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Coloring Your Hair

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About this lesson

Practical advice on coloring your hair for the workplace.  

  • 00:05 I mentioned briefly in the previous lecture, the topic of hair color.
  • 00:12 Let's go into that a little more deeply.
  • 00:13 This is one of the areas in life, and I'm not saying there are that many,
  • 00:18 where women do have more options than men.
  • 00:22 Women can color their hair, it's considered perfectly acceptable.
  • 00:26 In fact, in a lot of cities around the world,
  • 00:29 it's considered odd for a woman over 50 not to be coloring her hair.
  • 00:34 I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm just commenting that's reality.
  • 00:37 So as a woman you can color your hair
  • 00:41 as long as it's somewhat natural and isn't too dark.
  • 00:45 You'll generally be in good shape in business situations.
  • 00:49 It won't cause distractions.
  • 00:52 The bigger issue is if you're 70 years old and your hair is three feet long.
  • 00:56 That may strike people as odd or a style that is just really really outdated.
  • 01:02 But coloring your hair, as a woman, and I'm, folks don't get on me,
  • 01:05 I'm not telling women they should feel bad about their grey hair or
  • 01:09 they need to color their hair.
  • 01:10 I'm simply saying that it is considered acceptable in business situations to
  • 01:15 color your hair.
  • 01:16 >> It gets a bit trickier for men for many reasons.
  • 01:22 It's one thing if you are in the acting world, Rob Lowe, for example,
  • 01:26 by his own admission went almost completely gray in his mid twenties.
  • 01:30 So if he had not colored his hair for
  • 01:34 the last quarter century he would've eliminated himself from tens
  • 01:39 of millions of dollars worth of income from roles, as a young, romantic lead.
  • 01:45 So he really had no choice.
  • 01:48 But if you're not in the acting world, if you're a man in a more traditional
  • 01:51 business, finance, accounting, insurance, oil services.
  • 01:59 You can stand out as being a bit dandyish, a bit fancy,
  • 02:04 a bit prissy and perhaps even egocentric if you're coloring your hair.
  • 02:10 Now that's one thing if you are 33 and you've got a little more grey hair than
  • 02:15 you want, and everyone else you know still has a dark head of hair.
  • 02:19 A little touch up here and there, and you still have a thick head of hair.
  • 02:23 Now again, let me be perfectly honest, transparent, and vulnerable here.
  • 02:28 So I have, as you can see, really not much hair on top.
  • 02:32 I do have hair on the side, I just keep it really short so as not to distract.
  • 02:37 Cuz nothing looks worse than the Bozo the Clown look, the nothing on top and
  • 02:42 long on the sides.
  • 02:43 So I keep my hair really, really short.
  • 02:47 Some people have asked, including my wife, have asked why don't you color your hair?
  • 02:51 It's so grey.
  • 02:52 Why don't you make it dark brown?
  • 02:55 The way it was when you were a young man.
  • 02:58 Here's the problem.
  • 03:00 If you start dying your hair as a middle-aged man or
  • 03:04 an older man and you're thin on top,
  • 03:09 the darkness of your hair contrasts with your scalp If you have light skin.
  • 03:15 And it makes you look even balder, so it looks worse.
  • 03:18 The other problem is when your hair is really thin,
  • 03:22 two days after you've dyed it, it starts to grow out, and you see the roots.
  • 03:27 If you have really thick hair, and comparatively,
  • 03:31 women have thicker hair the roots don't show nearly as quickly.
  • 03:36 The other problem, and I do see this with men more than women but
  • 03:40 I see it with women too.
  • 03:41 If you try to do one of the home dye jobs that you get from the store.
  • 03:46 And it's all one color it's just a lot easier to turn
  • 03:50 red to look bad, to look like you put shoe polish on your hair.
  • 03:56 And as a man in a business situation, you could become the object of ridicule.
  • 04:03 My advice, there are exceptions to every rule, but as a general rule,
  • 04:08 I would say if you are a man and you are over, say the age of 45, and
  • 04:13 you're getting gray hair in most business situations,
  • 04:17 most of the time, you're better of just letting it go.
  • 04:23 Keep your hair color natural, don't color it.
  • 04:27 The other issue with coloring your hair is once you start it becomes a part time job.
  • 04:33 Now you can point out the example of Ronald Reagan.
  • 04:35 Someone says, well TJ, look at Ronald Reagan.
  • 04:38 He was 69 years old, completely brown hair,
  • 04:43 and after he was shot and he had his head shaved and it grew out.
  • 04:48 You could see it was completely white but he went back to dyeing it.
  • 04:50 Well Ronald Reagan, from the acting world and he had a hair colorist come
  • 04:56 to the White House every single Tuesday morning the entire term of his presidency.
  • 05:02 So it requires a lot of work.
  • 05:04 In my experience unless a man is getting compensated extremely handsomely,
  • 05:11 by being in the entertainment industry, very few have the discipline,
  • 05:18 to stay up on it that much every week or every other week so
  • 05:21 the roots aren't growing out.
  • 05:23 And again the nature of having shorter mens hair if you don't stay on it
  • 05:28 right away the roots come out, it looks more ridiculous.
  • 05:33 And for whatever reason, and
  • 05:35 you could say there is all sorts of gender inequality in the world.
  • 05:38 Mostly not in the favor of women but
  • 05:41 in this case men who dye their hair are seen as vainer,
  • 05:47 more foppish, and sort of less trustworthy in business,
  • 05:53 than women who dye their hair where it's just considered the norm and status quo.
  • 05:59 So it's not the end of the world if you dye your hair.
  • 06:02 But make sure it's really sending the right message.
  • 06:06 Also, if your goal is to dye your hair and
  • 06:09 make yourself seem younger, make sure that's really
  • 06:12 happening because it can actually make you look older if it's a bad dye.
  • 06:17 If it's too dark, and
  • 06:18 it shows the contrast with your skin which gets lighter as you age and
  • 06:22 a darker hair can actually make you look older, vainer, and more out of touch.
  • 06:28 So leave it to the professionals and
  • 06:32 make sure you do it right, and once you start, you gotta stay up on it.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Make Sure Your Hairstyle Works for You
06m:34s
The Eyes Have It
03m:08s
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