One appearance choice does not fit all (a continuing series)

[firecat]

A friend who is a musician was told that in order to make a better impression at auditions, she needed to dye her hair.

I used to dye my hair for fun. I currently don't dye my hair because I am enjoying watching it turn gray. But occasionally someone thinks my OH is my son, and then I feel tempted to start dying it again.

So I am wondering about the reasons people dye or don't dye their hair, and your thoughts about hair dying in general.

Poll #3554 Hair dye choices

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 68

View Respondents

Do you dye your hair (using permanent or semi-permanent dye)?

View Answers

Yes
16 (23.5%)

No
20 (29.4%)

Sometimes
22 (32.4%)

I tried it once or twice
12 (17.6%)

I'm thinking about it
9 (13.2%)

Ticky box!
7 (10.3%)

Why or why not? (Feel free to elaborate in comments)

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What is your gender identity?

View Answers

Comments

[hobbitbabe]

I haven't put in highlights for about 18 months, because I wanted to get enough of the silver to take pictures. I'm probably going to get highlights done next week again. It's been an interesting experiment, noticing the situations in which I mind looking my age (except for the hair, I'm still often taken for 10-15 years younger than my actual age.)

[tylik]

So I'm personally pretty boring on this one. Twice a month I shave my head.

But my sister just bleached her hair and dyed it blue, something she hadn't done in years. Since she's no longer working as a stripper, she no longer has to maintain that wholesome girl next door look, and so she back, as she says, to her roots. (Apparently working in a toy store, or as an aerialist, or as an aerialist instructor doesn't require wholesome girl next door looks.)

[eggcrack]

I've only dyed my hair twice in my life, but my younger brother dyes his hair regularly, and also uses a lot of hair products that I don't even think about using (such as gel and mousse). I was planning to cut my hair short and maybe even dye it sometime this summer, but it has also lost volume lately so maybe it's better not to push it.

[zeborah]

I once dyed my hair green, or tried to. I wanted it to be forest-green, some parts lighter and some parts darker, just like hair would be if it naturally grew green. (I may have been reverse-Mary Sueing the main character of a story I was writing...) It came out a lot subtler than that because I had quite long hair so we didn't actually have enough dye. The only comment I got from a stranger was "What shampoo do you use?" and it turned out she thought the green was discoloration so she wanted to avoid that shampoo...

But I've never wanted to change the colour other than that. Some hairs are starting to go silver, which I think is pretty; I think I'll still think it's pretty when it's much/mostly/all silver, or at least acceptable enough that I needn't spend precious time 'fixing' it, but I guess we'll see.

[snippy]

I've dyed my hair several times over the years--the first was when I was 14, just henna but it did change the color, texture, and shininess. I've never lightened it, only gone darker or added a color-burgundy, purple, darker brown. When I started getting a lot of grey, I wanted to see what it was like to have grey hair, and I find I really like my hair with grey in it.

Although the fuzzies around my face now look like a halo (because they're grey and very wiry, unlike the brown wavy/curly mass), and I don't especially like that. I dislike it less than dying it, though.

I don't rule out dying it again, but not to "cover grey to look younger." I think I'd only dye it an interesting color for fun.

[rivenwanderer]

I put in purple streaks once every month or two. The dye I use fades to a not-unattractive shade of pink after three or four weeks. Since my hair is a fairly light color (medium-light brown), I don't need to bleach--I don't think I'd dye my hair at all if bleach was required. I really like purple, so it's nice and comforting for me to have some with me all the time, and I like having a "this person is not 100% mainstream" marker (though I'm obviously not gutsy enough to get a more permanent body mod for that purpose). It's also convenient sometimes to have a descriptor of how I look that's not focused on my body or the way I dress. I started dyeing in college, when a lot of my peers were experimenting with coloring their hair, and stuck with it because I like it.

Re-dyeing my hair is kind of a barometer for how busy I am and how willing I am to take time for self-care--it takes most of an evening for my girlfriend and I to dye my hair (it's more work because of the precision of the streaks, and the length of my hair). I might not take an evening off to relax or go to the hot tub or whatever, but eventually the sight of my hair fading will drive me to schedule in a night to re-dye. The process itself tends to relax me, so I think it's a good thing. Ideally, I think once every 6 weeks would be a good frequency to recolor, but sometimes I go for as long as 4 months (my mental image still has purple hair even when it's practically faded to nothing).

[treacle_well]

I've been playing with my hair color for a long, long time, for decorative reasons. First bleaching using spray-in "Sun-In" (do they make that any more.) Then a too-orangey tint that my hairdresser wanted to try. Colors I've tried have usually been blonde (I used to be naturally blond) or reddish of various shades, and while I don't dislike my natural color, I do like reddish a lot. I do have gray now, and at some point I might get curious and let it grow out, but I'm so used to coloring and like the results, so experimenting with completely natural color may be a long time off.

[sqbr]

As I said, it makes my scalp react badly so I don't do it often, but for some reason my mental self image has auburn hair even though my natural hair colour is a rather blah dark brown, so I do really like having dyed hair. I'm less fussed about covering grey, especially since I don't have much of it.

[torachan]

I have never dyed my hair consistently, but I started dying it occasionally in high school and have kept that up, sometimes going for years in between doing it. I like having different colors and trying new things, but it's a real pain in the ass for me, especially because I have very dark brown hair, so to dye it anything other than black, I have to bleach it first. Also sometimes I buzz my hair, so I can't dye it then.

I have an increasing number of white hairs, which are clearly visible since my natural color is so dark, but I would never dye my hair just to hide the white. I think it looks cool.

[azurelunatic]

Also in the very dark brown hair camp, and since I have been claiming that blue is my natural hair color off and on since 1995, the bleach thing makes me despair. In addition to having hair this color, I maintain long hair (growing it out since '01), so bleach is not really an option.

I think all of the previously-dyed bits have now gone, although a tabby look would be interesting.

[lorres]

I've colored or bleached it on and off since I was 13. I've got very straight sort of generic light brown hair, and I also have done permanent waves on and off, just for something different. I like to play with fashion and costume and have always considered by hair to be part of that. Lately I have a really talented colorist who does highlights in two different colors of red. I like the way it's really different than my natural color but it looks very very good with my skin color, which is very pale. I'm old enough so that my hair color is not going to make anyone think I'm younger than I am. Anyone who takes a good look will know my age. I'm not concerned with looking younger and have earned every wrinkle and gray hair that I have. But if heredity has much to do with it I probably won't have much gray hair for a while longer yet. I think I'd like to have really light silvery hair and wouldn't mind if it was wiry. At least that's what I think now.

[maize]

I had a lock of my hair bleached once, which I did like. (I had very long hair at the time, so "a lock" was rather a lot of hair.) I think I'd be curious about dying my hair if I worked in a company where people, especially men, commonly did that for show / pleasure. I think that hair dye for that reason can be fun.

I tend to dislike the idea of dying one's hair for concealment, especially to conceal signs of aging. That sounds like it should have some fancy political basis, and to some degree it's informed by a general approach that I'd rather be people be comfortable in their natural state, but in the end I must also admit that part of it is that I often find silver/white/grey hair hot on other people.

Right now, the bulk of the grey I've gotten in has been in my goatee and has been the occasional hair here and there rather than a mass change, so the question is moot for me. I don't *think* I'll dye when it becomes a more practical question, though.

[firecat]

I often find silver/white/grey hair hot on other people.

I have a memory of going into a local drugstore that's near a senior home and seeing dozens of "dye your hair silver/white/grey" products on the shelf. But it must have been a dream because I have gone into multiple stores selling hair products since then and haven't seen any.

[maize]

I've seen such products for men. I think the most interesting product from a sociological standpoint is, "Touch of grey," which IIRC is intended for men. The idea is to not entirely eliminate the grey, but reduce it so that there's just a little -- to give the distinguished element without the "old man" element, I guess.

[amadi]

There are such products, they're just really hard to find. There is a product somewhat more easily found meant for brightening/whitening already grey hair, but it's not exactly a bleach, so it won't whiten darker tones. My aunt used it in the winter when lack of sun exposure made her hair dull with an unpleasant yellowish cast.

I'm now also reminded of how it used to be a thing to use bluing in grey hair to make it more silverish, but really made old ladies the first people to have "hair colors not existing in nature" and resulted in the epithet "bluehairs."

[cleverthylacine]

I thought my hair would look cool turning grey. It started when I was 21. And it did, when it was a few silver threads here and there.

But by 28 I was salt-and-pepper. And I'm a Winter, and it made me look OLD. Like, way older than I was. And brought out all the uneven colour in my skin. So when I was 28 and dyed my hair for Halloween, my friends kind of surrounded me and said, "You'd be crazy ever to let it go back," and I wasn't even annoyed because I had already realised that this was true and they were right.

Not because ageing or grey hair are inherently unlovely. But because the way my hair looks when it's half-and-half does not flatter my skintone at all.

So I dye. And get really irritated when people who are all granola tell me I shouldn't, because they are sure my grey hair is just lovely, or because I shouldn't care that I'm getting older and people might judge me unfavourably, and I can't possibly actually know what my own hair looks like and be right about finding it unflattering.

[firecat]

Down with the hair police!

[nolly]

I think when my hair starts going grey / white naturally, I'll probably try dyeing it something unnatural at least once. Until then, I'll think about it, but probably not do it, because it would take a lot of bleaching for anything to be visible, and that doesn't appeal to me.

[usqueba.livejournal.com]

I used to color my hair. I don't any more cause my hair is long and thick and it's a PIA. Also it's course so the color doesn't stick well so it fades after a while ::sigh::

I have a friend who started going grey in her 20s so she started coloring it.

My hair is brown with faint red high lights. I wanted more red in my hair so I colored it.

FWIW, I don't have many grey hairs. People keep assuming my housemate is my daughter :P. We're only 10.5 years apart. I think they're trying to figure out our dynamic (me, my husband and the HM).

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I'm a second-generation hair dyer. My mom was bleaching hers with peroxide and Lux soap flakes in the 1940s, and by the time I was around, doing all kinds of goofy things with color, from a skunk stripe over her left temple to adding food-coloring to make it green, pink or blue whenever she went into the hospital to have a baby. She *stopped* coloring it when she started to gray, because she said the gray was as much fun as the color without any of the hassle.

I seem to have followed in her footsteps. I started coloring mine (mostly various shades of red, including shades that never grew out of a human head) when I was 27. I quit last year because I needed to look "older" for a play, and I haven't bothered starting again because the gray is pretty groovy. Though I still like to mess around with streaks of wild color now and then.

100 percent for fun, for me, like virtually every other fashion choice I make. My personal sense of style amounts to "every day a costume party."

(It was kind of disconcerting this past weekend, though, when johnpalmer was visiting and I had my hair styled like this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kightp/4713809578/) for a theatrical role. I felt like his *grand*mother.)

[hislittlekitty.livejournal.com]

I dye my hair. I hate the exact shade that my hair happens to be naturally. So far I just go darker, but when I get brave enough for bleach I'll be going with purple or blue highlights.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I have dyed my hair many several times through the years. It is currently my natural color augmented with large sections of royal blue.

I dye it because hair is an accessory - obviously it's a slower growing one than, say, an earring collection but it is part of the general aesthetic I want to play with and express. It's FUN. It ought not, as with makeup and other performative markers of any particular identity choice, be imperative and/or compulsory; if it is, it's not fun any more.

[kshandra]

I have repeatedly said that if I had sufficiently infinite funds and patience, I would find a stylist who would protect the individual gray strands on my head, THEN bleach the rest and dye it purple. As funds and patience are sadly in short supply, I have found that the "highlights" route (wide chunks of hair picked up separately for treatment) gets me a similar satisfaction. I'm about to call my colorist in preparation for Burning Man, and trying to decide if I'm going to go whole-head this year, since I work for a company that won't care.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I've enjoyed watching my hair turn gray. I'm old enough to claim the privileges of age.

When I wanted a streak of unnatural color in my hair, I was advised that extensions were a better idea than dye, because my hair was and is rather delicate. I had fun with the turquoise streaks, but did not renew them.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

The dye removes the feeling of cognitive dissonance that I had been starting to get between the way I looked and the way I feel inside. Plus, I can do a cool-looking front streak just by NOT dyeing that bit!

I do not dye my own hair. This is one of those things that I consider well worth the money to pay a professional to do it right.

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

I also have cognitive dissonance between the way I look and the way I feel. Thank goodness on the internet no one knows that I'm grey (or something).

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I've never dyed my hair - the reason why has changed - when I was young there was no way I could have afforded a colourist good enough to know how to deal with hair my colour. Nowadays I don;t do it because my hair is naturally a colour that it is hard to do with dye and (I worry this sounds braggy) I think it's gorgeous so don't want to do anything else with it.

I have decided that if I knew I was going to lose it I'd cut it short and dye it an unnatural colour first as I'd love to know how I'd look like that.

[ona-tangent.livejournal.com]

My hair is so dark that dyeing it never made much of a difference unless I bleached it first and that wasn't worth the hassle. If my hair color ever lightens up I will start dyeing it fun colors.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I only dyed my hair once -- when it started coming back in after the first renal failure, it was very thin and I put on a red/purple dye to add some thickness and color.

However, when my hair started coming back in after the second renal failure, it changed color by itself. I'd had medium brown hair up until then and now I have dark brown hair, and curly.

In the last three years or so, I'm getting the familial silver hairs at the front edges of my hair. They're translucent so light flashes on them and they look silver.

[leandra333.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen my original hair color since I was 17 (the age I was allowed to start dying it) and will continue to dye it until it turns totally white. I should have been born a redhead, dammit!

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same thing you are: I'm enjoying watching my hair turn white. Since it is taking its sweet time, and it was light to begin with, this does not make me look older than I am. People don't think my SO is my child at this point, but perhaps once my hair is totally white, they will.

But I reserve the right to dye it if I get bored. I did get bored before the white started coming in and after the red leached out, so I dyed it back red. What I didn't like was the upkeep and maintenance and expense, so I quit.

Sometimes I'm tempted to be a brunette or dye it bright blue.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i had my hair all sorts of colours when i was young. i even bleached it, which might sound odd for a blonde, but it was the days of punk and i was at art school, and i needed a bright base for dye. nowadays i have it natural and long to best see the 'grain'. my mother still has blonde hair whereas my granny, having a late baby, went straight to silver, so i have no idea if or when my hair will turn. i stare at it sometimes and wonder if strands are white or just part of the blonde. it's like a science experiment. i am quite grateful not to have to think about dye because i am so hypersensitive to things.

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

I'm going grey in the front, in streaks.

I like how it looks, except that the grey hair has a different texture than the rest, it's more 'wiry'.

I've only dyed my hair for a couple of brief periods, and would not consider it now.

[tanteterri.livejournal.com]

I have been dying my hair since my 30s just because I always wanted red hair; so then I had it.

Now I dye my hair light light blonde because my "gray" hair is coming in white, and I can go longer without having to dye my hair.

I'm thinking of having my hair bleached, because lately I've been wanting hair that is clearly dyed, not natural. My hair dresser couldn't understand this when I tried to explain I wanted big red chunks of hair in with my blond and I ended up looking like a strawberry blond.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I do know one person who went grey when she was quite young and was very comfortable with it, but wound up dyeing it to conceal the grey in time because she got tired of being consoled by people (she worked in a public-facing job) for going grey so young.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

My hair stubbornly refuses to turn grey. When I do start getting white hairs, I'm going to have a hard time deciding whether to keep dyeing it green or not.

As to why I dye - it's hard to say. I only hit on the green about a year ago, and already it feels so much a part of me that when I was briefly (a few days) returned to my "natural" haircolor, I felt extremely self-concious and awkward. Nowdays I have to remind myself of why people will sometimes stop and stare at me. "What are you looking at?? ... oh right." :D