When I came across this vintage Sun-In ad this morning, my brain immediately flashed back to the summer of 1995, when I thought I'd give myself some highlights and ended up looking like a human Chee-to.


While Sun-In may have been a highlight lifesaver for some, I either didn't follow the directions properly or the solution had a weird reaction with my often-chlorinated swimmer's hair, as my "highlights" left me with a bright orange mop atop my head that took months to fade away. It wasn't the worst of my hair disasters, however: there was a truly heinous haircut during my freshman year of college that left me with about an inch of hair on my head and Kate Gosselin-eque bangs (which I later trimmed myself, which made things worse, as I looked like a four-year-old), and of course the time I spent a summer continually dying my hair a shade of drugstore-brand red, which left me with faded purple hues and creepy blood-colored dye stains in my shower. And then there was the time when I decided to go back to my "natural blonde" by attempting to bleach the red out of my hair, which left me looking like Pink's sad, slightly deranged older sister.

There's not much you can do with a terrible haircut but let it grow, and dye jobs are often fixable, though they come with a price, for both your wallet and the overall health of your hair. Over the years I've learned that I'm a total idiot when it comes to my own hair, and that dying and trimming are best left to the professionals. Of course, in a recession, that means my hair has to go through awkward periods of growth and obvious roots, but in my case I'll take the hair of someone who hasn't been to the salon in a while over the hair of someone who looks like they just stepped out of a Kajagoogoo video from 1983.


So what were your worst hair disasters? And how did you fix them?

Sun-In [Vintage Ads]