Being a Burger

After Beah generously provided me with authentic Beah Burger garments, I decided I would go through with my original plan to be a Beah for Halloween. She hooked me up with the good stuff: leggings, a skirt, a white t-shirt, and her trademark red sweatshirt.

That left me with just a few items to provide myself: glasses (optional), footwear (flip-flops will do), and a wig.

I heard from Koklynn that finding a wig would likely be difficult so close to the holiday, even at a seasonal costume store. But, on Halloween Eve she texted me with good news. She was in Walmart, and was able to grab one of the last wigs as they were flying off the shelves. The only problem was that the only remaining wig was blonde, and Beah is not:

I figured this wouldn’t be a big deal; I could just dye it. Girls are changing their hair color all the time. Unfortunately, the only spray-on hair dyes they had were weird colors like green, so I decided to go with a more intense coloring solution. Koklynn told me it probably wouldn’t work, since it isn’t real hair, but I still went ahead and picked up some product:

I also found some cheap red glasses, which aren’t exactly the same style as Beah’s, but close enough. I popped out the lenses though because they were making me dizzy.

The hair coloring instructions were more complicated than I expected, but I dove right in and started coloring the wig. It was a pretty messy process, but I contained as much as I could to my bathroom sink and I was wearing the provided gloves. Unfortunately, during the process I learned a couple of things:
1) This stuff gets airborne (and on everything in the bathroom) very easily.
2) I need to get a new comb.

The wig was a little too long in the back to match Beah’s hair, so while I was coloring I also decided to cut it to a more accurate shape. To make sure I got this right, I put the wig on and cut in front of the mirror. I also thought it would be easier to color this way. Turns out it was a great way to color my face:

Not only did it color my face, I also noticed at one point that I must have poked holes in my gloves, because both of my hands became stained. They’re still dyed, even after a shower and several hand-washings:

After about an hour of careful application through every layer of fake hair, I finally had the entire wig colored, and it actually looked pretty good. I was amazed at how much I was able to change the color, and when wet the wig’s style really came close to matching the real thing. Here’s the color I was able to get, with an uncolored lock in the foreground for comparison:

Satisfied and extremely proud of myself, I started to think about what it would be like at work. I even imagined a scenario where I would get there really early and sit at Beah’s desk, and see if arriving coworkers thought I was her until I turned around. To make sure the color really set in, I let the wig sit for an hour.

After an hour, the last thing I needed to to was rinse out the excess coloring agent. As soon as that warm water hit the wig, I knew I was in for an EPIC FAIL. Here’s what I soon saw… a wet blonde wig:

If I wasn’t wearing Beah’s clothes, I’d probably just re-color the wig and not rinse it, and risk staining an old sweatshirt. But I couldn’t pass on a chance to wear the real deal.

By this time it was too late for me to find another solution, so I had to settle for “Beah Burger wearing a blonde wig” as my costume. I dried the wig on my heater (I don’t have a hairdryer), put on Beah’s clothes, and became this:

Unfortunately, if you just look at my face, I look like Liam Sullivan’s “Kelly” character:

Happy Halloween.