Every once in a while I get these crazy ideas that I want platinum blonde hair or navy blue highlights. I get these ideas because I look at my black hair and think: boring and normal. While I've dyed my hair in the past, it's never anything too drastic or edgy, mainly blonde highlights. And that's because as much as I really want to be different, I also don't want to stand out. That's what I crave for myself: normalcy upon a glance but uniqueness upon a look.
I'm a modernist in that I like to see the items I own/encounter take up functional and purposeful shapes that exemplify the materials from which they are made of. The school of Bauhaus comes to mind: simple, functional, and elegant. But I also want these items to feel organic. I like to have a sort of harmony between us and the outside world. Think Frank Lloyd Wright. And yet, I'm also a post-modernist; I like the extra details and frills that are sometimes completely useless. The iPhone 4 is a prime example. The back glass serves no function and is super prone to cracks, but the double-sided glass is my favorite iPhone design. Finally, everything needs a bit of character, imperfections if I may.
So yes, my black hair is normal. But there's so much more behind it. My haircut is simple and functional: it doesn't fall all over my face when I'm hunch over a laptop. It's also heavily layered and organic; my hair is naturally black. And it's definitely got character. Somedays, it does what it wants and I just have to deal with it. Black hair can be boring, but everything, including boring, has a story.
So like the black hair, I make my statements against conformity in small indistinguishable ways. I wear a watch on my right hand even though I'm right-handed. With everyday sneakers, I tend toward grey, grey-black, muted yellow, navy, than straight black. I love adding details with colors. Take this blog for example, it has a very simple design that makes use of different but simple colors against a white background and of course the watercolor backdrop. My lapdesk is basically just a piece of bamboo attached to a cushion with a handle, but it's bamboo . . .
So I guess my point is that being different for the sake of being different shouldn't be my goal because my different just so happens to look, well, not different.
