Purple Hair, Compliments, and Lies

Purple Hair helped me learn to love compliments from my girlfriends.

Compliments. They are a weird thing, right? There’s this decipherable binary to them. On one hand, they can totally brighten your day.

“Girl, your shoes are EVERYTHING.”

On the other hand, they can err into creepy territory real quick.

“I love it when you wear heels. You look like a tall drink of water.”

There’s this feeling when you get a compliment that it’s because you’ve put in some kind of work, even if you haven’t.

“You’re looking fit AF lately!”

Figuring out how to process compliments (catcalls?) from strangers, coworkers, and family members could be a full time job for women.

But it’s not like that with your girlfriends. When your girlfriends tell you you’re beautiful, there’s no benefit in them telling you that. They don’t want to fuck you. They’re not trying to kiss your ass for a promotion. They’re not competing with you. In fact, complimenting your girlfriends is the easiest way to stop competing with them. (More on that later.) Being complimented by a woman who loves you unconditionally is, quite possibly, the purest form of a compliment. Ultimately, it is rooted in self-love and love for each other.

Now, that self-deprecating anecdote I promised to illustrate this fact.

It’s 2011. My second year in law school. It was a challenging time. I was working at a hyper-conservative state agency as a law clerk; I was studying my butt off; I was also having a TON OF FUN. Because balance. And grad school.

At this time, myself and fellow Bonded Co-Founder, Sam, were living the high life on a really small budget. We cut and colored our own hair, painted our nails, and basically ran a full-scale beauty salon out of our one-bedroom apartment. (You read that correctly.) And I can’t remember a happier time

One particular evening, we were preparing to hit the town for a night out. First stop was a law school end-of-semester party, followed by late-night, high calorie snacks. Exams were over. We were half-alive and surviving on Red Bull, but we were gonna go out if it killed us. And look FRESH TO DEATH whilst doing it. In order to achieve FRESH TO DEATH, I needed to dye my hair literally one hour before we left my humble abode. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this. IT NEVER GOES WELL. You can guess what happened next. My hair turned completely LAVENDER. Which, in 2016, doesn’t sound terribly off-trend, but this was 2011—well before pastel hair was in vogue. And I had PURPLE HAIR. Not sorta purple. Not a lil bit purple. VERY PURPLE HAIR.

So what did I do? I turned to my best friend for assurance:

Me: “Is it bad?”

Sam: “Don’t be RIDICULOUS. You look gorgeous!”

It was a lie. Oh, it was a big OL’ LIE. I had actual purple hair. But honestly? Who cares. The color of my hair was going to have approximately zero effect on our fun that evening. And she knew that. It also didn't make me any less gorgeous, and she knew that too. She knew that the evening could have been squandered by my own self-doubt, and part of being a friend is to love me enough to help me get past my own insecurities. One box-dye slip-up and I was questioning my worth, beauty, and all around fierceness, and she wasn’t having ANY OF THAT. To this day, she won’t have any of that. Girlfriends remind you that your beauty is more than skin-deep. It doesn’t just go away. Sam sees me as beautiful every day, and her insistence of this has helped me to love myself and other women more.

So next time you start questioning the validity of a compliment from your girlfriend: stop. Remember why she is telling you that you’re beautiful, and practice that self-love every chance you get.