Coloring Your Hair

• 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• 00:56 That may strike people as odd or a style that is just really really outdated.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.

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