Image Change Experiment – Week One

On TV, Gok Wan is always going on about changing how you look at yourself.

The people he works with start out looking and feeling fat and frumpy (for example) and after eight weeks of education about clothes and body shape (not to mention a top hair stylist and makeup artist), they have blossomed into a shapely, feminine figure who feels great about themselves and looks fabulous.

I am mid thirties and having had two children and several crises in the last ten years (I comfort eat), I am carrying about two or three stone too much weight. I have a definite hourglass body shape (that plays havoc with buying clothes), my skin is pale and doesn’t like taking a tan. I have thread veins all over my legs and even when I wax them, because I have dark hair, I have thousands of dark little dots on my legs…

And don’t even mention my hair…Okay… I will mention my hair. Normally, my hair looks like this:

Granted, that’s not a brilliant picture of me – I call it my “Mad Woman with Cats” portrait (no sniggering in the back there) – but my hair is normally a dark brown with red streaks in it from the sun and you can see that in this picture.

I’m also rather lacking in the wardrobe department – plenty of clothes, I’m just not sure if they are what I should be wearing

Today, because it’s so grey and un-summery, I was feeling a bit grumpy and down, so after I had dropped the kids at school and shoved TOH out the door for college, I decided to do a little experimentation with my hair colour.

Now, don’t get too worried, I never go that far with this sort of thing. I tend to stick to colours that only change my hair a little. I think the brightest my hair has ever been was a deep purple colour that washed out after six weeks.

The colour I chose was one that I won from John Frieda – a dark Red Brown.

Having followed the instructions to mix the colour:

1. Open Developer bottle.
2. Open Colour bottle.
3. Pour Colour into Developer.
4. Gently tilt the bottle several times to mix the liquids.
5. Change the screw cap for the foamer cap.

…I slipped on the pair of “professional” Colouring gloves. Black rubber, very kinky looking (and a little too tight – I have big hands) and started applying the foam to my hair. I had ¼ of the bottle of liquid left when I decided that I had enough. I don’t think I put enough foam on though; when I compared the picture in my mirror to the one on the leaflet, I didn’t look foamy at all…

I spent the 20 min developing time playing Puzzle Quest. The Arke Liche had defeated me four times by the time the clock rang.

Washing it out was as easy as shampooing my hair. The dye left my scalp cleanly and the conditioner provided smelt quite nice. I decided to style my hair for a change, so about twenty minutes later, after wielding brush, hairdryer and straighters I looked in the mirror and blinked.

The colour had definitely changed and when there’s light on my hair, you can see that the colour is there. It’s just rather subtle.

Strangely, I feel different.

I’m not sure if that alteration in emotion is because I did something for myself, or because I’ve changed my appearance slightly.

What Gok does isn’t just changing the clothes of the woman he is working with; it’s about changing the attitude of the person to herself. The clothes are almost a symbol of that change.

Gok throws out the wardrobe they have at the beginning and replaces it with a brand new one that suits the personality and body shape of the woman. By the end of the show, the woman (or man, sometimes he does men) has transformed and I am green with envy.

I’ve tried hard to change my attitude to myself. I’ve gone from looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a fat, lumpy, old woman to seeing a thirtyish woman with a great body shape, gorgeous eyes and lovely hair – the flabby arms, rolls of fat, saggy boobs and bloated belly, mar it though.

And no, I am not posting pictures… I wouldn’t want to make people feel sick.

Sometimes I can see the woman I should be in the mirror. I saw her this morning after I finished doing my hair. However, she doesn’t stick around for long and I really wish that instead of getting that glimpse, I could see that woman all the time.

So what is next on the experiment agenda?

I just checked my stats on the Wii Fit. I’m back to being almost 14 stone. It’s an unhealthy weight, especially as I’m getting older rather than younger. So that needs to be sorted… and the easiest way of doing that is to get into an exercise habit.

And as normal, I just had to set up a timetable.

However, this time I am going to take it a week at a time and not plan an entire month’s worth in one go – it always makes me feel bad when I don’t achieve what’s on the timetable when I do that. I’m going to do exercise that I find fun, uplifting and that I can fit into my life, rather than try to target a particular area or anything like that. As well as getting into an exercise habit, I need to get out of a failure habit. I have to motivate myself – I can’t rely on anyone else for that, it’s an attitude adjustment.

Right, here we go.

I am going to take this uplifted feeling that I got from colouring my hair, and use it to spur myself on for this week’s exercise. At the end of the week (well, beginning of next week) I’ll weigh myself etc again and report, right here on my blog. Then I’ll plan the next week’s exercise and carry on from there.