I'm 20 now and I dyed my hair for the first time around 15 - I'm naturally a medium brown and slightly copper in the summer, so I went for a red. However, I was too chicken to go permanent and just did semi-permanent (that loreal mousse stuff). It only lasted a few days, but I loved it. Since, I've done it about 5 times. I'm temped to go permanent now that I know I like it, but I don't for a couple reasons.. the first being that I have curly, frizzy hair, and dying it is only going to make it worse. The second is that I KNOW I won't keep up with the roots - I'll end up putting it off and putting it off until it just grows out and looks stupid. As it is, I only get a cut a couple times a year so It'd be unlikely I'd keep up with my roots every month. I've seen a few girls around my school with 2 inch roots who went very light to very dark or vise versa... it looks like an ugly hat and that's what'd happen to me. I'd like to try a few more (dark brown, for example) but I don't think I'll go permanent until I start going gray.

http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/98/l_627d9eff55314c37835782e13809447c.jpg

My mom is 52 and hates that she is (fairly) gray. She's never dyed her hair and has only had about 4 cuts in her life (too expensive according to her). After hearing her say she needed to dye her hair constantly for several years, I finally bought her a box of dye for last Christmas in a shade that matched her current hair so she didn't have to keep up with the roots. It's now October and she hasn't used it - now that she has the dye she's decided she doesn't care and she's too scared to dye her hair because she might not like it!

A girl I grew up with was a strawberry blond and hated redheads, even though it was barely a touch of strawberry blond. She started bleaching her hair around the age of 7 to a lighter blonde, and she hasn't stopped since. She's obsessive compulsive about roots to the point she'll look closely every day to make sure NONE of her original color was coming through. She'd check them on breaks at work (we worked together). By the time she was 16, she was touching up twice a week at a salon, costing her 80 dollars each time. There weren't even roots showing, but to her, they were everywhere. I haven't talked to her since and I have no idea if she's still doing it, or whether she even has hair left or if it's all melted off her head.. but from what I know of her, I'm sure she's still a little OCD about it... one of those girls who gets up at 4am to straighten her hair and do makeup for 3 hours even if she isn't leaving the house.

IMO 12 isn't too early, but just for something fun and not for regular touchups. Maybe just semi permanent and it's a good age to try semi permanent colors (blue, green, orange) as you don't really need to look professional for anything. However, I don't think they need to be getting regular dyejobs until they are old enough to pay for it themselves (16?).

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