Simple Suggestion #148 revisited: Naturals of the World, Unite!

It's been a year since my hairstylist/neighbour put some natural plant-based dyes into a small swatch of my bangs. Since that bit of silly blue hair, I've decided that I'm done with all haircolour, and I've been delighting in the folks I know who are leaving their hair to be its natural tint. As my hair moves beyond ash to glacial grey, it's nice to know that others are comfortable with colour changes. We are aging gracefully, or something!

And there are solid ecological reasons to leave our hair in a natural state. To put it simply, with places like Johannesburg living with water shortages, droughts in other parts of the globe, and what's sure to be another dangerous wildfire season in parts of Canada again this year because of climate change, the idea of spoiling our local freshwater with all those chemicals for the sake of haircolour seems just plain wrong. I can live very happily with what Mother Nature has given me, even if it isn't trendy.

In an effort to encourage others to live more simply and less chemically, I thought I'd offer a poem I wrote almost ten years ago. Feel free to share it with all the Naturals you know.

Naturals of the World, Unite!

Naturals of the world, unite!

Those whose tresses have some grey or white,

All who are whom they’re meant to be,

Join in uncoloured unity.

We refuse to join the throng

who sit in salon chairs all day long

In chemicals and net and foil

while stylists all around them toil.

They say, “Hair that is ash or white or grey

makes you look like you’ve had your day.

Auburn, burgundy or maroon

will have you looking younger, soon!”

The beauty business stole my mind.

It brainwashed me, but now I find

that a haircolour “personality” quiz

can’t tell me what my true colour is.

Mother Nature seems to know best

the colour I need, so here’s the test:

Can I accept Nature’s reality

as party of my “personality?”

Why so much stress on eternal youth?

What’s so wrong with living the truth?

Does grey hair make me less than the ones

who live by the adage, “Blondes have more fun”?

My head may not look as young as theirs,

but I’ve worked hard for my grey hairs,

and I don’t feel the need to be

masked like a celebrity.

Greys like me used to be the main target

of the hair colouring industry market

but things have changed in the last ten years.

Now it’s going after my teen daughters and their peers!

“But Mom, everyone is colouring their hair,

and if I can’t do it, that’s just not fair!”

The incidence of hair colouring is up 50 percent

but the hair industry won’t tell us how much we’ve spent.

So Clairol, L’oreal and Garnier

over my head will have no say.

Nor will I give them a single cent

for their brand of hair luxuriant.

For when I think of the water I drink

running through the beautician’s sink

full of chemicals and dyes,

I ask myself, is colouring wise?

Where does that coloured water end?

How many ecosystems do I spend

to have that manufactured look

we see in many a beauty book?

If I want to be treated or pampered,

the planet’s environment shouldn’t be hampered.

And neither should I be with chemicals

or with psychological pressure from hair-dye commercials.

‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free

from chasing my roots eternally.

So friends, please join me in my quest

to lay these hair colour demons to rest.

I am who I am, I’m real, I’m free

in voluntary simplicity

I’ll forgo hair dye’s needless mask,

and am sure to tell others, if they ask:

Naturals of the world, Unite!

Those with tresses dirty blonde or mousy brown or plain black or silver or white

All who are whom they’re meant to be

Join in uncoloured unity!

JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO NATURAL!

Simple Suggestion #148... Go natural

This won't be a popular moodling, but I'm not out for popularity. After seeing a hair colour commercial last night that almost made me gag, I'm done with tippy-toeing around this topic. You're getting my real feelings here today. And if you colour your hair, you might not want to know my real feelings, so you've been warned. I guess I've lived long enough that I can be an opinionated woman on certain subjects...

Before I get any further, I'll be honest about my past hypocrisies. I have coloured my hair -- twice. My first grey hairs appeared when I was the tender age of 23. I pulled the two of them out. But then I thought, why be so vain? Greys are a sign of character. I'd always admired salt-and-pepper girls my age. Unfortunately, the that didn't last. Not long after my third child was born, my sisters and I had a girls' party with a box from Clairol. My hair was very salt-and-pepper at that point, so we picked up a rich brown that wouldn't make the change seem too obvious, and, voila, a "new me." (Not really, though that's one line with which marketers make their money.)

Every time I washed my hair during the weeks following, I watched chemical colour run down the drain. Seeing the sullied water bothered me, but as I wasn't too concerned about our environment at that point in my life, I ignored my unease. Years later, when my sister-in-law and I turned forty within two weeks of each other, we went to a snazzy salon in Le Marchand Mansion and spent an outrageous amount of money on colour -- with highlights -- and a cappuccino on the side. My hair never felt so soft and manageable or looked so fantastic, and the salon's coffee service was good, too.

So why do I have issues now with the hair colour industry? Well, for the same reason that I have issues with anything that complicates life, consumer culture in particular. It has a way of manipulating us (and sometimes, those around us) so that we think we need to change just for the sake of change (and for the sake of consumerism's bottom line, but it never mentions that). If I had the time, I could dismantle just about every beauty boon, cosmetic craze, or fashion fad there is, but today I'm picking on hair dye. When a larger portion of the world's women every day are subjecting themselves to unpronounceable chemicals (ever try to read the side of a hair colour box?) in order to spice up their lives by spiffing up their locks, is that really a good thing?

I wish you could meet my dear neighbour, back alley Mary, who died of lung cancer (she was a smoker) in the summer of 2009. She was a funny and delightful woman that I just loved to talk with whenever I saw her. We chatted about everything and anything over our respective fences, shared gardening tips, and she taught me to make pickles, perogies and pie crusts. She was like an extra grandma to my youngest daughter, and overpaid my kids for shovelling her sidewalks. We all loved her and the pies and pizzelli she brought to our back door. You'd be hard pressed to find a better neighbour or friend.

Several times during our over-the-fence chats, Mary commented on my salt-and-pepper hair and how lovely the grey looked. I thanked her, and commented that if she would go natural she'd be even lovelier than she already was. She pulled at her perm- and dye-damaged hair, saying, "Oh, I could never do that. My hair is already white -- see the roots? I'd look so old." And I'd look at her outrageous strawberry blonde or brassy brown with those white roots showing through and think, "Who has done this to you? Who has made you think that white hair isn't beautiful on a 74-year-old?"

We know darn well who has done it. Who can't name several hair dye brands without even trying (men will know Grecian Formula if they watch hockey, right)? We've all seen the commercials featuring stunningly beautiful women with incredibly shiny coloured tresses flowing around them like cascades of riches. The one I finally saw last night (my girls tell me it's been around for a while) featured an adorable Aussie or Kiwi actor saying "Kate's more beautiful now than the day I married her." I have yet to meet a real human being married for 15 years with two kids who has hair that looks like Kate's, and I have yet to see a hair product advertisement with a model who has unevenly greying hair like mine. Of course, marketers won't make much of a living if they encourage people like me to love the hair we have. Their reason for existence is to create artificial needs, so they tell me I should be like Kate perpetually and "wash that grey right out of my hair" until the day I die. Like dear Mary did.

But if you know me by now, you know I'm a rebel who can't stand that kind of conformist blather. The last time I wrote on this topic was in October 2010. Today I went looking for fresh stats, and couldn't find any, which makes me wonder if the hair colour industry doesn't want us to realize how much of our lives' hard work goes toward paying for colour-in-a-box. According to an undated article I found in 2010 on the Marie Claire magazine website, in 2008, 1.6 billion dollars were spent on home hair colour in the US, $490 million in Mexico, $180 million in India, and $400 million in the UK (Canada doesn't register on a New York magazine's radar). Increases in sales of in-home hair colorants from between 29% in the Middle East to almost 180% in the Eastern Bloc countries were reported since 2002. I'd love to have a penny for every dollar we spend now.

Of course, not a word in the article about the chemicals in hair colour, lovely sounding things like 6-Methoxy-2,3-Pyridinediamine, 2,3-Naphthalenediol, N-Cyclopentyl-m-Aminophenol, and Acid Red. Try repeating those 5 times in under a minute. If unpronounceable chemicals with numbers attached don't scare us, just the smell of them combined should. In 2010, the David Suzuki Foundation released a report on some of the toxic substances in our personal care products, and hair dyes were the second thing singled out because some colourant chemicals have the potential to cause cancer, or contain heavy metals that are toxic to the brain.

But let's put concerns about chemicals messing up our bodies aside because nobody believes in them anyway... let's guesstimate... let's just pretend that out of 34.5 million Canadians, a fifth of us (or 6.9 million -- I'll bet that's a modest guess because a lot of guys are into this racket, too) buy six fourteen dollar packages of home hair colour per year (gotta keep up with those roots, right?) to the tune of about $85 dollars a year. That would mean that Canadians spend about $586 million on nearly 42 million do-it-yourself dye jobs per annum. And if we use a modest twenty litres of water to wash the chemicals away each time... that's 840 million litres of dye-polluted water. When you take into account the fact that the average person needs five litres of clean water per day to live in a moderate climate, and you realize that about 780 million of our brothers and sisters in the developing world don't have access to drinkable water (data from http://www.unicef.org/wash/ ), it doesn't take a genius to see that all the good water we waste colouring our hair could go a long way...

If you want to argue with my stats, guesstimation, or math skills, be my guest. I never was very good at those subject areas. But water issues are becoming critical in a lot of places in our world due to climate change, and the needless use of chemicals contributes to the pollution of land, air, oceans, and us. Do we need to dye our hair? Do we have to buy personal care/beauty products that contain toxins? Must we follow fashion trends? Or is there any way, any way at all, that we can live more simply?

Going natural is one way. I have a deep respect for those women in my life who have never felt the need to colour their hair, but who accept themselves as they are and take aging as it comes, with grace and humility. They're the ones who inspired me to post the video below a few years back (excuse the poor sound quality -- I don't actually have a lisp), and since then, several other friends have joined me in living more simply in this regard. If it inspires you, or you want a copy of my poem to share with friends, my email address is under "profile" on the sidebar, and I'm happy to share, especially if it gives others the "permission" they need to truly be themselves.

Naturals of the World, Unite! And share the news with all our "dyeing" sisters and brothers -- free them from the idea that they have to hide those greys or improve their tresses at the expense of their health or our world's diminishing freshwater supply... because today's suggestion to go natural is just another small step we can take to make the world a better place.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Hair: Natural or Not?

I'm not talking the musical from the sixties. (But did you know its full title is Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical? I didn't!) I'm talking hair enhancement, so if you love to colour or otherwise enhance your hair, you might want to skip this moodling. Really.

My beautiful sixteen year old daughter came home from a friend's house with her lovely brown hair a fresh auburn colour two weeks ago. It's not the first time she's coloured her hair. Two years ago, she went for pink highlights, and she was auburn this spring, but it grew out. The colour looks wonderful on her, actually. I do like it. But something is really messed up when gorgeous teenage girls think that their hair is boring and they need to do something to change it.

I'll be the first to admit it -- I have coloured my hair in the past. My sisters and I had an evening with a box from Clairol not long after my third daughter was born. My hair was already greying at that point, so we picked up a rich brown (the ingredients of which I never thought to question) of non-permanent colour and, voila, a new me. Every time I washed my hair that week, I watched colour run down the drain. Years later, when my sister-in-law and I turned forty within two weeks of each other, we went to a snazzy salon and spent an outrageous amount of money on permanent colour -- with highlights. My hair never felt so soft or looked so fantastic.

So why do I have issues with the hair colour industry? Well, for the same reason that I have issues with anything that complicates life, like the cosmetics/beauty/fashion industries. They have a way of manipulating us so that we think we need to change just for the sake of change (and for the sake of their bottom line, but they don't mention that).  If I had the time, I could tear into just about every cosmetic craze, fashion fad or beauty boon that is recommended, but today I'm choosing hair dye. When a larger portion of the world's women every day are subjecting themselves to unpronounceable chemicals (ever try to read the side of a hair colour box?) in order to spice up their lives by spiffing up their locks, it can't be good.

I wish you could meet my dear neighbour, back alley Mary. She was a funny and delightful woman that I just loved to talk with whenever I saw her. We chatted about everything and anything over our respective fences, shared gardening tips, and she taught me to make pickles, perogies and pie crusts. She was like an extra grandma to my youngest daughter, and overpaid my kids for shovelling her sidewalks. We all loved her. You'd be hard pressed to find a better neighbour or friend.

Several times during all those over-the-fence chats, Mary commented on my salt-and-pepper hair and how lovely the grey looked. I thanked her, and commented that if she would go natural she'd be even lovelier than she already was. She'd pull at her dye- and perm-frizzed hair, saying, "Oh, I could never do that. My hair is already white -- see the roots? I'd look so old." And I'd look at her outrageous strawberry blonde or brassy brown with those white roots showing through and think, "Who has done this to you? Who has made you think that white hair isn't beautiful on a 74-year-old?"

We know darn well who has done it. Who can't name several hair dye brands without even thinking about it? We've all seen commercials featuring stunningly beautiful women with incredibly shiny (read: shellacked) coloured tresses flowing around them like cascades of riches. I have yet to meet a real human being with hair that looks like that, and I have yet to see an advertisment with a model who has unevenly greying hair like my friend Charleen's, or like mine. (I don't get the Grey Power magazine -- yet.)

According to Marie Claire Magazine (I looked up "International Hair Colour Trends" and found an undated article on the magazine website), in 2008, 1.6 billion dollars were spent on home hair colour in the US, $490 million in Mexico, $180 million in India, and $400 million in the UK (I guess Canada doesn't register on Marie Claire's radar). Increases in sales of in-home hair colorants from between 29% in the Middle East to almost 180% in the Eastern Bloc countries were reported since 2002.

Not a word in the article about chemicals in hair colour, but this week the David Suzuki Foundation (right sidebar under my Favourite Links) released a report on the toxic substances in our personal care products -- wanna bet there are more than a few in those dyes? Anyway... let's guesstimate... let's just pretend that out of 33 million Canadians, a fifth of us (I'll bet that's a good guess) buy six twelve dollar packages of home hair colour per year (gotta keep up with those roots, right?) to the tune of $72 dollars a year. That would mean Canadians spend about $475 million on do-it-yourself dye jobs. Add it with those other figures in the previous paragraph from 2008, and we're up to over three billion dollars spent on colour-in-a-box (and that doesn't include Europe, Australia, Africa, or Asia). Divide by $12, and we're talking two hundred and fifty million home hair colour jobs and all the chemicals they entail. And if every person uses a modest twenty litres of water to wash the chemicals away... that's five billion litres of polluted water. When you take into account the fact that the average person needs five litres of clean water per day to live in a moderate climate, and you realize that 1.2 billion people in the developing world don't have access to clean water (data from  http://www.worldwater.org/ ), it doesn't take a genius to see that all the good water we waste colouring our hair could go a long way...

If you want to argue with my guesstimation or my math skills, be my guest. I never was very good at either. But water issues are becoming critical in a lot of places in our world due to climate change, and needless use of chemicals contributes to the pollution of land, air, oceans, and us. Do we need to dye our hair? Do we have to buy personal care/beauty products that contain toxins? Must we get rid of the clothes in our closets when they're no longer in style? Or is there any way, any way at all we can live more simply?

I moodle today in memory of my friend Mary. I love seeing peoples' true colours, and I never got to see hers before she died of cancer last summer.