I’ve been dying mine for a few years, to cover the gray. I hated starting, because I loveloveloved the natural color of my hair, which was a medium brown, with a ton of gold and copper highlights, but I’m just not ready to be gray yet.
Other than that, I do pretty much nothing to my hair. It’s thick and longish and naturally curly, and I don’t even own a blow-dryer.
Eyebrows of Doom, I can’t speak for everyone, but I only wash my hair if it’s actually dirty. Otherwise, I condition, but don’t shampoo. I also use conditioner as a styling product. Yep, I condition, rinse, and then apply the same conditioner to half-dry hair and leave it in. It works as well as any styling cream, and it’s waaaaaaaaay cheaper.
Well, of course it can get dirty and if it does get dirty or exceptionally sweaty I’ll at least rinse it off, and wash it an extra time if it seems appropriate. (Then there was the time last year when I got Gorilla Glue in my hair… that required a scissors to fix)
Brushing long hair distributes oils down the length of the hair shaft so oil doesn’t build up the way it would on short hair. It also removes dust, lint, and loose hairs. The longer the hair the less often you wash it, all other things being equal.
My hair is the work of the devil. Thin, fine and mousey. I’m going grey (55, at least for a few days more) and the grey doesn’t bother me but the mousieness does. So I colour my hair (or my hairdresser does), a sort of warmish brown with blonde highlights.
Right now–nothing. I have wash & wear hair. It’s fine but it’s thick and wavy. When it’s cold I blow-dry it just because I don’t like going around with wet hair when it’s cold.
I have been known to blow-dry and style, or blow-dry and use hot curlers. I have these appliances but they’re for special occasions. Oddly enough, when I use them, I don’t really get better results than wash & wear.
I get haircuts about 3x a year and I do spend a lot to get a good cut.
No color right now. I’ve highlighted, and I went red (shade not found in nature) for awhile, and we won’t even mention the purple Kool-Aid incident, okay? There’s some gray, but my hair’s light enough that the gray doesn’t really stand out.
How it works is, when my bangs start looking greasy I will wash my hair. If I swim I’ll wash it, if I play tennis I’ll wash it. But the longer it is, the longer I can go without washing it. It looks blonder when it’s clean, but as far as style goes it looks best three days dirty.
Shower cap? I just put it in a clip. It might get a bit damp, particularly if I drop the soap, but since it’s not really styled, that’s not a problem.
My hair is naturally red and naturally wavy…so I don’t feel the urge to do anything but shampoo and condition it. I rarely use a hair dryer, and I don’t cut it until it reaches the small of my back.
For a while, I’d use color wash in the winter, to equalize my winter coat to my slightly-redder summer color.
Then I discovered how angry women 10-15 years younger than me got when it was summer and my one white hair was visible…
and then I reached the age at which every brunette I went to school with became the same shade of blond…
Nowadays, neither I nor the two natural blondes in that group dye our hair. We’ve all got darker hair than everybody else, we can be found easily in group pictures, and we have a combined age of 123 and a combined amount of less than half a dozen white hairs. Pisses the rest no end
My natural colour is mousey brown which I don’t like much so I dye it with a very nice shade of mahogany which gives it some reddish tints. It needs to be done roughly every six weeks which is also when I get it cut so that’s a good reminder.
It also gets washed daily at the moment because after I’ve slept on it, it’s flat and generally yukky so I feel much better if I wash it and blow-dry it before I head out. It only takes about 20mins to do the wash/dry thing so it’s not a huge chunk out of my morning.
I started going gray in my late teens. I thought it was kind of interesting and cool, but as I got older and grayer it became a huge distraction for everyone else. Sorta like that talk to my eyes not my boobs thing, except people were gawping at my hair instead of boobs. I tired of constantly explaining that it’s just genetics, no I don’t worry an excessive amount, yes it’s premature and I’m not really that old, etc.
I started coloring to cover the gray around thirty. It’s not all the effective as my hair grows indecently fast and I’m just not high maintenance enough to keep up with it as well as I should, so there’s nearly always a visible root line. I’m not quite ready to stop wearing my hair long though, and you really don’t see a lot of ladies with long salt and pepper 'dos out there, so I feel stuck.
I have an oversized bandanna for my long hair, I coil up the braid and tie it up in that. If the bandanna gets splashed in the bath or shower it dries quick because it’s cotton, and my hair never gets more than damp.
I actually wash my hair in the sink, where I can use that spray-rinse thingy to really make sure the soap is out. I find it very important to get the area just above the nape of the neck clean because that seems to be the worse spot for oil and dandruff to accumulate. I use a very mild shampoo, often baby shampoo, and a homemade vinegar rinse. Nothing else.
I didn’t start coloring my hair until the gray, which started appearing at age 19, got to the point where I was obsessively plucking gray hairs all the time. Since I’m not obsessive about anything, I took this as a sign that I really wasn’t happy being gray at 38…and newly divorced…and a little Clairol wouldn’t be a compromise of my identity. I knew I’d made the right decision when I saw my sister, who doesn’t color, and realized I did not ever want to look that tired and old! And…of all the women in my church choir at that time, I was the only one NOT coloring my hair, and they were all way older than me! I color it back to my original color, or something close…it tends to look redder than I’d like. When I was ten I had my braids cut off, and I still have them, so I have a perfect reference to what my natural color is.
My daughter, on the other hand, has been coloring her hair since she was 13, and has no idea what her natural color looks like anymore. She goes for unnatural shades and combinations…just dyed her hair a really bright pinkish-red because she said she wanted to be stupid one more time with her hair before growing up (she’s 27). I’ve asked to see her natural color one more time before I die!
I really, really want to go see that movie, though.
I don’t do anything to my hair except wash it, comb it, and get it cut occasionally. I went to a conference a couple of years ago, and out of around 50 women, I was the only one with their natural hair colour.
I’m currently growing out a gray-coverage misstep. Every time I try to cover my gray, the rest of my hair changes, but the gray stays. I probably would need to have it professionally done to really get rid of the gray, and I’m too cheap. So for now I’m not messing with color, except maybe some semi-permanent dye to return it to my natural color so I don’t look weirdly two-toned as it grows out. I only have a dozen or so gray strands anyway, and they’re a pretty, shiny silver.
I am toying with the idea of using some Manic Panic - either all over on unbleached hair for an undertone, or bleaching and dyeing a strip by my face. It’s my version of the mid-life crisis, I think.
I have wavy hair that tends toward frizz. I recently switched from “mousse and scrunch with diffuser” to putting in styling lotion, blow drying with a giant round brush, then spraying with thermal styling spray and running a flat iron through it. It makes it look more “done” and stylish, and I LOVE the trendy Vidal Sassoon cut I just got. It only takes about 20 minutes, and - bonus! - I can go 2-3 days without washing and re-styling, so on average I spend less time on my hair than I do if I try to make it curly.
BTW, speaking about black women and hair per the OP, I know that there are cultural and social issues surrounding what to do with black hair in America, and that many women feel pressured to straighten their hair to fit white standards. But I think they may be underestimating the pressure on all women to do all kinds of work on their hair to make it look “presentable.” If I just wash my hair and let it dry, I look like a disheveled crazy woman. I would guess that for the majority of women, if they don’t apply at least one product and one heating device, they look sloppy and “undone.” It’s that pitfall of advancing technology - what *can *be done quickly becomes what *must *be done to conform to social norms.
This is what I do. I like changing my hair, and I’m good at doing it myself so I don’t spend tons of money on it either. I get all my supplies at Sally Beauty, so the color is even cheaper than drugstore colors, plus I have a lot more choices.
My hair grows like a weed, and I keep it short, so I can get away with coloring it every month if I want to, since by the time I’ve dyed it enough to damage it - which takes quite a lot for my hair - it’s time to cut the damaged part off anyway.
Nothing at the moment. I did dye my hair to it’s natural dark dark brown earlier this summer to get rid of some of the gray, as an experiment. It was interesting to see the white disappear, but that was the first time I ever did it and I didn’t really care.
My hair is going severely white over the temples. I actually rather like the effect, so it doesn’t hardly bother me (though I am shocked at how much it changed in just the last two years).
A few years ago I dyed it auburn for shits and giggles but now I just wash twice a week, comb it out, use gel, and style it with two clips or a hairband. All of this takes maybe 5-10 minutes.
Im about 30% grey right now. I am splitting the difference, my dads side of the family tends to grey in their 20s, moms side dont go grey until in their 70s … I started in my late 30s.
I happen to like my hair color,a nice unassuming medium brown that goes reddish when sunbleached. Well, except one summer I crewed on a sailboat, and wore a kerchief to cover my hair and the bangs bleached out totally white :smack:
I’ve got very dark brown hair with silver streaks – more and bigger streaks with every passing year, but I’m still way more brown than silver. My sister, who’s four years older than I, is completely gray, and has been for several years. She’s got a very chic chin-length bob and looks great.
I wear my hair short and curly. I can’t seem to get the hang of a blowdryer to straighten my hair, and I don’t really care anyway. Sometimes I let the woman who cuts my hair put “product” in and style it, just so she has something to do besides cut it! Almost every time I go home immediately and shower off the itchy little hairs.
I’m 50, and I have very little gray so I don’t color it. I tried a temporary red rinse a long time ago, just to see. It was ok, but I’m not very “girly” and barely wear makeup.
I usually leave the house with my hair wet and fluff it with my hands while I get where I’m going.
Sometimes I let the woman who cuts my hair put “product” in and style it, just so she has something to do besides cut it! 
Almost every time I go home immediately and shower off the itchy little hairs.