Dye Hard: Just a Fashion Statement?--"Abracadabra!"

But this isn't one of Sun Wu-kong's 72 transformations, it's the modern "Theory of Hair." Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. . . if you've got the nerve, you can have your hair in any color you like.

When Lee Chen-chen got together with friends after not having seen them for a few months, she was shocked to discover that the friends, a couple, had both dyed their hair a coffee color. But the husband, serving in the military, had only dyed the front of his head. It was only after a thorough interrogation that she discovered why: the husband's hair had been dyed as an afterthought with the dye left over after his wife had finished dyeing her own hair.

Everybody's doing it!

Hair stylists themselves are the trend-setters in hair fashion. It is on their heads that we see how the hippest people of the moment are doing their hair.

Take "Anonymous Hair" in Taipei's East Gate area as an example. Among the 20-odd people who work in the shop, from the stylists to the assistants who wash your hair, there's not a single one who has not dyed his or her hair. The owner, Ku Yuan-hsi, has even dyed his mustache.

Turn on the TV and the screen is filled with variety show hosts, pop stars, even news anchors sporting gold, silver, purple, pink, orange, and coffee-colored hair . . . each of them violently eye-catching.

People say that it was "The Empress of Fashion," pop star Sammi Cheng, who started the trend in Hong Kong. When she came to Taiwan last year, her dyed hair was a distinctive feature of her style. "She's hardly ever let anyone see her wearing her original hair color," says her publicity agent Kao Su-yun.

But keeping up with fashion isn't unique to women. Chou Yi, Marketing Manager at MTV, has dyed his hair flaxen. He says that when he first dyed his hair half a year ago, dyed hair was not at all common at the channel; everybody thought he looked like a foreigner. Now, dyed hair has become ubiquitous at MTV. "About half the people in the office have dyed hair. On the tube, it's almost everybody," he says.

Hair stylists are leading the way and, with the media close behind them, the trend towards dyed hair is spreading like wildfire. From movie stars and students to office workers and housewives, from teenagers to 50 and 60-year old senior citizens, everyone is giving it a try. Coloring one's hair seems to have suddenly become a social movement encompassing people of all ages.

"We've got customers of both sexes and of all ages. Everyone wants to dye their hair." According to Ku Yuan-hsi's estimate, about 70 to 80 percent of his store's customers are having their hair dyed. For the last year, income from hair dyeing has accounted for one-third of the company's total sales.

"Hair dyeing has a huge market," says Kandus, an importer of German hair care products. One reason is that hair dyeing's consumption cycle is shorter than that of haircuts and permanents. Every one to two months, the hair grows out enough that a touch-up is necessary. If it's not done, one is left with two-toned hair. In short, a dye-job just doesn't last as long as a haircut or a perm.

What gray?

Though dyed hair is currently the mark of hipness, it is anything but a modern invention. According to dancer Lin Hsiu-wei, ancient Africans used mud to color their hair and faces, taking on the likenesses of lizards and eagles in the hope of becoming as fierce and brave as these animals.

According to written records, in Cleopatra's day, those seeking to make themselves beautiful used pigments extracted from flower blossoms, plants and mud to dye their hair.

As for China, there are no records of its people dyeing their hair in many colors. However, ancient Chinese who were unable to bear the thought of prematurely graying hair and wished to hide what was viewed as a symptom of misery and anxiety did use organic compounds to darken their hair. Black sesame, polygonum multiflorum, and black beans all have the property of blackening one's hair.

The Qing dynasty Book of Heavenly Secrets records a recipe for making a medicine to turn gray hair black: Seal half a catty each of tadpoles and black mulberry into a jar. Allow it to decompose for one hundred days, then apply it to the hair and beard. It will turn them black as coal. Or pulverize the leaves and seeds of the paulownia tree then place them in a pot to boil. After boiling, wring the mixture through a new cloth. Using the resulting liquid to wash gray hair will blacken it.

Tang dynasty writer Sun Si-mao's Golden Prescriptions also records that the liquid resulting from cooking black beans in vinegar can be used to dye one's hair black.

In modern times, with people facing ever increasing pressure from life and work, more and more thirty-somethings are finding their hair speckled with silver. These people naturally want to find some way to restore their hair to its youthful color. This has led to the production of all kinds of organic and metallic dyes. However, these dyes are less than ideal in both the duration of their effect and the depth of color that they produce. Moreover, metallic dyes can cause hair to become brittle.

With the advance of technology, synthetic dyes were developed in Germany approximately 60 years ago. With that, dyeing one's hair became easy. Not only could those who were prematurely gray recover their youthful look, but old men and women could also dye their hair regularly.

For the last two years, in contrast to earlier days when people felt they had no choice but to dye their gray hair black, people have been moving in droves to dye their black hair blond or red. Chen Chiang-cheng, head of a famous school of hair styling and cosmetology, says that colors of clothing, accessories, and make-up are always changing; hair color obviously cannot be immutable.

Ku Yuan-hsi feels, "The idea of an 'integrated look' is already widely accepted." Recently, clothing, accessories and make-up all have gone "retro." In keeping with "integrated look" thinking, hair colors have also begun to take up the style. And so-called retro hair colors include reddish and coffee shades. In addition to retro fashion, the trend towards individuality and egoism has also led hair into a period in which colors are thriving.

Last year, The New Popcorn Report, which predicts consumer trends for the next ten years, was published in America. In one chapter, the writer states that egoism can be reflected in individualistic hair colors. The author views outlandish hair colors as a kind of identity.

Big hair

Hair is a part of a person's appearance, one which can be changed at will. From ancient times, it has been our most lethal weapon in playing the fashion game. In ancient times, although people lacked readily available, easy-to-use chemical dyes, hairstyles nonetheless changed as frequently as the weather.

The Book of the Later Han records that at that time, Sun Shou, the wife of the famed Liang Ji, was a beauty with a talent for flirting, one who used all manner of devices to seduce men. The book describes her devices as, "the putting on of the appearance of a lady in distress, the thrown-from-a-horse bun, the bowed walk, the coquettish smile." The thrown-from-a-horse bun refers to the hair falling down one side of the head to the shoulders and back. With her hair brushed into the thrown-from-a-horse bun and her face made up as if she'd just been crying, she truly looked as if she'd just fallen off a horse. It was a look which inspired sympathy and affection. It is said that in the Han dynasty, the thrown-from-a-horse bun was the rage of the capital. Worn by all the women of the city, it gradually replaced the custom of wearing braids.

A Short History of Classical Chinese Costume and Accessories mentions that in order to create big, tall buns, women in the Jin dynasty began to wear wigs. The Jin dynasty method for making wigs was, in fact, very similar to that used on TV today.

In the colonial era of the 18th Century, towering hair styles came into fashion in Europe and America. In the Virginia of that day, there was a wig maker who produced wigs which were made from husked wheat into a variety of styles, then baked in an oven. These wigs were not comfortable to wear, but beauty-conscious ladies happily wore their "pastries" about town attracting everybody's attention.

In China's Song dynasty, tall buns were even more fashionable. For a typical woman, a bun might reach a height of five to six inches, but for the courtesans of the period, a "Spring Wind Bun" might be as tall as one foot.

Manchurian women of the Qing dynasty seemed to bear a small blackboard on their heads with the "Great Wing" which was fashionable for a time. By the end of the Qing, female teachers and students didn't have the time to brush their hair into a large bun and the style slowly went out of fashion. What replaced it were a few types of simpler bun which eventually gave way to braids.

It's an attitude

People never stop working over their "three thousand strands of worry," always seeking new styles. The tremendous amount of time spent on hair care led one person to quip, "What's under your scalp is more important than what's above it."

In fact, for many people, the hairstyle displayed on top of their head is an expression of the thinking in that head.

"Hair is easily shaped and therefore can easily give expression to a person's ideas and desires," opines Lin Hsiu-wei. She says that hair is an extension of the body. In dance, it can be tied, braided, or wrapped up in a number of ways to express different feelings. To her, it is a part of the "physical landscape" which cannot be ignored.

In the 1960s, the hippies appeared in America. The hippies, who wore their hair long and without any kind of styling, came together as a movement to protest the Vietnam War and to support sexual freedom, homosexuals, and the Civil Rights Movement. The hippies' "anti-establishment" attitude was just like their wild and unkempt long hair. And both the attitude and the hair made the keepers of traditional culture very uncomfortable.

The punks of the 1980s, on the other hand, shaved their heads, leaving just a small patch at the front which might be dyed in all sorts of colors. Tsai Chi-tah, a social observer employed in the print media, believes that these unconventional hair styles are protests against society's rules. Most of the earliest punks were from law-abiding, middle-class English families. Faced with a stifling, monotonous life, they turned against their parents' generation.

Two kinds of skinhead

In the last few years, the "skinheads" have appeared in Germany. After the 1989 reunification of East and West Germany, prices in Germany rose while unemployment worsened. Some Germans have pointed the finger of blame at Turkish laborers living in Germany. Many youths, a shaved head as their badge, have come together as the "skinheads" to bash cars and people, their xenophobia resembling that of the Nazis. In both hair style and ideology, they are the exact opposite of the long-haired, peace-loving hippies.

Hair and skin color are the most obvious differences in the appearance of people of different races. Therefore, in order to eliminate one very apparent manifestation of racial distinctiveness, those undertaking the life of a Buddhist ascetic must first shave their heads.

The Venerable Man Kuang, chief editor of the Buddhist magazine Universal Gate, says that in the Buddha's day racial differences were large. In the interests of equality, specifically to eliminate comparison of race or beauty, both men and women had to shave their heads. In the form of Buddhism that moved south, as seen in Sri Lanka, the most senior monks even shave off their eyebrows.

On the other hand, Indian ascetics do not cut their hair, as well as rarely washing it or bathing themselves. Instead, they let their hair knot and drag upon the ground. "Maybe they are dirty and stink, but they move people," thinks Lin Hsiu-wei. She feels that these ascetics' long hair is just another way to spiritual development.

Tsai Chi-ta thinks that whether it is a Beatles-style Mop-Top, something punk, or a shaved head, though the culture and thinking in the head underneath may be different, at least there is an ideology, there is something being said. The current rage in Taiwan for dyed hair, on the other hand, is purely the following of fashion with no cultural ideology to speak of.

The winds of fashion

Hair stylist Lee Tsai-sheng agrees. He thinks that most people in Taiwan's attitude towards their own hair's look is that it should follow international fashions. This is why it is easy to operate a hair salon in Taiwan. Twenty years ago, short hair cropped close at the sides was fashionable. Almost everyone was wearing an Audrey Hepburn style or an "A-go-go" look. Later, cold perming mixtures were introduced to Taiwan. "Then people felt that as long as you were going to get a perm, you might as well make it a little curlier." And so afros and tight curls came into fashion.

Straight bangs and no layering-"The Doll Style"; "The Rice Noodle Look" (the creation of which involves teasing hair in a way that looks like the frying of rice noodles); "The Mushroom Look"; the big wave of "The Farrah Look"; "The Demi Moore Look" as seen in the movie Ghost. . . all have been fashionable for a time.

Lee Tsai-sheng says, "The Mushroom Look has been the Taiwan hair industry's most profitable hair style." He says that it has been fashionable since 1978 and has never gone out of style. The reason for its durability is that it suits women of all ages.

Now the dyed-hair look is becoming the ubiquitous style. Where did this dyed-hair fashion originate?

"Walking around Tokyo, eight out of every ten girls you see has blond hair," says Teng Pei-wen who visited Japan in October of last year. She thinks that the dyed-hair wildfire spreading through Taiwan was blown here from Japan.

Although most people in the hair industry state that Taiwan's fashions follow those of Europe and America and are in step with those of Japan, in fact, Taiwan's hair fashions follow only Japan's.

"The Japanese are the trendsetters of East Asian fashion," states Chen Chiang-cheng. Given that body shape and skin color are similar, "What Japan can accept, we can accept." Whether it is a big salon or a family-run beauty parlor, the fashion magazines that are in the store for patrons to look over are largely Japanese.

"The local hair styling industry is still a foreign colony." Mentioning the Japanese feeling of Taiwan's hair styles, Lee Tsai-sheng, a trainer for a local chain of hair salons, is pained.

"Actually, more than 10 years ago, there were people in the industry who tried to bring dyed hair into fashion," confides one hair designer, a hair industry veteran of almost 20 years. But she says that at that time the only kind of hair coloring people were willing to accept was dyeing gray hair black.

Chen Shiang-liang, Director of the Taipei County Cosmetics Union, says that because all Chinese people have hair of the same color, it is harder for them to accept the idea of dyeing. In America and Europe where hair colors are naturally diverse, the dyed hair market is booming. America is the market for hair dyes with sales of US$1.5 billion annually.

Following in Japan's footsteps, the Taiwan market has recently become ripe for hair dyes, and sales of colored dyes seem unstoppable. Some industry insiders forecast that Taiwan's hair dyes market will see sales of several hundred million NT dollars this year. Others feel sales could be even higher.

Egoism?

Experts place the dyed-hair movement under egoism's banner, but the encouragement and promotional efforts of hair stylists coupled with consumers' own desire to be different from the masses has inadvertently led everyone to the same look. That "different look" which people have worked so hard to get has instead led to the loss of their particular individuality.

"Asians have yellow skin so black hair doesn't suit them; it gives too heavy a feeling." "With a lighter hair color, layering is more obvious and your skin color looks better." "With a little coloring, the hair's contours are more apparent." Those who have been to a beauty parlor are no strangers to these kinds of sales pitches and such statements about the benefits of hair dyeing have moved many.

Thirty-something-year-old Lee Shu-hui's abundance of gray hair caused her a great deal of upset. "The stylist told me, 'If you're going to dye it, go ahead and make it pretty. A little color will make your features more prominent, your skin color better . . .'" After spending NT$1,500 to have her hair cut short and dyed a not very obvious coffee color, she thinks it was expensive, but "the results were pretty good" because "lots of people can't tell I had it done."

Chou Yi, a tall, strongly built, strongly featured, large-nosed and dark-skinned man who says of himself that he has "a foreign look," is well-suited to having dyed hair. "I wanted to change my look," is Chou's reason for getting dyed. Change your hair color and you change your mood. To Chou, it's just like his painting his car a different color every now and again.

Hair color knows no national borders. For Asians wearing blond or red hair, it's as if there is already universal brotherhood. On the other hand, some people feel that dyed hair is a manifestation of Asia's adulation of the West.

But Hsieh Kao-chiao, head of the Department of Sociology at Chengchi University, says that adulation of the West is not as apparent in modern times as it was in the past. He feels that the fashionability of dyed hair has no particular rhyme or reason, "It's just keeping up with fashion!"

The grass is always greener. . .

Although those who chase after the current fashion do not necessarily adulate the West, the grass certainly is always greener on the other side of the ocean. People are never fully satisfied with their own hair style and color. Asians work hard in pursuit of the soft, curly look of Western peoples' hair. Westerners, on the other hand, envy Asians their uniquely beautiful black hair.

In fact, the hair of Asians and Westerners is radically different in both its color and its quality. In general, Westerners' hair is curly and full of body while Asian people's hair is straight, black, and mysterious.

Actually, these differences in Asian and Western hair are symbolic of the differences in Western and Eastern cultures. In Lin Hsiu-wei's view, Eastern culture is like black hair in its mystery and its depth. Western culture, on the other hand, is like Westerners' blond hair, bright and shiny.

The jet-black-haired Lin says that while on a study-tour of America, her black hair attracted a great deal of attention. "One professor said to me, 'There's nothing more mysterious and seductive than black hair!'" She says that while walking around the streets people often made "well-intentioned sneak attacks." "They couldn't keep themselves from sneaking a touch of my hair."

Lin feels that the matching of skin color, facial features, and hair color was arranged by God. White skin coupled with blond hair and blue eyes is beautiful. Likewise, yellow skin with black hair and black eyes create a natural harmony. "If you don't have a Westerner's facial features, why do you want to dye your hair those kinds of colors?" She feels that the result of grafting together Asian and Western features is likely to be dissonant.

Wang Wan-hsing of the Tainan Junior College of Home Economics' Department of Cosmetology, on the other hand, thinks, "A little color in your hair looks great!" Wang, who has coffee-colored hair, says that it's hard to distinguish styles on black hair, but add a little color and it's a completely different story. To her, coffee-tones or similarly dark colors suit most Taiwanese. For those with whiter skin and eyes of a lighter shade, dyeing hair a lighter color also looks good.

Brainwashed!

"Fashion information is a brainwashing drug," says another hair stylist. This person feels that, at its base, there is no rationality to fashion; if it's fashionable, it is therefore beautiful. For example, modern people probably find it hard to imagine why a thrown-from-a-horse bun and a face made up to look like one had just been crying were fashionable to Han and Tang dynasty women.

Hair really is "three thousand strands of worry" and today's hair-dyeing fashion is just the adding of some color to those three thousand worries. Any color of the rainbow is possible as long as it doesn't offend others. And whether it's beautiful or not, well, that depends on for whom we are dyeing it.

p.108

The age of self-expression has arrived! But is dyed hair really a kind of self-expression, or is it just an expression of hair stylists' ideas?

p.110

Performers are fashion's trendsetters. Singer Sammi Cheng, the "Queen of One Hundred Changes," never stops playing with her hair color. (courtesy of UFO Records.)

p.111

Since ancient times, people have been trying to "do something with" their "three thousand strands of worry." In ancient China, the buns that women wore changed as fashions changed.

(courtesy of the Palace Museum)

p.112

In the past, couples who'd been married for many years often helped each other to dye the gray out of their hair, recapturing at least a part of the appearance of youth.

p.113

The fashion of the moment is dyed hair. Red, orange, yellow, green. . . any color of the rainbow, it's your choice.

p.114

Hair color doesn't need a visa to travel. The hair on Taipei's streets has been internationalized.

p.115

Though people say that what's in your head is more important than what's on it, they are seemingly always trying to do something with their hair. Recently, hair fashion has come to include not only dyed hair, but also wigs.

Since ancient times, people have been trying to "do something with" thei r "three thousand strands of worry." In ancient China, the buns that women wore changed as fashions changed. （courtesy of the Palace Museum）

In the past, couples who'd been married for many years often helped each other to dye the gray out of their hair, recapturing at least a part of the appearance of youth.

The fashion of the moment is dyed hair. Red, orange, yellow, green... an y color of the rainbow, it's your choice.

Hair color doesn't need a visa to travel. The hair on Taipei's streets has been internationalized.

Though people say that what's in your head is more important than what's on it, they are seemingly always trying to do something with their hair. Recently, hair fashion has come to include not only dyed hair, but also wigs.Though people say that what's in your head is more important than what's on it, they are seemingly always trying to do something with their hair. Recently, hair fashion has come to include not only dyed hair, but also wigs.