Should men try to hide their greying locks or embrace the silver theme? asks MICHAEL KELLY
I WAS watching U2 perform on the special edition of Top of the Popsthat was aired on Comic Relief night on BBC2 and though I'm a fan of their music generally I have to confess to being distracted by something during their performance.
To the uninitiated eye at least, there seems to be varying attitudes within the band to the idea of growing old gracefully.
Though they are all of a similar age – approaching 50 – only Adam has gone grey and commendably comfortable he looks about it too.
The Edge, as most people know (but don’t tell him we know), is as bald as the proverbial coot beneath his woolly hat and while I couldn’t comment on whether Larry and Bono dye their hair, it’s a fair bet that they do given their age.
Going grey gracefully is an issue close to my heart at the moment. I am blessed with a good thick head of hair (and some would say a good thick head beneath the hair too) so fingers crossed I won’t have to worry about going bald for a while yet.
Going grey on the other hand is something that I need to be very worried about indeed. In my late 20s I started to get some nice grey flecks on my temples and I was sort of cool with that because I reckoned it gave me some much needed gravitas.
“Grey hair,” as the bible proverb reminds us, “is a crown of glory.”
I was also relatively content with the idea that one day in the distant future I would be completely silver because of course in your 20s the distant future is something you acknowledge without every really believing that it will come to pass.
I am old school on this issue – I reckon men look distinguished and “lived in” when they go grey. You know, basically Richard Gere.
Alarmingly, however, something happened in my early 30s which threw a bit of a spanner in the works – in addition to increased “flecking” on the sides and back of my head, I started to get a patch of grey/white hairs on the crown of my head, towards the front.
This wasn’t nice, blended grey – it was a spot, a daub, a splodge. As time went on and as the patch of grey became more prominent, spreading like a malignant virus across my noggin, complete strangers would stop me on the street and say, “Sorry Mister, this is probably none of my business, but you’ve got some white paint in your hair there.”
And I would say “Oh God, you’re right, I’m so embarrassed. I shall rush home forthwith and deal with it immediately.”
Now in my mid-30s, I am still in that awkward in-between phase between full head of brown/black hair and silver mane where I essentially look like a Piebald Pony.
I’ve tried keeping my hair really, really short which seems to help for a few weeks at any rate. I’ve also tried letting my hair grow really, really long but I ended up looking like a roadie for Crosby, Stills and Nash. So perhaps like Bono, it’s time for me to think about hair dye after all?
Men have been told for years that we look distinguished when we go grey – so much so that we’ve more or less bought in to it.
But it’s not necessarily the case, according to Janet Clarke, general manager of The Grooming Rooms on South William Street.
“Not all men with grey hair look sexy and distinguished. It suits some men more than others. The colour of hair they have to begin with is very important – obviously black turning grey can look very attractive, but strawberry blonde turning grey may not look so great.
“Skin colour is very important too. With certain light complexions which a lot of Irish men have, grey hair makes them look very washed out. Not everyone has lovely sallow skin like George Clooney.”
Hair dyeing for men is an increasingly important part of the business mix at The Grooming Rooms, according to Clarke.
“It’s only something we have been doing for about six months and we have quite a lot of men availing of it. Usually they just want to feel more youthful or their wife or girlfriend has been encouraging them to do it.
“Men feel apprehensive about dyeing their hair – that it will be seen as a ‘poncey’ thing to do. I think they appreciate that in a place like this they don’t have to feel embarrassed about it. We use L’oreal Homme which is a colour blending system as opposed to a dye and I think men appreciate that it’s natural looking. It’s not eliminating the grey, it’s just softening it.”
Hmm. Isn’t it all just, you know, a little girlie? “I don’t agree at all,” says Clarke. “Anything that makes you feel good, go for it. Women dye their hair all the time, so why shouldn’t men?
“The caveat I would put on that is that over a certain age, it can look very unnatural. On a man of 60, a head of jet black hair has the opposite of the desired effect I think. It should also be done professionally. There is nothing worse than a man who looks like he had a bucket of tar poured over his head.”
The issue of whether hair dyeing is masculine or not is an acutely important one for the cosmetics industry. The EU hair dye market was worth €2.6 billion in 2004 and while the women’s market is relatively saturated (over 60 per cent of women already use hair dye), the men’s hair dye market is opportunity knocks for the industry – just 5 per cent of men currently use hair dye.
All they have to do is convince us that it’s a good idea – go to the websites of well known hair dye manufacturers for men and you will see just how hard they are working to convince us that real men dye too.
The homepage of one has the picture of a half-naked man lying on top of a half-naked woman. She runs her hands through his hair – there’s not a grey hair in sight. The message is clear – you can go grey gracefully if you want, but women won’t want to have sex with you anymore if you do.
Though his salon offers a range of colouring services, Eddie Doyle of Hair Perceptions in Goatstown, Dublin is not a fan of male hair dye. “I always say to guys when they ask me if they should dye their hair – don’t do it. It’s probably a personal thing because I have quite a bit of grey myself, but I would just feel less of a man if I was dyeing my hair. I think grey hair looks distinguished and looks fantastic.
“There is a percentage of women who want their men to dye their hair, usually the same women who want their men to get manicures and treatments. But the vast majority of women want their husbands to go grey. They love it and think it’s incredibly sexy.”
Good man Eddie. That’s settled then – the grey stays. So does Doyle have any advice for curing the Piebald Pony problem?
“Get a really cool haircut,” he says. “A guy your age would get away with that. Use a bit of product and wax it up a bit. If you don’t use product, your hair will be fluffy and that just highlights the patch of grey. The messier the better.”
And if that doesn’t work? “Buy yourself a nice hat,” he says.
Why does hair go grey?
Hair colour comes from a pigment called melanin which is produced by melanocyte cells located in the root of each hair. As we age the amount of melanin produced begins to decrease, resulting in a decrease in the concentration of pigment in the hair shaft. The process of going grey is genetically predetermined and this slow process stops at grey for some people but moves on to white for others. White hair basically signals that no melanin remains to colour the hair.
Some families are characterised by grey hair in their 20s, some families have hardly any members with grey hair.
Despite common folklore (and the evidence provided by both Barack Obama and Tony Blair – both seemed to turn grey overnight courtesy of their stressful jobs), there is no evidence that stress causes grey hair.
Incidentally, plucking grey hairs is a folly – once the cells responsible for producing melanin are dead, the hair follicle can produce only grey hair. So plucking out grey hairs will only result in another one growing in its place.