65 Percent?!

Walking through my neighborhood back from my meeting, I stumbled upon the Pantene ProV truck.  It is quite rare to see advertising trucks in Casablanca-at least I have never seen one.

The Moroccan girl helps me fill out the sheet and she is laughing because her English is pretty much non-existent, but she tries(I always appreciate those who try because I try).

After I fill it out, she takes out a beige colored device that looks like a remote control and puts it towards my head. Being funny and dramatic, I jump away from her in fear of what she was about to do. I look inside the truck and see a girl having a similar procedure done with this device.

After her, I  jump up on the seat like a little 10 year old. I am excited to see what this remote actually does.  She takes a few strands of my hair 1,2,3,4 and “Beep, beep, beep-reading 67 percent.” Her face looks shocked and a bit sad for me. The photographer is standing in front of me and two other Pantene Pro V girls who are shaking their head.

I am sitting there a bit confused wondering what happened. The photographer says, “Not good, not good.”  I am officially feeling bad as I know that what this reading of 67 percent is not good.  The girl takes out another interactive touch screen device and I scroll through where it asks some questions about my hair type.  I keep scrolling through to the end where it says, “67 percent damage.”

My mouth is wide open and I sit in disbelief. I knew that my hair had become bad the past couple years, but 67 percent damage. I am 28 years old. Will I have any hair even left when I turn 35 or 40?

To be dramatic and funny, I ask the Pantene Pro V girl to test her own hair. “Beep, beep, beep-3 percent.” She sits and pets her hair and smiles with her cute blue braces.  We then test another Pantene Pro V girl’s hair- “Beep, beep, Beep 6 percent.” Okay so these girls have Virgin hair-they have never once colored their hair.  I have been coloring my hair since 16 and I am not 28 so that makes 12 years of color about 5 percent damage per year to equal 68 percent. 

At this point, I am sitting in speaking in my Englija (English and Darija) and making them laugh hysterically with my disbelief that it is really 68 percent and my worrying thoughts that maybe I will have no hair by age 35. 

This is clearly a sign to stop coloring my hair, but I love being brunette and blonde. I thought about growing out my natural hair color, but in the meantime I would have to walk around with unbelievable roots. My color was five months ago and I hardly ever wait that long. It actually takes longer than one year to grow out my hair because I tried to do it while traveling and it was nowhere close after eight months. 

From that Pantene Pro V truck, I bought some oil replacement, but they did not give me any reassurance that this would improve my damage.  They made me feel a bit like a hopeless cause, but perhaps that is because they really could not communicate with me because they did not speak English. Let’s hope I can improve that 68 percent!