Conquer Swimmers' Green Hair with Malibu 2000 Just for Swimmers' Kit

My first experience with “swimmers’ green” hair was during the summer of 1975. I was sixteen years old and ecstatic that my mother had granted me permission to use one of those spray-in hair lighteners.

At the time, we had an above-ground pool where my best friend and I spent our afternoons floating around on rafts, worshipping the sun. Just hours after applying the hair lightening product, I went for a quick dunk and within minutes my hair began to turn green. I can still remember the look on my friend’s face as she quietly uttered, “Uh…Kath, your hair is turning green” and her eyes were as big as saucers.

I ran inside to look in the mirror, vaguely hearing my mom yelling, as she chased after me with a mop in her hand. “You’re getting my newly waxed floor all wet. You better wipe this up, missy!” Honestly, I could have cared less about her floor at the moment. I was having a crisis and needed to assess the damage.

As I stood looking at myself in the mirror, tears streamed down my face. My entire head of hair had turned horrid algae green and was getting greener by the millisecond. My mother stood at the bathroom door, mouth wide open and chin dropped. For the first time in history, my mother and I were speechless at the same time.

After a long silence, mom turned on her heels and said “I’ll be back in a minute”. An hour later, I had new hair color. While it only took sixty minutes to get my hair back to a normal shade, I have never forgotten the horror associated with the dreaded swimmers’ green.