Reclaiming Rainbow Brite

If you’re new to Tarot by Hilary, you may not know that I changed my hair drastically in September.

This drastic change is leading me to all kinds of conclusions and revelations, especially surrounding that whole biz of truly trying not to care what other people think of me. Or, at the very least, trying to care more about what I think about me more than others!

The new hair did not escape the notice of my coworkers at my day job. Most people were very enthusiastic about the change… some more enthused about the platinum part of it, some crazy about the rainbow streaks.

But it wasn’t until a coworker at the day job called me a nickname that I had when I was in middle school that I realized the venom that I still held onto within that particular name.

I was called Rainbow Brite in middle school. People are starting to call it me again… and this time? I’m completely okay with it. After all, when you have rainbow hair, what ELSE are they going to call you, right?

In middle school, this was not the most fun nickname to have. I hated it. I cried all the time. I was the least popular girl in the entire school while I was in sixth grade. And while teenagers are prone to exaggeration, this time? It really WAS true. I had a really tough time. My parents were divorcing, and at that point in time I knew of absolutely NO ONE whose parents were divorced. I felt awkward and weird in my own skin and body. Weird was different. Different was bad. To be weird was to not fit in, and to not fit in was to be targeted for being weird instead.

It was due to this awkwardness and my parents’ split that either I dressed myself in leggings and oversized sweatshirts, or my dad did my clothes shopping (I really can’t remember which, in all honesty). But I specifically remember one particular outfit that caused the nickname to be created and then stick: Rainbow-striped leggings and an oversized green knit sweater. Rainbow Brite was coined the day I wore that to middle school.

Middle School Years and Children’s Theater

At that point in my life, I was having a really hard time understanding why everyone suddenly hated me, just because we went from 5th grade to 6th grade: one grade’s difference, and yet everything had changed. We had gone from inviting everyone in your class to your birthday party (because that’s just what you did) in the 5th grade. Suddenly in 6th grade it was boyfriends and crushes and oh hey, everyone let’s gang up on Hilary because her parents are getting divorced and that’s weird because no one else is doing that and she dresses funny, too.

I am deeply suspicious of other women’s motives to this day, due to everything that happened to me in 6th grade: befriended by the cool girls only to find out it was to use everything I said and did to make fun of me first behind my back and then eventually to my face. I guess you could call me the skeptical feminist: even now, it is still very hard and scary for me to make friends, period, let alone to make friends with other women. There will always be some part of me that questions even my deepest friendships with women, always waiting for the other shoe to drop… waiting for them to turn around and say, “Just kidding, we actually hate you and think you’re ridiculous and a waste of space.” Hey, if it happened once, why couldn’t it happen again?

In hindsight, I am incredibly grateful that I didn’t live in the time of computers and cell phones and social media up the proverbial yin-yang, because then I wouldn’t have had the escapes or outlets that I did. My outlet was musical theater, where awkward me would disappear behind characters like Tinkerbell who had gorgeous glittering costumes and was a FUCKING FAIRY WITH A BAD TEMPER and a major jealous streak (which hindsight shows was incredible typecasting). But that was Fifth Grade, and things were still relatively okay…

Until Sixth when the children’s theater produced Alice in Wonderland and I went from juicy lead role of Tinkerbell to the fucking Dor-mouse, with an awful costume of a gray bodysuit that accentuated my weird body (I called it the three jelly-roll suit, where my torso looked like three spare tires bunched into stretch polyester) and a gray fake fur coat, and a rat tail sticking out of my ass. And the role I wanted? Alice, of course, or one of the flowers that sang “All in a Golden Afternoon.” But no, I got the Dor-mouse, and the only bright side was a solo of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat” and to work closely with my secret crush who was cast as the Mad Hatter. And who got cast as the flowers? My sixth grade girl tormentors (and oh, how I see the irony now, those perfumed bitches…). My safe haven of children’s theater was torn asunder, and I couldn’t even moon over my crush in safety anymore, because those girls saw EVERYTHING, including my pining for him. These girls were kind enough (tongue planted firmly in cheek here) to let him know that I had a big ole crush on him. My secret crush? Not so secret anymore! My cheeks were scarlet most of the time after that, and it wasn’t from the stage makeup.

I was saved from middle school torture by my father’s remarriage and move, where I found myself in a different school district where nobody knew who I was. The past erased, I was free to find a new identity in my new school, and settled into the “middle class” of high school bureaucracy happily. The phrase “dimming to fit it” could have been my middle name, because after being a focus of ire for an entire middle school (three full grades, 6, 7, and 8), invisibility was a welcome alternative!

Closeted Teen Witch

From junior high into high school, I researched witchcraft and paganism, and when I realized it was for me I slipped my pentacle necklace quietly under my shirt and went about my day, feeling a quiet assurance at the sensation of the secret silver warm and yet cool against my skin. On the outside though, I was still the Episcopalian I was raised as. I even made my confirmation, served on the altar as a Crucifer (right-hand person to the priest, specifically during the Eucharist), and taught Sunday School as a teacher’s assistant side-by-side with my friend who would eventually become my first boyfriend. It was so ingrained in me that I could probably go through all the motions, actions, and words of a Eucharist service right now if asked (but please don’t ask). That was exactly the problem. It was empty words, empty actions. I no longer felt the emotion or spirit behind it. The wine was wine, not blood. The wafers were fluffy crackers with a cross on them, and not the body of Christ. Transubstantiation (that upon consecration, the wine and bread offered at a Christian or Catholic service becomes the actual body and blood of Christ) was a theory, but not my reality. But my conversion from Christian to Witch is another story entirely, for another time…

Pro Tarot Reader

Even when I started reading tarot at sixteen (a happy accident borne out of giving my mother the wrong present), I was quiet about it. Reserved, even. Circling back to hair color, when I started reading professionally in 2005, I projected myself as the calm, cool, collected brunette… I was still a witch, but quietly, because I didn’t want to scare people off, and I sure didn’t want to be seen as unprofessional or allowing my personal religious ethics to cloud my objectivity in reading for my clients of other faiths. My motto was hide hide hide, even while telling my clients to shine their lights bright and whoever couldn’t deal with their lights shining bright wasn’t worth their time. Hypocritical much? You betcha.

In 2011 I won Theresa Reed’s Tarot Apprentice contest, to my utter shock and surprise. 5 months later, this website you are reading right now was launched, and my career as a professional tarot reader TRULY began. As I entered the world of tarot professionals, I began to get to know a host of them… glorious variety, even when doing the same kind of work, we weren’t all doing it in exactly the same way.

Some of them, like Dixie Vogel, had the most outrageous and gorgeous hair I’ve ever seen. When I first learned of Dixie, her hair was bubble gum pink. This was before the ombre hair and mermaid hair crazes, by the way. I envied people like Dixie and Kimra Luna that were not afraid to project themselves outwardly with a show of blazing colorful glory atop their heads.

My hair was still the same brunette it always was. There were occasions where I had it dyed, but a uniform color, such as a dark red, sometimes a fiery red. In college I had my brunette but with silver streaks on both sides of my face, hair parted right down the middle (think Rogue from X-Men, or just see the pic below). My friend and I went to Sally’s Beauty Supply store to find both the bleach to strip out the color from the hair I was going to apply the silver to, and the silver dye that was used (I still remember the magenta bottle it came in, though I no longer remember the name of the brand).

 

In my secret heart of hearts, I began thinking of doing something drastic. As I became more well-known in the tarot world, and began to be a little more open with my clients about my religion (especially when clients were asking me for advice on spell-work or if I knew of any spells that would help them within the context of their situation), the thought of being more visible physically was starting to take shape more and more. It was at this point that I was ready to make the leap into the crazy color territory with my hair, and began pinning hair inspiration on Pinterest daily. Mermaid hair or Galaxy hair? Unicorn hair or ombré? Sunset hair or opal? The inspiration was endless and made me all the more confused in my commitment.

Out of laziness and being in several weddings (one of which was my own), I stalled on the drastic dye job. It wasn’t until I made an appointment for a professional up-do for a wedding I was in in August that I actually voiced my desires out loud. As I was walking out of the salon after they did a fabulous job on my hair, I tentatively asked: “Do you do ombré hair? Like mermaid hair?” My stylist assured me that he could do whatever I wanted, and I pulled out my iPad and started showing my hair inspiration boards. He said, “oh yes, I could do that”. My heart soared as I went off to the wedding, with a promise that I would be in touch.

A month later, I was sitting in the salon staring at myself in the mirror. Squinting more like, since I didn’t have my glasses on as the platinum bleach was doing its work. Through the squinting, my hair was so stark white with the bleach setting on it that I looked bald (and felt like it too, with the dye burning into my scalp). Rinse and shampoo and condition. Color masque to set. Rinse and shampoo and condition again. Blow out to dry it out before the crazy rainbow colors were applied. I took a peek in the mirror again prior to the crazy colors being applied, and I nearly said stop right then: I looked like Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones! But no, I said to keep going. I looked over at the tray of different colors being set up. No going back. The blues and pinks and purples and teals were painted on, and the waiting game began again, this time covered in so much foil that I thought I would be able to pick up premium cable. Rinse and shampoo and condition. Blow dry. The moment of truth: all platinum and rainbows and smiles.

Two days later, I was called the formerly venomous nickname by my co-worker, and this time, the sting was gone. First of all, because she had no idea of all of the past history I just described in glorious detail triggered by uttering “Rainbow Brite.” Second of all, wasn’t it true? I smiled and said, “Thank you!” and continued on my way down the hall.

 

What have I learned from this drastic change, from having my hair transformed into what I call #platinumandrainbows? Many things, but most of all that you can’t please everyone. Who can you please? Yourself. There’s always people that will try to crap on your happy. There are other people that will simply love what you are doing: they just “get it.” There will always be people that don’t like or agree with what you do. Sometimes people will think or believe that telling you what’s wrong with you or what they don’t agree with will change your mind. My advice? Feel however you want to feel: you’re going to anyway!

The biggest lesson of all for me is to stop hiding and start being more open and vulnerable. More myself. More weird. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I’ve been told many times in many ways (frequently by the tarot!) to stop hiding. I didn’t think I was hiding, but in hindsight (that darn hindsight again!), I truly was.

I’m not hiding anymore. Here I am! Want to join me?

 

Blessings,
~*~Hilary~*~
www.tarotbyhilary.com

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© Hilary Parry Haggerty | Tarot by Hilary