Hair Dye and Fedoras

This was prompted by the question, “Do you find any sort of hair color attractive?” on some random message board and because of a recent excess amount of introspection time this question spurred me to think in a lot of directions.  Hopefully this all comes together as something complete rather than just being a messy pudding of poorly mixed ideas.

I have never noticed myself having an attraction to one style or color over another. I have dated women with brown hair, dyed hair, black hair, and ineffectual hit on innumerable women in countless situations of awkward flirting. But I think I will go on a bit of a digression to mention a trend I sort of see happening that this question strikes deeper into.

I get the impression that lots of people in nerd culture are dying their hair out of the misguided belief that it is the first step to becoming the main character in some anime-esc adventure story. Like how I used to think wearing a fedora would give me a personality before I actually got a personality of my own thru accumulating life events, skills, and lasting personal relationships beyond my immediate family.  But I think people still feel they need to have a flashy trait to stand out because a lot of nerd media substitutes flashy looks for actual personality traits.

For example this is the sort of thing being passed down to children in my (relative) youth. Because I turned 31 this month and I am feeling older than I should.  This is of course a dramatization.  In reality I imagine more drugs were involved.

Designer 1: How do we make the nerd interesting?
Designer 2: Hair.
Designer 1: What?
Designer 2: The craziest fucking hair in the universe.
Designer 1: By human standards? Or by Anime standards? Cause that second option is a summit to climb.
Designer 2: I will show you my vision.

Later...

Designer 1: Yeah, that will definitely serve in place of a personality till we figure out what the fuck this whole series is about.

Designer 2: It is my opus.

  

(When I was a kid I knew how God awful "Yu Gi Oh" was, but until you watch an episode as an adult you can't really understand how much of an extinction level hit to entertainment it is.)

This is not so bad a sin as to be unforgivable.  Lots of people wear clothing hoping it will make them beautiful, popular, or just to cover up something about themselves.  There are a trillion fashions shows telling people to not be themselves and instead be what wealthy people pretend to be.  “Fashionable”.  I kind of wish that I was wise enough when I was a kid to realize this, and I wish I could pass it on to those younger than me whom I see doing it without coming off as the massive tool I feel like every time I try to give advice.  Be a person, not a look.

This is where my own nostalgia and mopey attitude starts to creep in on me.  Sadly the fedora and other quirky hats are no longer distinct fashions that allow people to put on a vibe of aloof intellectual, and instead have become short hand (along with the term “neckbeard”) for someone who is a misogynistic loser, more than likely in the gaming or nerd community.  Now I can’t even look back on my awkward shy years of undergrad and trying to figure out who I was without having to associate it with the phrase, “m’lady.”  Though I was hardly a great person at the time so maybe that is an issue too.

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