Need a Real Change? Dye Your Hair

New Year’s resolutions pretty much never stick, and if they miraculously do, they take time—with one exception: hair dye. “Resolutions to eat more fruit and meditate every day and read Virgil are fine for the long-range self-improvement plans,” writes Mary Elizabeth Williams for Salon, but “any time I want to become a new and better person, all it takes is 10 bucks, a steady hand and a half hour on the roots.”

A bottle of dye is “a quick route to stunning transformation,” the cheapest, strongest “mood enhancer outside your local meth lab.” And while Spanx and mascara must be shed at night's end, a bottle of L'Oreal "will give you at least a good month, which is more than I can say for several of my relationships." Recalling her history with the “near magical metamorphic power of hair color”—in her case, red—Williams writes, “Anything this cheap that makes a person look and feel this good is worth it. That's why you'll have to pry the Feria out of my cold, dead hands.”
(More hair dye stories.)