Last December, at the ripe old age of 31, I finally decided to do something I’d always wanted to do: I dyed my hair blue. And I love it. In fact, I keep wondering why I didn’t do it sooner — and this video of a little girl with pink hair just intensifies those thoughts. She’s so into it, and it’s adorable. In fact, I’d go ahead and call this the definition of the phrase “living your best life.”
Charity LeBlanc’s YouTube channel and Instagram account (@charity.grace) are both full of colorful hair, artful makeup looks, incredible fitness routines (you might remember her as “Spider-Mom” — she went viral for her acrobatic workouts earlier this year),and her family — often all at the same time. A recent video combined two of those key elements, walking viewers through the process of dying her daughter Felicity’s hair pink. According to LeBlanc — who often sports brightly-colored hair herself — Felicity had been asking for pink hair for a long time, so she finally “went ahead and bit the bullet,” as she put it. And you guys? Felicity could not be happier about it. I mean, just look how excited she is as they get ready to get down to business:
LeBlanc used Manic Panic’s Amplified formula to get the job done — and yes, this kind of dye is perfectly safe to use on kids. It doesn’t contain any ammonia and “relies on natural vegan dyes that mostly sit on top of the hair,” notes Manic Panic’s FAQ; it’s even safe to use when you’re pregnant. Indeed, as Lauren Warehime, who owns the salon Rock Paper Scissors in Maryland, explained to Scary Mommy, “Direct dyes like Manic Panic are unable to do anything to the hair other than stain the cuticle layer. They can’t lift natural pigment and their molecules are too big to penetrate the hair shaft like permanent color.” She added, “It is literally the equivalent of dying Easter eggs.”
What’s more, although rainbow hair typically requires you to bleach your hair before applying the actual color if you want to make sure your strands are really bright, LeBlanc specifically skipped that step because Felicity is so young. “I’m not lightening her hair because I don’t want to cause any damage to it,” she expressly noted in the video. Additionally, because the dye itself was semi-permanent, she knew it would wash out quickly — in fact, she told Scary Mommy, “It only lasted three days (which was one of the reasons I picked that product).”
To get Felicity’s hair that perfect shade of cotton candy pink, LeBlanc put a styling cape on her to protect her clothing and applied the color with a brush:
Then she let it sit for 20 minutes, after which she gave Felicity a bath to wash it all out. The reveal was filmed the next day, and it is glorious:
You can check out the full video here:
Of course, many people on the internet have a lot of Opinions about LeBlanc’s decision to let her daughter dye her hair a funny color, and while many of them are supportive, others are… uh… not. Not unlike the response that professional stylist Mary Thomaston got when she posted pictures of her daughter, Lyra, with “unicorn hair” — which, similarly to Felicity, had been Lyra’s own idea — comments from some viewers on both LeBlanc’s Instagram and YouTube have harshly criticized her parenting choices.
And, honestly, I think that’s BS. Neither LeBlanc or Thomaston have put their children in harm’s way; as Thomaston said to TODAY in September of 2016, "Some people are saying I'm poisoning her by putting these toxic chemicals on her scalp — I'm not. It's Manic Panic. It's non-toxic; it's not harmful. It's basically a super, highly pigmented conditioner. I'm not going to harm my child." Sure, it might not be a parenting choice that you would have made — but that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to make that choice, either. It’s not a dangerous one, and the parents are perfectly within their rights to make it, regardless as to whether everyone agrees with them.
What’s more, I am firmly of the opinion that giving kids the freedom to express themselves through their appearance matters. It teaches them from an early age that they have autonomy over their own bodies — that they’re allowed to wear what they want, to style their hair how they want, to look how they want. It teaches them that they don’t have to change their appearance simply because other people may not like it. It teaches them that their choices are their own — and it teaches them that no one has control over their own bodies but themselves. That’s one of the most important lessons kids can learn… and it’s a lesson that any adults would do well to learn, too.
The bottom line is that if Felicity likes her pink hair, that’s all that matters. And you know what? Even if she loved the idea of having pink hair beforehand and hated the way it looked when it was done, the dye will wash out and her hair will grow out. That’s another good lesson to learn: A bad haircut is not the end of the world.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a salon appointment to make —because my blue hair is definitely due for a touch-up.
