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"  The problem with my hair begins with my face. My face, I am sorry to report, clashes with any hairstyle other than a medium-length and nonlayered one, which is less a style than a state of nature. I discovered this a few years ago, when a makeup artist stepped back from my face midbronzing, squinched her eyes, and said, &amp;quot;You know, I thought you had a square face, but it&amp;#039;s actually sort of a pyramid.&amp;quot; A pyramid? Yes, she said, a pyramid. She was right about my face\u2014it&amp;#039;s widest at the jawline, like Luke Wilson&amp;#039;s\u2014and I&amp;#039;ve never quite forgiven her for it. For a pyramid, hair options are limited. Bobs exacerbate the problem; bangs turn your face into a Rothko painting; curls = bigger pyramid. But humans are perverse; we tend to desire the very things that we absolutely cannot (or should not) have. In my case, this unattainable ideal is cool hair\u2014the kind that inspires a second look. Cool hair is Jean Seberg in Breathless and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction; it&amp;#039;s Bernadette Peters and Gwen Stefani. It is my Swedish mother, who has a nest of platinum hair that she likes to style in a variety of ways: piled up like Brigitte Bardot, blown into a smooth pageboy, knotted with a chopstick, rippling in mermaid waves. My mother has cool hair, and every day I feel sad that I inherited her thimble-size nose and aversion to theme parks but not, sigh, her blond pouf. My own hair is a neutral brown, medium thick, medium wavy: the hair equivalent of an in-flight magazine. There are so many lovely ways to describe blonds and reds, and so few to describe browns. Blond is corn silk, platinum, honey, wheat, butter, gold. Red is copper, strawberry, russet, ginger, titian. Brunette? Eh. In his 1912 novel, The Financier, Theodore Dreiser described a character as having hair &amp;quot;the color of a dried English walnut&amp;quot;\u2014and he meant it as a compliment. Thanks to my uncommonly geometric face, I&amp;#039;ll never quite permit myself to change the style or length of my hair\u2014but color is potentially fair game (and a potential disaster). Enter Zoe Wiepert, a top colorist at Bumble and bumble. She&amp;#039;s done runway color for Marc Jacobs, 3.1 Phillip Lim, and Thakoon; she&amp;#039;s dyed faux pieces for Sarah Jessica Parker (did you really think she went full-on brunette for those hair-color ads?). A Tinker Bell blond with saucer eyes, Wiepert is part mad scientist and part artist\u2014and wholly a wig obsessive. She&amp;#039;s the kind of girl who stores wigs in her kitchen pantry and could easily take a side gig putting together disguises for the CIA, if she weren&amp;#039;t already fully booked. Along with fellow Bumble and bumble stylist Carrie Hill, Zoe offered to create three custom, pyramid-flattering wigs so that I could experiment with color in the real world.  When I arrived at Bumble&amp;#039;s uptown NYC salon on a chilly Sunday morning, I found Zoe and Carrie standing before a full buffet of wigs, giggling. I giggled too as Zoe led a tour of the goods, pointing out auburn Nashville-style curls, icicle-blond shoulder-length bobs, gray high-priestess tendrils. We browsed choppy Patti Smith shags and $800 wigs hand sewn from virgin European hair. Virgin European hair! I repeated the phrase in my head, savoring it the way I would the words pebbled kidskin or champagne reception. Before we could get down to business, though, we had to get my real hair out of the picture. Carrie parted it in the middle, made two braids, and pinned them to my head. A stretchy bald cap went over the braids, forming a condomlike seal and giving me the look of a pinto bean. Then the wig parade began. &amp;quot;You look so different,&amp;quot; Zoe observed as wigs flew on and off my head, each new style swiftly erasing the woman wearing it and replacing her with a fictional character. Studies have shown that hairstyles are a key factor in how we recognize people&amp;#039;s faces, and here was a rather spooky form of proof: As my hair changed shape and color, I hardly knew the person in the mirror. After eight wigs, three cinnamon scones, one cappuccino, and a million iPhone pics, we settled on three styles for me to take home: a long blond, a lush russet with bangs, and a pastel lavender-blue that reminded me of screen savers and unicorns. (Zoe deemed it &amp;quot;very editorial.&amp;quot;) I wore the blond wig out, feeling fantastic. Then I got on the subway. Self-consciousness set in. Jammed between riders on the crowded train, I was suddenly beset with the conviction that my hair looked fake. I could sense people staring, but the stares were less Ooh! than Kim Zolciak? You know when you see a woman tightly bound in Herve Leger, looking generally great but hobbling around in debilitatingly high heels? That&amp;#039;s how I felt. The words trying too hard might as well have been Sharpied across my forehead. An empty Snapple bottle was rolling around the subway floor, and I trained my gaze on it for the remainder of the trip downtown. Upon reaching my apartment, however, I found a sleek Upper East Side blond staring back at me in the bathroom mirror. The panic had been a false one; Zoe&amp;#039;s wigs were way too good to look fake. I got a beer from the fridge and started pacing, trying to relax into my new hair. But pacing and beer didn&amp;#039;t feel right either. I looked in the mirror again. Before me stood a pampered platinum princess clutching a Budweiser next to a stack of dirty clothes. My brain flashed the system error message. Women\u2014like me?\u2014with hair like this do not drink domestic beer from a can in Chinatown apartments. They drink kir royales at Le Bilboquet.  But there wasn&amp;#039;t time for another mini crisis. I&amp;#039;d made dinner plans with six friends at an East Village barbecue joint. After pouring the rest of my beer down the drain, I changed into jeans, spiky heels, and a beige silk top with gold chains for straps. With my customary brown hair, the outfit might have looked cheerful and celebratory. On a blond, it screamed mail-order bride. What the hell? I winced in the mirror, and then I went to dinner. &amp;quot;Whoa,&amp;quot; said male friend number one when I arrived at the restaurant. He took in my hair. Then he changed the subject. Whoa on its own is always a bad sign. Sliding into a seat at the center of the table, I greeted the rest of my friends (to a chorus of similar whoas) and flagged down a waiter. &amp;quot;Frozen pi\u00F1a colada with an extra shot of rum,&amp;quot; I requested, smiling. And with that, it was official: Molly was gone, and in her place was Fun Girl. Fun Girl ordered wings for the table and insisted that everyone order high-proof slushy drinks. She made a duck face in photos, flirted with the waiter, did funny voices when she told stories, and talked way louder than everyone else\u2014but that was okay, because she had so many fun things to say! Fun Girl put away 24 ounces of pi\u00F1a colada and couldn&amp;#039;t help but ask herself, at the end of the night, whether this was what it felt like to be charismatic. Were there people who felt this way all the time? And if so, was blond hair the secret to becoming one of them? Fun Girl texted Zoe Wiepert to ask if it would be possible, in theory, to bleach her actual hair. Zoe texted back that yes, it would be possible. Fun Girl&amp;#039;s mind spun with possibilities. By midnight, however, the wish had begun to dim. Fun Girl&amp;#039;s wig now felt like a monkey gripping her scalp. She returned home and dewigged, leaving a nude bald cap where the long blond tresses had once flowed. Her face resumed its familiar pyramid shape. The lesson: Blonds might have more fun, but the same is true of drunk people. When I wore the wig sober to meet my boyfriend, Ashwin, the next day, he noticed the new length of my hair (three extra inches) before the color. &amp;quot;Your hair grew,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;It makes you look shorter.&amp;quot;Pause. &amp;quot;And it&amp;#039;s blond.&amp;quot; Men are so weird. Still, his dislike of the new hair was reassuring, and I squeezed his hand as we walked to dinner. How, I wondered, would I have felt if he&amp;#039;d liked me better as a blond? (Turns out, even if he had liked the wig, I couldn&amp;#039;t have kept it. A few weeks later, Ke$ha requested it for her MTV New Year&amp;#039;s Eve performance. Google it. She looks Fun.) If a woman&amp;#039;s hair has any equivalent in the male appearance, it&amp;#039;s probably the man&amp;#039;s suit. Both are measuring sticks of power and sex appeal. Both can also be an armor. There&amp;#039;s no hiding from hair, and if you think that shearing it off would solve the problem, think again: A pixie cut attracts far more attention than a ponytail ever could.  Of all the colors in the natural hair spectrum, red is the most attention grabbing, as well as the rarest. My thick, rose-gold number brushed my lower back and gave me the look of a\u2014well, I don&amp;#039;t know. The rareness of red hair means that there are fewer archetypes to select from. Red might be Christina Hendricks, but it can also be Rebekah Brooks. Hendricks&amp;#039; Joan Harris coif is about as close to a breast as hair can be: big, buoyant, round, touchable. Following her arrest during the News Corporation phone-hacking scandal, Brooks&amp;#039; force field of red hair seemed suddenly to reflect everything negative its owner was accused of: crudeness, overreach, rule breaking. Both women would be unrecognizable without their signature red. Would I be unrecognizable with it? To find out, I wore my new red to my favorite coffee shop and asked for the usual. The guy behind the counter (hi, John!) responded blankly. I waited to see if he&amp;#039;d register my face beneath the new hair. Nope. &amp;quot;The usual,&amp;quot; I repeated. Then I asked, &amp;quot;Do you recognize me?&amp;quot; which now seems like an incredibly creepy thing to have said. &amp;quot;Sorry?&amp;quot; he replied, flustered. &amp;quot;Oatmeal cookie and a small coffee,&amp;quot; I muttered, handing over a bill. Eating my cookie in the crowded room, I noticed more stares (a few) than usual (none) coming in my direction, but the looks seemed to express curiosity more than sexual appraisal. The plan for that night was dinner with Ashwin. I&amp;#039;d warned him that I would look different but had not supplied further details. (Evil laugh) As I pawed through my closet, I picked up on a singular quality of red hair: It&amp;#039;s an automatic accessory\u2014almost an automatic cosmetic. With the hair pulling so much weight, I dressed simply, in a white chiffon dress, black Ala\u00EFa spike heels, and liquid swoops of cat eyeliner. The buzzer sounded. Ashwin ascended the staircase, pausing at the doorway to observe me from a safe distance. &amp;quot;You look like a Lolita,&amp;quot; he observed. &amp;quot;But an old one.&amp;quot; I hugged him. He reflexively leaned in to kiss my hair, then jerked back: &amp;quot;Whoa, can&amp;#039;t do that anymore.&amp;quot; Then he made a face. &amp;quot;I think my lips grazed it.&amp;quot; We left for dinner. &amp;quot;My biggest question,&amp;quot; Ashwin said after we were seated, &amp;quot;is, where do you keep all your hair? Does it fold into itself?&amp;quot; I explained the wig cap. He nodded. Then he squinted in a way that made me nervous. &amp;quot;You know, now that you&amp;#039;re a redhead, I can&amp;#039;t picture what your hair normally looks like.&amp;quot; He couldn&amp;#039;t? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not\u2026distinctive.&amp;quot; Ha. Isn&amp;#039;t it funny when boyfriends ratify your petty insecurities? &amp;quot;But, to be honest,&amp;quot; he continued, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not sure I would have asked you out if you looked like this.&amp;quot; I sucked violently at the straw of my watermelon juice. It\u2014the juice\u2014clashed with my hair. &amp;quot;Also, you look more freckly.&amp;quot; Okay, I said. Let&amp;#039;s stop talking, and eat. Later, outside the restaurant, I snapped a couple of pictures on my phone of us together for posterity&amp;#039;s sake and scrolled through them on the way home. The photos showed my boyfriend smiling gamely next to a grimacing red-haired stranger. He didn&amp;#039;t protest when I deleted them.  And then there was pastel. Here are some things that look terrible in pastel colors: jeans, eye shadow, lipstick. Here are some things that work brilliantly in pastels: Jordan almonds, Easter eggs, hair. Hair? Yes\u2014it&amp;#039;s true. Pastel hair has persisted since Proenza Schouler sent a lilac-haired mannequin down the runway in 2009, with starlets (Kate Bosworth, Pixie Geldof, Katy Perry, Ashley Olsen) and designers (Peter Som, Thakoon, Narciso Rodriguez) alike dabbling in the sherbet end of the spectrum. Done correctly, pastel hair makes skin glow and eyes pop. No wonder, then, that for his latest Chanel resort collection Karl Lagerfeld styled models like Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, with Creamsicle- and pink-frosted heads. My own pastel wig was a masterpiece of pearlescent blue and clouded lavender\u2014a long, thick mane that transcended its biological origin and looked beautiful quite simply as an objet. I wore it to the hardware store and on the subway. I wore it to do laundry, pick up the dry cleaning, and purchase groceries. I wore it so often because\u2014unlike the other wigs\u2014it didn&amp;#039;t make me feel sneaky. The hair announced its artificiality; clearly I wasn&amp;#039;t trying to pull one over on anybody. Also, unlike the blond wig, this was not the expression of a secret fantasy. I didn&amp;#039;t feel like a stereotype. Not surprisingly, responses to the hair divided sharply along demographic lines. Women my own age stared with poker-faced blankness, refusing to grant the attention that my appearance so loudly demanded. (Should a woman be judged by her hair? Of course not. But we are.) Women older or younger than me smiled wide. Men stared, transfixed, like babies hypnotized by television. Children went wide-eyed. I averaged about 12 compliments per hour, three-quarters from women and one-quarter from men. I acquired a lot of free stuff, too: When I ordered coffee at a bakery, the counter guy insisted on wrapping up an apricot bar because I looked &amp;quot;sweet.&amp;quot; Elsewhere I got lemonade on the house, a refill of Maker&amp;#039;s Mark, and my pants hemmed free of charge. With hair like this, who needs a personality? There were detractors, of course. When I went to a Brooklyn Nets game, a ticket taker stared at my hair in offended disbelief. &amp;quot;You colored your hair that way?&amp;quot; she exploded. &amp;quot;You really did? You did that to your hair? You colored your hair like that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Do you like it?&amp;quot; She handed back my ticket, tsk-tsking. No matter. While it is impossible to feel pretty in pastel hair\u2014nobody&amp;#039;s looking at your face, pyramid-shape or otherwise\u2014it put me in too aloof a mood to take one woman&amp;#039;s distaste personally. With pastel hair, I felt intimidating and sort of foreign. Cool, in other words. The thrill was undeniable. It was also undeniably petty. The upside of having cool hair is having cool hair. The downside is that your cool hair becomes an all-obstructing trait and the only thing that you are. It turns you into a movie extra: If long blond hair made me Fun Girl, the pastel turned me into Woman With Purple Hair in Line at Duane Reade. A similar thing happens, I think, to women who have dieted themselves down to indistinguishable twiglets\u2014fine to do, as long as thin is the one and only thing about you that you want people to think of when they hear your name. Examined in this new light, my plain brown hair was, if not a virtue, then at least a neutral factor. Perhaps the dullness that used to dismay me is something I could learn to cherish\u2014that ordinary, nonglorious brown served as a blank slate that allowed other, more important qualities to shine. Like generosity or a nice laugh or an exceptionally well-executed smoky eye. Even, depending on how you look at it, a pyramid face. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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