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Image submitted by Ellie Dawson-Moore

A lot of people like to express themselves with their clothing. Can the same idea apply to the color of somebody’s hair? Junior Ellie Dawson-Moore thinks so.

“I started in middle school and then was self-conscious for the beginning of my high school career. After a year, I decided to have less care for others’ opinions and be more focused on myself,” she said.

For Dawson-Moore, different colors represent different times in her life. For example, her orange hair reminds her of happiness and easy summer days. With the help of the social media phenomenon TikTok, hair dye has become a popular way of expressing oneself, and certain hairstyles can even represent a certain mood. Dawson-Moore dyed red hair reminds her of a harder time in her life.

“The red hair was kind of a TikTok trend, where if you had red hair it meant that you were not doing too hot,” she said.

For her this was intentional, knowing at least some people in the community would know the meaning when they saw her red hair. Another big reason that she dyes her hair is because she gets bored easily.

“I always dye it when I get bored, and I hope that will fix something,” Dawson-Moore said. “But every time, I just get bored again and change it again.”

Currently Dawson-Moore has the front half of her hair black and the back is a blue pink fade so she’ll have to wait until the black fades or grows-out before she can dye it again.