While reality TV star and socialite Kylie Jenner’s plump lips have gotten all the buzz, her ever-changing hair is equally noteworthy. Kylie Jenner has worn a rainbow of colours, from saturated blues to a seafoam green that would make a mermaid proud. She even went pastel pink for a hot second at Coachella. Now, it’s back to brunette but, if history is any indication, probably not for long.
Sometimes, she goes for wigs, and other times, it’s the real deal. Either way, what’s the obsession with switching up her hair colour 24/7? “I’ve just had this addiction to changing my hair,” she spilled on her website in September. “It makes me feel like a new person.”
The possibility of being addicted to switching up your hair colour isn’t totally out of left field. In fact, it’s pretty easy. You could become addicted to just about anything. Everyday activities like eating, working, sports, and shopping can become habit-forming. So it is with hair dyeing, says NYC-based psychologist Vivian Diller. It could also be a signal that you’re straight-up bored. Sometimes, women just want to change their hair colour for the sake of it. They get sick of it quickly.
Logistics could also play a part. To get these rainbow shades, a natural brunette like Kylie would have to bleach her hair out before adding a new hue. The process is tough on strands. Switching from one bright colour right to another isn’t going to do that much more damage, says Hazan, who took singer and songwriter Katy Perry’s hair from pink to purple to blue. If it’s already bleached, you might as well enjoy it. In the case of Katy Perry’s candy colours, since her naturally dark hair was already lightened, she ran with it. In this case, it’s not addiction so much as a matter of convenience and minimising damage.
The choice of hair colour, too, is also revealing. In Kylie’s case, she doesn’t stick to safe pastels, but opts instead for a range of shades and tones. Women who dye their hair in bright, rainbow colours are often risk-takers. They tend to enjoy making a statement and standing out from the crowd. Crazy hair hues may also be a way of establishing oneself as an individual, which is probably tough to pull off when you have not one, not two, but seven older siblings – some of whom have been in the spotlight for years. Minus reality TV star and actress Kim Kardashian-West’s platinum blonde, no one else in the Kardashian-Jenner clan has experimented so much with hair colour. This could be Kylie’s way of claiming her turf. If that’s what Kylie’s going for, it’s working.
The desire to enhance our looks is natural, explains Vivian Diller. Who doesn’t like a new lipstick or hairstyle? But the compelling need to change the outside to feel better on the inside is a slippery slope. Plus, it can do a number on your hair. Constant colouring makes hair more fragile and prone to breakage, and adding coloured extensions to get your fix can actually cause hair to snap off altogether. There’s nothing worse than that. Once hair breaks, you can’t fix it. The only solution is to leave your hair alone for at least six months.
Still, that’s an extreme. Playing with hair colour can be like fashion, like your favourite eye shadow, like your Twitter profile; just another way of expressing yourself. It is not necessarily a problem, nor an addiction. It’s the motivation behind it that is important to understand. As long as you’re doing it for the right reasons because you think that a mossy-green would look gorgeous with your skin tone, there’s no reason to hold back.