Friday, March 07, 2008

Men, Do Not Dye Your Hair

And, speaking of human enhancement, do not, gentlemen, dye your hair. The matter of male hair dye has intruded on almost every conversation I have had recently. It even came up in relation to Nick Cave's new album. Each of my interlocutors has retreated, traumatised, in the face of my vehement opposition to the artificial colouring of the ageing male's hair. It doesn't matter with women - they start dying their hair soon after they're born. For them, the process has been normalised. Older rock stars like Cave are expected not to look quite right. But a hair dyer who is neither female nor a rock star is an abomination. They never look right. This is partly because they always get the colour wrong. I have seen wealthy, prominent grandees who look like Duracell batteries - copper-coloured top -  and ordinary drones with lined faces surmounted by improbably black mops. Some think they can mitigate the worst effects by 'leaving a little grey around the temples'. This, of course, makes matters worse by establishing a stark and deeply implausible contrast. But chromatic ineptitude is not the only issue. Dyed hair always, for some reason, makes men look older, an effect that rapidly descends into grotesquerie as the years go by. Also I cannot get over the rather old-fashioned idea that it is not a masculine thing to do. Men should face the body's rotting with a heroic chin, a glass of whisky, a good book and a wry smile, not with a bottle of Grecian 2000.

14 comments:

  1. Thank you, Gok Wan!

    Dear Aunty Bryan,
    I've noticed, with curiosity not alarm, that the pubes go grey first. I've noticed a few down there already even though the head is au naturel and light brown. Should one dye or shave?

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  2. Yeah, Nick Cave's gone for the classic Sex Offender Out On Licence look - nice, but we at Celebrity Beauty Office ask, is it still cutting-edge rock&roll? Maybe the 'tash is a wee bit too much...

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  3. The pubes problem is alien to me, Ian

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  4. Shaving your head seems to make you look younger, or at least ageless. Look at Ben Kingsley - he's been somewhere in his 30s for the last 30 years.

    One of my tutors at university had totally white hair even though he was only in his early 40s. Everyone thought it was cool; some because they saw it as a sign of maturity & power, myself because it put me in mind of Twin Peaks' Leland Palmer, whose hair goes white overnight after murdering his daughter.

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  5. There appears to be no logic to the whole deal. Random decrepitude.

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  6. Do you mean something in the vein of Clarkson getting in and out of those little Italian cars ?.

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  7. Interesting (tho not universally applicable) point about the pubic area, Ian. Bill Connolly once remarked that his nether regions now looked like Stuart Grainger. Probably the only amusing thing he ever said.

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  8. 'scuse my pedantry but that would be stewart granger - known to his family as james stewart, a name he couldn't use professionally for reasons of coincidence.

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  9. It's a virtual world these days. Hair, Grecian 2000, shaving - it's so twentieth century. Paper-thin, fully flexible, high-res LCD screens aren't far off. The day will soon come when you'll be able to cut a screen to shape, stick it under your pants and change the colour of your pubes at the flick of a switch. I believe even current technology allows 16.7 million colours to choose from, which means you'll be able to change your sex-god hue every day for at least 45,000 years.

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  10. you look like an old fart some people go grey at 20 some people have a young looking face at 40 let the colour their hair but not you ian you would just look silly

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  11. I play in a band, but only part time so I'm only a part time rock star! I also dye my hair because lets face it, you dont want to see your granded headbanging on stage or singing "Wicked game" by Chris Izzaks, it would be just silly. I guess this makes me a pert time abonination then!

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  12. At 43, I tried dyeing my hair subtle shades of atomic turquoise and shocking blue. I now use a number 2 attachment on a pair of clippers and shave my hair off to a length of 2mm. I shave off my moustache and look about 6 or 7 years younger. I agree with elberry. Don't dye your hair, if you don't like it get it shaved off. It shaves off years in looks.

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  13. I don't think that's a fair assumption. Maybe chubby middle-aged man shouldn't dye his hair, but I'm 16 and in shape, and I think my hair looks much better dyed. You also have to take care of it, as most older men don't. Sad thing is, I dye to hide the grays... at 16.

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