It was in my family when I was growing up, but it wasn’t directly addressed out loud like makeup was. Lipstick, eyeliner and blush were definite hard “NOs,” but it was kinda implied that hair dye was too.
Not that I really wanted to dye my hair when I was a kid. The curiosity kicked in later when I was in college, and that’s when I started experimenting with box dyes and at-home highlighting kits… Mind you, I wasn’t good at any of it, and I’m 100% sure my hair color looked terrible because I’d always leave the color in too long, or the hair color in the back would be applied hella patchy.
Girl, I was a mess!
I see kids in elementary school and middle school now with vibrant hair colors like blue, purple or pink and think, “Wow, your mom must be a cool mom!” — ’cause that wouldn’t have flown in our conservative house.
My brother was actually the one who was more curious about it than I was! He’s always been a rock ‘n’ roller, and when he was in sixth grade he managed to scrape together enough to buy some Jolene cream bleach. (Ya know, the one used for upper lip hair? I used it and rocked an orange mustache pretty hard back in the day, LOL!) He used it on his head for some terrible DIY orange streaks. Funny thing is, my parents didn’t notice for months. I’m talking at least half the school year. I was in college at the time, and when they finally figured it out, my brother left a cryptic four-word message on our shared landline voicemail (!) — “The jig is up.”
I immediately knew he was talking about the hair dye.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Yes it totally was! Granted my idea of hair dye was crazy Manic Panic colors, which my parents did not approve of. But when I was in high school my group of friends thought we were “punks” so it was the cool thing to do. I dyed my hair hot pink once in the middle of the night and my mom didn’t speak to me for a week. Her idea of dealing with problems is the silent treatment, lol! I sometimes still want to do a couple of crazy colored streaks in my hair, or do an ombre teal color like Kylie Jenner did once. I don’t think the job I have now would even care!
I never really brought it up but yeah, I don’t think my parents would have been too keen on it, either. Nowadays kids get to go to the salons with their parents to get funky colors in their hair. I would have loved that.
We used Sun-In back in the day. Basically peroxide with a spray pump. Not really hair color but, for people (my one friend) without any warm undertones, it could lighten your hair quite a bit. For everyone else, it was I Love Lucy orange. Actually, not really, since it was brassy and bad. I started coloring for real, for fun, in my early 20s and then to cover gray in my late 20s. I’ve had a lot of highlights over the years but never a funky color. It would be fine for me to have whatever hair I wanted at work but I’m pretty Plain Jane. 🙂
Yes I remember Sun-In! It was the only thing I was allowed besides sitting out in the sun with lemon in my hair… Brassy streaks on dark hair what a look it was lol
Diana, they still have it! I was really surprised to see it for sale on Amazon. And I remember the lemon, too. Of course, back then, sun damage wasn’t really talked about like it is now. I shudder to remember spritzing the Sun-In and slathering on the baby oil. 🙂
Totally not forbidden, esp. since my Dad used it himself — he was a box color man on weekends to cover his gray. ;D I had been trying to get eggplant purple for the longest time (a goth desire of mine) but could not figure out that I needed to LIFT color to DEPOSIT color. Durrh. Luckily, my aunt was a hair stylist and she helped take my hair to its maximum straw-ness with blond streaks. heehee…
I was not allowed, like your household they were quite conservative. and even more than that a my mom thought my hair was so pretty and long that she believed it would destroy my hair. it took me until three years ago at 31 to dye my hair what i called debra messing red. omg. it was the most terrifying thing i ever had a professional do to my hair.
Nope, not at all. But my Mom dyed her hair red, still does, and she was a belly dancer, so we grew up kinda loosey goosey. I started dyeing my hair red when I was 16. Went back natural at 20. I’ve had pink hair and blue hair. My 16 year old had bright blue hair for two years, now she’s blue black. My 12 year old had bright red hair that’s faded so we’re doing dusty blue denim this evening because school pictures are tomorrow. It’s just hair. And these days hair color isn’t frowned upon as much. It’s self expression. I love it. In fact, I’m going Rose in a month or two. I’ve got some greys and I flat out refuse to go grey!
Hi Karen ,
This is an hysterical subject I can now laugh about .
I’ve sayd this before having grown up in the 60’s I sported black hair , black eyes and white lips !
My father would look at me through his newspaper and ask point blank : Do you blacken your eyes ? Do you blacken your lips?
I actually morphed on the way to school . Hiked up my skirt , changed my shoes and put eyeliner on in the girls bathroom!
I even used a cream brown eyeshadow in my crease . People would ask me to close my eyes so they could see it !
Not much is different today . Just no white lips !
Oh, white lipstick! I think a version of it made a brief comeback in the late ’80s? I remember frosty white/pale pink being a thing. 🙂
Oh man, when I was a teenager I wanted red hair just like Anne of Green Gables – but I wasn’t allowed to colour it until I was 18 & finished high school. 18 is also the age I found my first gray hair! I used temporary rinses at first, then when I started graying I went to a salon for highlights.
Kept colouring my hair until I hit 35, and decided to see what my natural colour was – I really liked it, so these days I’m all natural, rocking my ‘platinum highlights’ aka silver hairs.
Ahh, Janet! When I grow out my silver hair I’m going to have to borrow your “platinum highlights” phrase, LOL! 🙂
I have naturally red hair and I’m 31 but I’m pretty sure my dad would still cry if I dyed it. My parents aren’t conservative at all but dad loves red hair! Dad quote: “I prayed and prayed for a little red-haired girl and God’s been laughing at me ever since.” 😂
OMG totally! I’m the oldest AND the only redhead in the family so it was drilled in my head, from birth, to never, EVER, color my hair. Now, on the wrong side of 40, I still haven’t. (I did, however, shape up those Brooke Shields 80s eyebrows 🤣)
Yes- hair dye was forbidden as was cutting my hair! I could not wax my brows or was I shown how to maintain them! Makeup was permitted after 15 but no quinceneara was involved, but nail polish was always allowed. When I was in college I used to love those temporary boxes of hair dyes from the mid 90’s. Good for 6 washes. Basically all they did was slightly tint my dark brown hair but I felt like I was living man!
I have extremely dark hair…between a blue black and a soft black. I’m school everyone used Sun In but I knew it wouldn’t work for me. In college I tried all the dyes and was sad when I couldn’t add any highlights given my hair color (remember Glintz anyone). Then we discovered bleach from Sally Beauty and used it to achieve a bright stripe of coin yellow. I thought I was so cool.
Fast forwards twenty years later and I finally got caramel highlights and loved them. My husband is extremely conservative and pretty much talked me out of the crayon colored looks of the late 90s and even highlights (he was sure it would turn that hideous metallic red that many of my fellow dark haired box dyers get)
Finally at 40,I said I’m doing it. Ive let them grow out a smidge since I finally am loving the darknes of my hair.
But this summer I may do a color. Weirdly my younger son loves spray on colors like turquoise and begs to get his hair colored.
My mom always felt there were more important things to be able to say NO to than hair dye and nail polish. She felt that it was a hard argument to make without sounding pretty arbitrary and she wanted to be able to really hammer in on the dangerous stuff. Her compromise was basically, if you screw it up, you have to pay to fix it.