“There’s a reason why 40, 50 and 60 don’t look the way they used to and it’s not because of feminism or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye.
--Author, Screenwriter Nora Ephron.

Sixty may be the new 40, but not if you have a head full of gray hair. The urge (or need) to dye our hair is not new. Archeologists suggest that Neanderthals, Egyptians, Romans and Greeks used natural products -- such as henna, saffron, indigo and alfalfa – to dye their hair. Saxons and Gauls applied vibrant colors to their hair as a sign of rank.

All these early coloring attempts faced one problem, natural colors faded. Like many scientific breakthroughs, a better hair color discovery resulted from work that was headed in a radically different direction. In the 1800s, an English scientist searching for a malaria cure, using coal tar, led to isolating the molecule that remains the foundation of most permanent hair dyes today.

Into the 20th century, hair dyes were used primarily to hide the gray in a woman’s hair. Advertising promoted this trend by calling gray hair “dull, drab” and the “ruination of romance.”

Some women wanted to mirror movie star Jean Harlow, who reportedly dosed her hair with household cleaning bleach to retain her “platinum blonde” look.

To hide the shame of hiding the gray, women sneaked in the back door of salons. Then in 1950, the one-step home hair dye changed much of that. With this development, the percentage of women coloring their hair rose from 7 percent in the 1950s to 70 percent today. In 1960, the U.S. Government surrendered to the tidal wave of dye and no longer asked women to list hair color on passports.

Today, hair dying includes variations, such as highlighting, toning, glossing or even a process called balayaging. Young women and men seek to express their uniqueness by adding brilliant accents of red, blue, purple or rainbows of color to their hair.  Even the once-staid corporate setting, which now emphasizes youth, finds males coloring those gray temples or reducing the salt in their salt-and-pepper look. New trends, styles and societal pressures will continue to color our thinking -- and our hair -- for the foreseeable future.