Styling for success

Dylan Hostetter, Opinions and Humor Editor

Even though we don’t like to admit it, our appearance matters. People judge others every day at first glance, from their hair and their clothes to their fanny pack shaped like the Lorax — which isn’t lame and definitely looks cool. Those middle schoolers don’t know what they are talking about.

After three years of college, I was ready to shake up my look. Throughout my time at this university, I have had the same hair, the same glasses and the same amount of women talking to me — that being zero. I didn’t plan this makeover just to pick up girls to be clear, but it wouldn’t have been an unwelcome outcome.

I was prepared to rehaul my entire wardrobe — to leave behind my boring cargo shorts, button-down polos and sneakers. Instead, I would now don the first three items I pulled blindly out of my closet each morning.

This plan backfired horribly almost immediately. On the first morning I somehow grabbed a blazer, a bright pink feather boa and a pair of pants that read “spank me” with two stars ironed onto the back pockets. What’s strange is I don’t remember buying any of these things. I’m a little frightened that so much random stuff found its way into my closet.

I couldn’t bring myself to back down from my plan on the very first day, so I swallowed my pride and dressed myself. Several girls did talk to me that day — if you count screaming, pointing and giggling as conversation. I was also assaulted by a strange old woman in the park who very passionately heeded my pants’ request. 

After experiencing what a real wardrobe change felt like, I decided to take a different approach to overhauling my appearance — I would dye my ginger locks to a new, less-abrasive color. 

My red hair has always been a gift and a curse. While it did garner me a higher pain tolerance, it also came along with its fair share of nicknames: Little Orphan Annie, Ginger Fanny, Mr. Stinky. I’m not really sure exactly how that last one connects to my hair, but you try and reason with a bunch of nine-year-olds. 

I found myself in the hair dye aisle, which was filled with so many different options I was almost overwhelmed. To keep my experiment random and spontaneous, I haphazardly grabbed a bottle off the shelf with my eyes closed. It was orange. 

Semi-defeated but refusing to give up, I bought it anyway. I’m sure the instructions on the bottle were very clear, but the words were too small and I refused to read them. As part of my makeover, I also stopped wearing my glasses — a decision that has made driving much more interesting.

Since I was disregarding the hair dye’s directions, I decided to just dump the entire bottle on my head, go to bed and hope for the best. I mean, how complicated could dying your hair really be? 

Well, it turns out it can be pretty complicated. I woke up the next morning to the surprising sight of clumps of half-burnt hair scattered all over the bed. By the time I peeled the rest of my scalp off of my pillowcase, I was left with only enough hair on my head to constitute a shabby mohawk.

The worst part was not my patchy, blotchy scalp — it was the color. I’m assuming there was some reaction between the orange of the dye and the orange of my hair because the color I was left with was the most putrid green any human has ever laid their eyes on — like the inside of Baby Yoda’s diaper.

I felt naive for thinking my red hair was a problem. It was a heck of a lot better than being stuck with the Jolly Green Giant’s happy-trail running across the top of my head for the foreseeable future.

I had failed miserably at every attempt to reinvent my look. Mistakenly, I thought I had gone too small. I could always change clothes, and eventually the dye would fade and my hair would grow back. I decided on something a bit more permanent — a tattoo.

I booked an appointment at the closest tattoo parlor, and when I arrived I was greeted by a woman that looked vaguely like Captain Jack Sparrow. I knew I was in good hands. 

It’s hard to pick a good first tattoo. I knew I wanted something tough, something that would strike fear in others — but the good kind of fear, not the, “Uh oh, here comes a grown man wearing a Lorax fanny pack” kind of fear. Look, I still maintain that it is a cool accessory, but I can understand how it may give me a weird vibe.

I decided to replicate one of the most famous tattoos ever: Mike Tyson’s face tattoo. I told the artist what I wanted, but there must have been something lost in translation because instead of his cool Māori inspired tattoo, she wrote Mike Tyson’s name down the left side of my face.

I think she may have not only been hard of hearing, but also dyslexic, because the tattoo didn’t even say “Mike Tyson,” but “Make Turson.” Come to think of it, I don’t even think she was a real tattoo artist. That would explain why her hands were so shaky and why the shop manager chased her out into the street with a broom.

If there is a moral to this story, maybe it’s that our appearance doesn’t matter. Maybe we should stop caring what others think of the way we dress or wear our hair and just be comfortable being ourselves. Or maybe we should care. Maybe we should be thinking about how we look every day all the time — I don’t know.

Honestly, I don’t think you should be taking any advice from me at all. I mean, I am the guy with “Make Turson” inked into his face skin, and what I can only assume is permanent scalp damage — it’s just so darn itchy.