u/Asleep-Childhood9952

I’ve just got back from the hair salon and honestly want to cry. I know that sounds dramatic, but my hair is now so dark it looks almost black and it’s completely washed me out.

My natural hair is a medium-to-dark brunette. I’m starting to go slightly grey at the temples and several months ago I used L’Oréal Casting Crème Gloss in Light Brown, which gradually faded very orange and brassy through the lengths. I later had a salon gloss that initially looked much better, but the warmth eventually came back.

Today I explained that I wanted to get rid of the orange and return to a natural, glossy “expensive brunette” not blonde, but with soft dimension rather than one solid colour. The salon put a toner over it and it has come out almost black and very flat. My roots and lengths are now extremely dark, and it doesn’t feel anything like the natural brunette reference photos I showed.

My hair also feels increasingly dry, porous and frizzy, so I’m frightened of panicking and causing more damage. I realise the toner will fade, but I’m worried it will simply fade back to the same orange underneath and I’ll remain trapped in this cycle of brassy hair followed by overly dark toner.

What should my next step be? Is there anything a colour-correction specialist could safely do to soften this now, or do I have to wait for it to fade? Could the excess toner be gently removed without bleach, and would subtle highlights or another technique eventually give me a softer, more dimensional brunette?

I definitely won’t try to fix it myself, but I’m struggling with how dark it is and don’t want to wait several weeks if something safe can be done sooner. When would you contact another salon, and exactly what would you ask for?

Any honest advice from colourists or anyone who has experienced this would be really appreciated.

I attach a photo of now (black!) and my natural hair colour before I started messing around with it.

Bulky calves/legs despite being slim everywhere else – has anyone actually managed to slim theirs down? Cavitation?

Hi everyone. I hope it’s okay to post this here. I’m getting increasingly upset and fixated on my legs at the moment, and I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced something similar.

I’m 36, 5’6 and around 55kg, so fairly slim overall, but my legs have always seemed disproportionately bigger than the rest of me, particularly my calves. I can remember struggling to get skinny jeans over my calves as a teenager, even when the rest of me was tiny.

My ankles are relatively slim, but my calves are quite full and bulky. My thighs and bum carry more fat too, although the calves bother me most. When my legs are relaxed, I can grab quite a lot of soft/doughy tissue and, if I squeeze it, I can see lots of little lumps and dimples underneath the skin. When I tense my calf muscle, though, there seems to be much less tissue to grab. I’m also starting to notice a strange fizzy sensation in my lower legs but not sure if this is lower back pain related or just in my head!

The fronts of my thighs can have a cellulite-like texture too which seems a lot worse since I had my daughter.

I’m slim through my stomach, arms and upper body, so I don’t really want to lose much more weight. I feel like I’d just become very thin everywhere else while my legs remained disproportionately large.

Recently I’ve started spiralling a bit about whether I could have lipedema. I know that’s something that needs proper assessment rather than an internet diagnosis, but I’ve read so much about it that I’ve become quite anxious and find myself constantly examining and squeezing my legs. The idea that there may be nothing I can do to change them is getting me down more than I’d like to admit.

I also know that even if it were lipedema, there isn’t a simple cure, and specialist liposuction isn’t something I could afford anyway. So I’d really like to step away from obsessing over a diagnosis for a moment and explore **all the realistic things I could actually try to improve the appearance, size and firmness of my legs**.

Has anyone with naturally bulky/fatty calves and otherwise quite a slim body successfully made a noticeable difference?

I’d particularly love to hear about experiences with strength training or Pilates, walking/running/cycling, compression or lymphatic drainage, radiofrequency/body contouring, and especially **ultrasound cavitation**. Has cavitation genuinely reduced fat or centimetres from anyone’s calves, or did you find it a waste of money?

I’d also be interested to know whether anyone discovered their calf size was actually a mixture of fat, muscle and/or fluid rather than purely fat, and whether that changed what worked for them.

I’m not expecting completely different legs overnight. I think I just need to feel as though there are practical things I can work on rather than continuing to Google, worry and convince myself that nothing can ever improve.

**If you’ve genuinely managed to make bulky calves/legs slimmer, firmer or smoother, I’d be incredibly grateful to hear what worked for you – even if the improvement was relatively modest.**

Thank you ❤️