Trying out a new hairdo can be nerve-wracking business. Sometimes stylists have a hard time making your vision come to fruition; perhaps, they are too liberal with the chops of their scissors, or they send you out of the salon looking the same as when you walked in. But, the most harrowing hairdo trials and tribulations are the ones that occur at home.

Case in point: today’s terrifying tale that stars the poor college student pictured in the photos above. Believe it or not, the two shots feature the same person, Estelle, a 19-year-old from France. The first one shows the beautiful student modeling for a snapshot and the second one shows Estelle with a “lightbulb head,” as she calls it, after enduring an allergic reaction from hair dye.

Estelle went through the ordeal after she tried out a new brand which included paraphenylenediamine (PPD), a compound found in 90% of hair dyes and one that, unfortunately, is known to cause allergic reactions in some users. 

What’s interesting about this student’s case, though, is that the reaction began slowly, manifesting itself as an itch on the scalp which commenced several hours after she washed out the dye.  Apparently, she didn’t think much of it at first; she simply visited her local pharmacist and purchased a cream to treat the minor symptoms. Two days later, though, she woke up to the picture you see above, a severely swollen head.

In an interview with Newsweek, Estelle spoke of her terrifying medical ordeal caused by the beauty product. “Before arriving at the hospital, you just don’t know how long it will take for you to suffocate, if you have the time to get to the hospital or not,” she said.

Luckily, for Estelle, she seems to have made a full recovery. “I pretty much laugh at myself because of the incredible shape of my head,” the university student said.

That said, Estelle is willing to face potential embarrassment so that she can better educate the public on the harmful ingredients found in hair dye. “… my biggest message is to tell people to be more vigilant with products like this, because the consequences could be fatal. And I want the companies who sell these products to make their warning more clear and more visible,” she said. 

We’re not going to lie, we are definitely going to pay a lot more attention to those warning labels the next time we dye our hair! Estelle sure is a brave and selfless young woman to share her story.

To see more photos of Estelle’s ill-fated new hair look, be sure to watch the video below. The clip is in French, but, even if you don’t speak the language, you’ll certainly get a better idea of her horrible ordeal!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this hair dye allergy disaster. Are you surprised to see that a hair dye allergy could be so bad? Have you ever experienced something similar before? If you so, what happened?