Had no idea the percentage was so high. Why don’t you like what nature gave you? Is it because you’re gray or you just don’t like your hair color or what? I though women were more concerned about their health. All those harsh, dangerous chemicals on your scalp and getting into your skin and your bloodstream.
What makes it worth it? Is it the fear that you will be less desirable with your natural color hair? Do all your female peers color their hair so you’ve got to keep up or be the “old lady” in the group?
I dye my hair roughtly every four-five months and don’t wash my hair every day. Here’s why:
I don’t need to wash my hair every day. It doesn’t get greasy that quickly.
I like dying my hair. I like changing colours, trying new things, looking different. I change very little about my appearance, usually. It’s fun and harmless, as long as I don’t do it too often (when it does start to hurt my hair).
Why is this necessarily vanity? Would you call it vanity if someone got a new haircut every few months?
I think it has to do with unsecureness (sp?). Many people might feel that they don’t look good enough, etc, and when they color their hair, they get a sub-conscious message saying: “Ok. Now I’m a new person. I’m looking good!”.
As for the gray hair, that’s just a fear of growing old. If you don’t have to face the truth you’ll be okay.
Why assume vanity? My wife puts a reddish tint in her hair every now and then just for the hell of it. She isn’t vain, she doesn’t otherwise do anything with it, she just likes a little different color every now and then.
Why do you change your clothes? You were born with nothing on, and yet you change your appearance with clothing because clothes are necessary. Do all your clothes look the same? Or do you wear blue jeans and a red t-shirt one day and black chinos and a grey sweater the next?
If you change your clothes, why can’t people change the colour of their hair?
I’ve dyed my hair light auburn a few times, just for the heck of it. I don’t think it’s vanity any more than buying a new shirt is vain. I haven’t sprouted a grey hair yet and I don’t know what I’ll do when it happens - probably not much. It’s just hair.
My youngest sister has sported several shades of red, just because. She uses her hair as an accessory, much like the wild earrings she likes or the tattoos she’s gotten. It’s just the way she wants to look. In her case, I’m suspecting insanity rather than vanity…
I dye my hair every 3-4 months, but not to cover any gray, as I don’t have any. My hair has become an odd, multi-colored, and rather freakish-looking muddle of hues – platinum (no, not white), blonde, red, black, and brown. Seriously. Given a couple of minutes I can find hairs of all those shades on my head, quite easily. When I leave it like that, it looks unwashed or like a really bad dye job, or something similarly unpleasant. So I just add a light dye, a non-permanent type that’s easier on the hair apparently, to tint some of the lighter colors to auburn. It at least “smooths out” the color to something more natural-looking, and I still have a fair amount of darker (brown/black) hair visible.
For me, I liken it to finding clothing colors that suit my complexion better (yellow makes me look sallow, for instance), using concealer on facial blemishes, or choosing a haircut that suits my face and personality. Hair is dead after all (except at the root), and one shouldn’t work dye into the scalp anyway as you’ll stain your skin.
My hair isn’t trashed out by it, either. I notice increased dryness for a few days following the dyeing, but nothing as dramatic as this article suggests. Then again, I’m not getting my hair bleached out or using one of the more extreme long-lasting dyes. It’s more of a tint than anything; you can’t even notice roots as it grows out, only that my hair is looking more muddled in color.
I don’t have any statistics, but I’ve noticed quite a few men who dye their hair to avoid grayness; women aren’t unique in this respect.
Some of it is a vicious circle: if most women cover their grey, then the ones who don’t don’t just look their age, they look much older. Many women start going grey at 30-35, but grey hair says “grandmother” to a lot of people. For a professional, this can really be a carreer liability–if you are climbing the corporate ladder, you don’t want to look like youare on the “winding down” side of your carreer.
I, myaself, teach just so that I don’t have to worry about this bullshit, butI can recognize that it is a real issue for professional women.
I’ve dyed my hair every color of the rainbow, my fav was purple. Not for vanity, but for fun! having the same color hair every day of your life is boring!
Not just for women, either…I used to work with another book editor who was maybe 5-10 years older than me, and I found out HE was coloring the gray out of his hair.
He felt agents and authors wouldn’t consider him Hip and With It and Possessed of a Youthful Pizzaz if he showed gray.
I haven’t dyed my hair in 3 years because I refuse to cut my hair, but I had fried it. Solution? Stop dyeing it for a bit to let the old stuff grow out and be cut off. Right now my hair is at my tailbone, and my shortest roots are 3" below my collarbone. Heck, I can’t even say I have roots anymore, I have two tone hair.
Why do I dye my hair? It’s fun. Having the same colour hair gets boring after a bit, and it’s neat to experiment with different shades. Now that most of my hair (all the hair directly around my skull) is my natural colour, do I feel insecure or anything? Of course not.
As soon as my roots get to at least my waist, I’ll cut the remaining fried ends off and do veggie dyes (no ammonia or peroxide, it coats the hair instead of soaking through, so it’s less harsh), probably in a burgundy shade. If I ever do cut my hair, I might go to permanents again. Why? Because they’re fun.
Oh, and even when I had fried hair, I never washed my hair every day. Every other day is my schedule. Your hair will adjust to the time period after a few weeks, and overall it’s much easier on your follicles (in many cases).
I’ve never dyed my hair because it’s already pretty dry and I don’t want to damage it. But I think funky colours (red, blue, purple etc) look fantastic ! It’s kind of too bad that around these parts if you dye your hair something bizarre like that you are branded as ‘alternative’ or ‘punk’ or something … I wish they could become more mainstream.
… if it didn’t involve peroxiding my own chestnut-brown locks I’d do it myself. maybe once it turns gray.
I don’t dye all of my hair, just one little strip down the left side of my face. It’s a dark blue/purple, while the rest of my hair is dark brown. I tried to find a temporary dye for my hair, but the only thing I could find that would show up on such dark hair was a colored gel, and that left my hair all hard.
Why do I? Because it’s fun, and it looks pretty. Very few people I know dye their hair any interesting colors. (Blonde, blonde, black, and red. Snore.) It’s also pretty subtle, because there’s brown over it, and it doesn’t show if I tuck my hair behind my ears.
And I do wash my hair everyday (mostly.) I just don’t wash the blue part. I rinse that, and wash the roots, and just wash the rest of my hair regularly.
I started getting gray hair at 18. I thought it was grossly unfair to have gray hair while my mother didn’t (not to mention gray hair and acne simultaneously). For a long time, I just let it do its thing, but one morning in my late 20’s I decided to put my hair up, and in the front there was more gray than brown. That’s when I gave up.
FWIW it’s dyed as close as I could get it to its natural color (dark brown).
I started dyeing my hair about 5 years ago. Why?. Because I was bored with it. I didn’t want a perm, bad for the hair, so I went with a color slightly lighter than my own. For the past 3 years or so I have used Fiera exclusively. My current color is “Chocolate Cherry” and matches my complextion better than my original color, although I did go with deep purple for a while.
As to washing, I have never felt the need to wash my hair every day. As it is very thick and waist length, it would greatly run up our water, shampoo and electricity bills if I were to wash it every day.
I’ve dyed my hair the gamut from blonde to punk rocker red for about 10 years often changing hair colors every two weeks or putting a different shade in. Sometimes it was at a salon so they would strip the hair and put in another and that killed my scalp. Like others, I did it because it was fun, just a mood thing, if I felt like changing my hair colour I would.
A few years ago I was at a petting farm, and a baby goat thought my hair was straw. He tried to eat it. Was I surprised, not really, because it felt like straw. I touched my ex’s sisters hair, which has never been dyed and it was so soft. I wanted soft hair again. So I stopped dying my hair and letting my roots grow out. I don’t think you can call them roots because the last remnants of my dyed hair is down the middle of my back but I would dye my hair to cover grey when that time came. In the meantime, I still get urges to colour my hair, but I like the condition that its in and it took me years to get it this way so I think I’ll stick with it for now.
I started going grey at 30. I don’t have anything cool like a grey streak at the temple, it’s not very attractive at all. I guess it’s vain to dye it, but I don’t really appreciate staring at evidence of my own mortality every morning while I brush my teeth. I buy a 7.00 box of clairol once a month and it take about an hour.
Coloring your hair isn’t all that damaging if it’s done correctly. I dye mine every 5-6 weeks. I love it. Maybe I’m vain, I don’t really care. It looks fabulous.
Because I think black makes a nicer contrast with the blue eye and pale skin nature gave me than brown does.
Cite?
What makes it worth the, let’s see, maybe 4 hours and $50 a YEAR it takes me to do it? It’s not that big a sacrifice.
Do you feel more desirable wearing an outfit you think you look good in or an old ratty bathrobe? And as has been asked, how its this any different than wearing nice clothes or doing any of the other things people do to look nice?
