IN WHICH I RETURN TO HAVING ROOTS

I’ve decided to become a blonde again. In the States, blonde hair on me feels indicative of all things teenybopper and obnoxious. Ironically, three of the people I most respect in my private life are blondes but there’s just something about blonde hair on me that feels bimbo-esque. I try not to let other people dictate my opinions about my personal appearance but frankly, watching all the vapid pop stars vie for who’s going to be the blondest bimbo with the most orange skin, loudest sniffle and basketball-like breasts really turned me off to being yet one more blonde drone slathered in fake tanner, enjoying her thinly veiled drug problems and playing with her painfully large breast implants. Consequently, I went red and continued to avoid self-tanner, drugs and surgical enhancement. Besides, I cannot deny that there was something remarkably appealing about actually being the “loathed, bastard redheaded stepchild.” (I was six months old at my parents’ wedding.) Not that my stepbitch actually knew I was red but I liked the concept nonetheless.

However, “Auburn” is the “Blonde” of Xi’An. All the girls here who want to be cute, vapid, fashion forward and pop culture savvy are all auburn. No one at all is blonde. Here, “blonde” does not imply the things it implies in the States. Here, “blonde” implies Westerner. Frankly, I am a Westerner, there’s no way to hide that and I don’t really think I would if I could as the Chinese are too cool for me to want to be anything but what I am around them. I’m no longer afraid of being a blonde now that I am free of the restrictions it implies within my culture. In fact, in this culture, blonde is the antithesis of what I loathe about blonde in the States. Blondes in Xi’An are, by virtue of geographic selection, powerful (Western) women who know their own mind.