I think you should go purple. That totally just screams "Professional journalist" to me.
You do what you want to your hair, but it seems that every time I get layers, it sucks. But then again, I do nothing to my hair except wash and brush it. Curling is a once in a blue moon type of thing. Layers always seemed to end up with the layers having split ends and looking frazzeled, and the rest of my hair was ok...so the layers were really obvious.