My hair is naturally as straight as a stick. I’ve been getting perms at least twice a year since age 12 since I love curls. People outside my family think my hair is naturally curly.
I found my first grey hair at 14 and I’ve been dyeing my hair since I was 20. (I’m 31 now). If I didn’t, I’d have two streaks of white at my temples a la the Bride of Frankenstein and lots of white tinsel scattered throughout the rest of it, and I’d look at least 5 years older.
Now that home hair dyes have developed the color I’ve always wanted to have (the darkest brown possible without being flat black…a few shades darker than my real color), I see no reason to ever stop dyeing. 
I sometimes blow dry it a little to get it to line up better. If I could find something that would take the static electricity out of it, I’d use that. Especially on those dry days when it sticks to my face and tried to slide into my mouth and up my nose.
Seriously. Could someone develop a metal barrette with a wire tail that discharges it or something. Although I suppose it would have to be long enough to go to ground, and that would make it a trip hazard.
I do a lovely (for me anyway) combo of mahogony and a purple kinda of tone that looks very good. I get it professionally done, and get my hair cut as well. I pay a good chunk of money for it.
I used to be one of those who didn’t do anything to my hair but wash it, but I got tired of it (and me) looking like crap. I look great with this cut/color, not washed out and mousey. Started wearing makeup, too.
Suicide redhead? I’ve never heard that turn of phrase before.
Thanks for the responses about washing/not washing. I didn’t know long hair can go for longer periods without looking dirty than short hair, I would have guessed the opposite. I keep my hair very short and use a wax on it every morning so I wash it every time I take a shower.
I haven’t dyed it recently, though in the past I have gone purple, white, red and for a while I liked to do a blue-black.
Perfect description of the titian do-it-yourselfer, IMO. I stole it from Eve. 
And your hair is gorgeous. You have the lovely type of natural graying that looks like it’s professionally highlighted or something.
Being 80% gray at 35, mine doesn’t look shiny and attractive so much as oddly haggard. At some point, I’ll chop it all off and stop coloring. I can see a short punky silver look being a fun way to get off the color carousel, but I can’t so much see a way to grow the color out gracefully while it’s still long.
I have a close friend who did this very thing. She’s in her late 50’s, I think, but her spiky, punky salt and pepper hair definitely suits her!
Ah, thanks – I wasn’t fishing for compliments (welcome though they are), just giving myself up as an example of someone with a lot of gray who wears her hair long.
I think you’d look really cute with a short, sassy cut.
Mine’s naturally boring brown, with a few silvers sprinkled in. I’m actually kind of interested to see how my hair will gray. I dyed it black for a few years and loved it, but decided I didn’t want to keep it up for the rest of my life!
I don’t have a good style right now, but fortunately it looks about the same if I work on it or if I don’t (i.e., scraggly and wild). I’d have it cut if I knew what to do with it.
Mine is mostly medium brown, but is developing quite a bit of gray. I basically wash, condition, then end up going to sleep with damp hair. It’s long (mid-back now) and incredibly straight. I used to color it red, but gave up on that when I started going gray. I’m probably the only person I know who loves their gray hair.
I will get it cut eventually, but I’m growing it out for Locks of Love right now.
I have dark brown Grace Slick style hair, only longer, which I have never dyed with anything more intensive than those Color Pulse week-long hair dyes. I got a spiral perm once when I was a teen, though it didn’t take and fell out within a week. For the four years, I have done absolutely nothing to it except wash, brush and trim my bangs and spit ends up. I don’t even blow-dry–ever.
That might be changing, soon, though. I’ve already found a couple of grays over the past three years (I’m 23) and they stand out to some extent because my hair is so dark. I have hypothyroidism (which can be associated with premature graying, AND my maternal great-grandpa was completely gray before he was twenty, so there may be a genetic link on top of it). My hair is also starting to get a slight, loose wave to it (before, it’s always been bone straight). I think I’ll probably let it “age” naturally in terms of both the graying and the curling, at least for a little while; once it looks gray-gray, I may experiment with hair color. And I know I’ll be too lazy to flat iron it all the time should it become any curlier with age (my mother’s hair was just like mine until she had kids [at 25, so about my age], and then it metamorphosed into waves/loose curls)
My mom is in her late forties and has dark brown, almost black wavy hair down to the middle of her back, and it has a bit of gray in it, especially around her temples–I think (and tell her frequently) that it looks absolutely beautiful (and if she ever gives in to peer pressure to conform to social norms and chop it off and die it, I’ll kick her). It looks like she has honest-to-God sterling silver wisps in her hair, and when the sun shines on it, she looks like an Azoulay painting of Angelica Houston. So if I should be lucky enough to have it go gray like that, I’ll definitely keep it.
I think “Suicide blonde” is more common, and it is usually followed by “dyed by her own hand”
Add me to the list of white women Oprah doesn’t know. I like my natural hair color.
Around age 17, I had some blonde and red highlights. Then from the summer after my senior year of high school through the end of my last year of college, I dyed it bright blue (minus the four months or so I lived in Japan, where I just bleached it white-blonde). For the last nine months or so of that it was also a mohawk. After that, it’s just grown out in its natural color.
If I’m going out someplace nice or I have a client meeting, I’ll usually take the time to blowdry my hair with a round brush. Otherwise, I pretty much just drag a brush through it and let it air-dry on the way to work.