Most people get their first gray hairs in their 30s-40s. Do you embrace it as a sign or aging, or do you dye your hair to cover the white/gray hair? Bob Barker of The Price is Right game show surprised many when he changed from jet black hair to snowy white hair, seemingly overnight. Shows are taped well in advance, and following a long break in taping shows, audiences were surprised when he “suddenly” appeared with white hair. My mom did the same thing one time. She quit dying her hair and was suddenly white-haired. Is it different for men and women? Do you/did you dye your hair? Is there too big of an emphasis against white/gray hair?
I have some white hairs and am getting more and more. I’m not dying my hair because I think the contrasts are interesting, as does my husband. Also I like the particular shade of white, and it is white not gray. Finally, I’m just not sufficiently worried to want the hassle dying would bring. What I am finding bizarre, having had straight as straight hair all my life, that it is now starting to curl, which means I have no idea what to do with it style-wise, as bits stick out where they always lay flat before!
Interestingly, my younger sister who for much of our lives has had the same natural hair colour as me has been going gray for some years now, and does dye her hair. I can only think I take after our father going white, whilst she takes after our mother going gray. Her hair has always been wavy though. She did comment on my new-found waviness, saying I must have been eating my crusts!
I have dyed my hair in the past, before it started going white. Ginger in my teens: I’d always wanted red hair. And brown at one point when I really needed to be taken seriously. Apparently research shows that people automatically take brunettes more seriously than blondes, so I gave it a try.
My husband is going gray/white which contrasting with his black hair looks very distinguished.
I have heard David O. McKay was quite insistent about keeping his Colonel Sanders white hair just so.
And I do think this is a case of male privilege. Women generally pay a heavier price for not “keeping youthful looking”. Sad but true if you ask me.
For guys there is also the option to just shave it all off.
I think there’s a negative connotation to the word vanity.
I don’t necessarily begrudge anyone for dying their hair, but I can’t see any way that changing the color of your hair, whether you’re dying it blue, purple, brown, or blond, the only explanation can be vanity.
Because the opposite of vanity is to leave the color of your hair the way God gave it to you.
It is sometimes vain to dye your hair, but sometimes not. It’s not a yes/no. I don’t mind my white hairs, but I did recently dye it because I was just bored with it. If I didn’t feel it would look unprofessional and cost me business cred, I would have done some kind of bold color choice like that platinum gray / purple that’s popular. And once you dye it, you have to keep doing something with it or it grows in weird with different roots than the rest. I don’t want to damage it by stripping out the color, so it’s a better option to color it again.
It’s interesting that more women dye than men, which I certainly think is true, but I suppose that’s for several reasons: 1) culturally, for women, youth & beauty are what make us attractive while for men it’s wealth which often comes with age – that’s one reason we say men look “distinguished” with age whereas women just look too old to be fertile, 2) women often have longer hair than men, and women are encouraged to experiment with appearance in ways men are not. If a man thinks he looks better with darker hair, I’m sure he’ll have no qualms about dyeing it.