Tuesday, February 6

to dye or not to dye, part two

A not-so anonymous poster placed a comment in response to my post on going grey. The comment essentially is what would russell do?

A brilliant thought I had not yet had. I marched off to my bookshelf and pulled out Russell's book "Men's Style - the thinking man's guide to dress" to find out. (BTW Russell, notice the repeated plugs for the book, I could use some swag in return)

Chapter 12 - Hair. I will save you Russell's take on the mullet, and just note that he is in favour of the traditional standbys when it comes to choosing a hair cut. Hmmmm, this isn't helping yet. But wait, the next section is Colour. I sense an answer coming.
There is nothing unmanly about wildly dyed hair - as long as it's obviously fake. Paradoxically, it's the dye job that aims at looking natural that tends to make men squirm. We can joke about where we get our tips bleached yellow, but we probably won't joke about our normal-looking dark brown hair if we are hiding the dark secret that its true colour is grey. It's the kind of thing we will whisper about others ("Do you think he dyes his hair?") rather than boast about ourselves.

And yet men are hesitating less and less about getting natural-looking dye jobs, just as women always have.Why not? If the technology is available to make you look ten years younger, then you should have no fear in indulging it.

I could go on as Russell debates the merits of D-I-Y kits and the salon. But his general conclusion is that it's better to go wacky and different and fashionable, then try to match your natural colour.

Judging by the comments and Russell's advice, it appears I'm going to go grey gracefully.

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