Dye another day

Is today8217;s stressed-out workforce greying faster? Is grey hair a liability in the corporate sector? The jury may be out on grey...

Is today8217;s stressed-out workforce greying faster? Is grey hair a liability in the corporate sector? The jury may be out on grey, white or black, but the world8217;s common quest to remain eternally youthful has taken a more liberal view of those who trek to the salon every three weeks to dye their hair. Never mind, if that determined shade of black was never your hair colour anyway.

There is a quiet, wordless understanding between folks who dye, who usually have a defensive attitude towards those who don8217;t. Of course it becomes easier to preach on how you8217;ll never give in to the bottle when you have a mop full of natural, shiny black strands.

The other day I met a 45-year-old cousin, a conservative lawyer, who8217;s worn his shock of white hair with pride for the last 10 years. He was absolutely the last person I8217;d expect to start on hair colouring. However, his gloomy account of what prompted him to take this drastic step sounded like a perfect storyboard for a hair dye ad. He went to pick up his teenage daughter from school and her classmate bounded off to call her, announcing loudly that her grandfather had come to fetch her. My cousin was thrown into a violent depression and he fixed a hair appointment for the next morning.

Women feel the pressure to colour prematurely greying hair a lot more than men. Of the 8, over-40 women CEO8217;s of Fortune 500 companies, not one sports her natural white hair. To reinforce stereotypes, most women would agree there is something inherently not cool about men who dye their hair. This is changing. Now we have Fair 038; Lovely cream for men, and if their sales figures are any indication, men are working on having peachy complexions.

My cousin8217;s hair colour change got him some mixed reactions. First, his kids are relieved that they can now flaunt a somewhat trendy parent, while in office some colleagues made snide references to Salman Khan8217;s hair transplant and colour. My cousin is wholly unperturbed. He claims women are noticing him more and his new hair colour has motivated him to join a gym. While the dye is being applied, he gets a manicure and pedicure and he8217;s thinking of trying out a facial. The Gregory Peck type of male is definitely going extinct.