Ours was a family of brunettes while school friends and neighbors had various shades of blonde through black. Some teachers had grey hair while others, like the principal, had white hair.
Admittedly hair color was not anything to which I had given conscious thought until one early fall day, when I was eight or nine years old, my mom took me shopping at a very nice department store. I first noticed an elegantly dressed older lady walking toward us. She appeared to be wearing a fur shrug on her shoulders, with the fox heads still attached. Wow. Continuing to, somewhat rudely, stare at the glassy eyes of her fox heads as she walked past, I lost interest in the animal wrap when I noticed her perfectly pure white hair. But as she walked away I saw that the back of her hair was blue. Blue! Blue hair. I was astonished and said so out loud, much to my mother’s great displeasure. A hushed but stern lecture followed. I did not understand her disdain towards my remark, especially since my mother and her coffee loving girlfriends would whisper asides to each other, such as “she dyes her hair”, implying that whatever lady’s standards were being discussed were not quite up to moral par. This “blue rinse” sighting was fascinating.
Later in the week, during one of my mom’s weekly visits to the hairdresser the nice stylist asked me what was new so, excitedly, I told her about the lady with blue hair. That was when I learned that the Queen Mum, whose sense of decorum was inviolable, used a blue rinse in her hair. This revelation, of course, made blue hair acceptable for the entire older female population of the British empire. After getting used to the idea of seeing older ladies with blue hair, one day I saw a lady with not a blue rinse, but a pink one. Now that lady was living on the edge.
Time passed. As a teenager, during the 60s, when bouffant hair prevailed, my mom got a call from one of our neighbors asking if she knew anything about hair color. My mother's first reaction was "of course not", but prevailed by asking what she could do to help. It seemed that her daughter had rinsed her mousy brown hair with peroxide but rather than the glorious blonde shade that she was envisioning, her hair had turned orange. At least some of it had turned orange, while the rest turned into various streaked shades of blonde and brown; the outcome being something of a deranged Kabuki player appearance. A furtive trip to the beauty salon ensued and, when they returned, most of her hair had been cut into a short pixie bob. It was quite the scandal, even then. At our house, mom repeated that cautionary tale whenever I looked longingly at a blonde temptress on TV or in a magazine.
Finally, all grown up, I moved to California. This was not just a change in country, or climate or time zone, this was a landing to another dimension entirely. No one, but no one had grey hair, regardless of age or sex, grey hair did not, and still does not, exist in California. Even today as I watch Tom Selleck on Blue Bloods, I see that he does not have grey hair and he is 78 years old. Hair color has advanced from being whispered about in kitchen klatches to out loud ordinary. Nowadays, people appear to change hair color as often as they change their socks.
Last, I remember one particularly hilarious phone call with my brother who had just returned home from visiting with our mom. He was somewhat chagrined that our mother had asked him to dye his greying hair because his grey hair was making her look old.
