results only in pain, misery and discontent for me.

Katelyn has begun her freshman year of highschool this year. Over the course of the past year, as she matured a bit, her tastes in music and clothing have changed. No longer can I go shopping for her and pick out cute little skirts or tops in pink or purple with bows and lace. I am now forced to look in popular clothing stores for items that are black and contain depictions of skulls and crossbones, earrings and jewelry that has little skulls, and ugly black pants covered with useless zippers that zip nothing or large safety pins that do not hold anything together. (Am I raising a pirate??) Musically, she has drifted into listening to bands like Disturbed, Seether, and Linkin Park. I am uncertain where the cute little girl I once took to see Britney Spears (when she performed fully dressed) went.

However, the most frequently requested change has had to do with her hair. The summer prior to beginning 8th grade, Katelyn's second cousin Chelsea was set to start beauty school. Katelyn spent some time with Chelsea and I received a call late one night asking me if she could put a teeny tiny bit of pink in her hair. I was assured that her father had been consulted and had granted his permission contingent on mine, and that this was not going to be permanent color, but more of a wash that would fade out fairly quickly. As it was during the summer and I had no real objection to this, I consented. When I next saw my daughter, this tiny bit of pink had turned in to half of her head. The top layers of her hair had actually been pulled up, the bottom layers bleached out to blond, and a bright pink dye applied to the bottom. While you might not think this would be overly concerning given that it was applied to the underside of her hair, the problem became when the wash began to fade out, leaving behind bright blond hair underneath.

Several weeks later, Katelyn showed up at my home with a new color: purple. Apparently, there was an assumption that if I had said yes once, I would say it again, so why bother to ask the question at all?? At first, this was not so bad. It was not as bright a color as the pink had been, and I had adjusted to the fact that my daughter had unnaturally colored hair on her head. Plus, it was still summer time. However, when this color began to fade, it faded into a lighter, blueberry color, and then to gray, and finally then to the ugly blond, which at this point was completely fried hair. It took three hair dying sessions with medium brown hair dye to get all of the hair on her head close to the same color, and several hair cuts to get rid of the five inches of dead ends on her hair.

For several months after this, Katelyn was content with her medium brown hair. And then the questions and requests started again. Could she please just dye it a little bit darker? Because Katelyn has the same boring and mousey brown color of hair that I have, I relented to a warmer shade. And then a shade a bit darker, and a bit darker, and a bit darker. I now am able to look back and see that she was really shooting for black, and just sucking me in closer and closer because she knew that I wouldn't agree.

However, now that she is in highschool, she is back to adding unnatural color requests to the mix, the most recent being green and black. Could she please have black hair and green highlights? Or black hair with green tips? Or black hair with green underneath? Of course, being the strict and horribly mean mother that I am, I said, "Yeah, um, no." This really means that I am out of touch with today's teenager, that I have no concern for her deepest desires, that I don't care if she fits in with her friends, and that I just don't understand her at all. Oh, the horror.

I just cannot see anything close to beauty when I think about green hair. The green hair that I have seen in the past was usually related to people that were bleached blond and spent too much time in chlorinated water. Do people actually purposefully want to look like this? Does anyone other than people that poke all sorts of extra holes in their bodies find this attractive? Would I want my daughter dating someone that did find this attractive? And how does one say to their child, who is asking to do this because she sincerely believes this to be a good look, "No. You may not dye your hair green and black. Green and black hair would be hideous. You would look like an ugly freak. I do not want to parent an ugly freak." Something tells me that this would violate several parenting rules, as well as established guidelines dealing with teenage self esteem. However, did this stop me from saying that to my daughter? Nope. Not in the slightest. Bring it Dr. Spock!