I stayed jet-black for all of my Mormondom.

But it seems that 50% of the women I met who were Mormons bleached their hair.

I keep seeing bleached blonde as a recurring theme, so I couldn't help but dedicate a post to it.

Were you bleached blonde during your Mormondom? Did you keep that color when you left?

And if your answer to either of those questions was yes...why? Did you feel prettier that way? Do you think it worked better with your complexion? Why?

At least a few decades back, a great many LDS living in
the Mormon Corridor were the descendants of northern
Europeans who had light hair. Those Arizona-Utah-Idaho
BIC members seem to have had a greater influence upon
the rest of Mormondom than did their brethren living at
some distance away.

Thinking back to my high school days, many of the LDS
girls in southern Idaho were blonde -- proportionately
more than the males -- indicating to my mind that they
were lightening their hair.

Maybe they wanted to be white and delightsome.

Looking at the typical Ensign photos these days, it seems
that physical diversity is now the officially projected
image for members. Maybe things are changing.

UD

Of course, since, as you say, most LDS living in the Morg Corridor ARE descended from northern Europeans they DO have light hair. It was no different from our small Mormon town. However, DH's grandmother, from a long line of one of these "delightsome" TBM families BUT she married a man from Greece. This produced a whole bevvy of dark-haired offspring of which DH is one. What is funny is that despite the "white and delightsome" pronounciations in the BOM, female members of the family delight in their dark hair because it made them stand out in the general population. Even to the point where the older female members of the family insist on coloring their hair almost jet black...which is rather odd looking on older women.

btw...a good chunk of the women in the US population go blonde so I think it has little significance in the TBM population as far as anomalies go.



Uncle Dale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> At least a few decades back, a great many LDS
> living in
> the Mormon Corridor were the descendants of
> northern
> Europeans who had light hair. Those
> Arizona-Utah-Idaho
> BIC members seem to have had a greater influence
> upon
> the rest of Mormondom than did their brethren
> living at
> some distance away.
>
> Thinking back to my high school days, many of the
> LDS
> girls in southern Idaho were blonde --
> proportionately
> more than the males -- indicating to my mind that
> they
> were lightening their hair.
>
> Maybe they wanted to be white and delightsome.
>
> Looking at the typical Ensign photos these days,
> it seems
> that physical diversity is now the officially
> projected
> image for members. Maybe things are changing.
>
> UD

I grew up with dark brown hair. I kept it that way until I was about 40.

It's been almost pure white since then. It's my real color. People stop me all the time and ask me what color I use on my hair.

Reminds me of this song.

http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=22976366&ac=now

Not unique to mormonism, if that's your drift.

I've been out of it for 25+ years and I'm a bottle blonde.

When I was living in the Philly suburbs for the past 20+ years, I met and knew lots of bottle blondes like myself who were never mormon and knew absolutely nothing about the religion.

It's far more cultural (American/western society) than it is mormon.

Certainly lots of mormon women are bottle blondes, but they didn't invent or come up with the concept. They're just following popular culture.

In that manner, they could be said to be of the world, but not in it. Or is it the other way around?

Meant to add:

I was a towhead as a kid, then dishwater/ash blonde as a teen/young adult.

When I was ex-mo and in my early 20s and started noticing quite a lot of gray hairs (genetic - my brunette mom went gray at 18), I just started to keep the gray away by continuing to dye my hair.

I expect at 50 I'll start investigating the possibilities of dying my hair a lustrous silver - something vibrant, rather than dull and peppery "gray".

Yes, it is vanity. Nothing uniquely mormon about it ;-)

As a lifelong ginger, I never went blonde; it would look awful with my ridiculously fair skin and freckles. When I was single I observed that most men considered blondes to be the most desirable dates, girlfriends, and wives. Not a few told me that they would ONLY date blondes (yep, that made me feel good...).

One or two said it was because they considered blondes to be more fair and delightsome, which meant more righteous, etc. Of course, they saw themselves as "deserving" of the more beautiful and righteous women, so having a blonde trophy wife proved to everyone else that they were righteous and deserving of such a reward.

Me being the rebellious, subversive little person I am, I decided then and there I would NEVER succumb to such a ridiculous cultural meme. But I know many females who dyed blonde to catch husbands or who bleached years later to shore up sagging self-esteem after kids, decades, and extra pounds. Some went blonde when divorcing for the same reasons.

My son has a real weak spot for ginger hair. He's the opposite of your friends who would only date blondes. He likes blonde hair but he'd trade in a heartbeat for a cute red haired girl. Always hold out for someone who thinks what you have to offer is the best thing there is in the world. :)

My DW is blessed with a gene which turns hair blonde - not gray or white - with aging. When we married her hair was a light brown but now is a "to die for" blonde. I think the gene came from her father's line because her mom turned gray. I guess some people are just lucky and with righteousness....

The advantage of not dyeing hair is that the roots match. Obviously, I did not date DW because she was a blonde. I can't imagine people actually placing anything of importance on hair color. Length, maybe. But not color.

My mother's hair has been turning red instead of gray as she gets older (natural blonde. I hope I got those genes!

I almost always kept my natural color "brown" until recently. I signed up as a shavee for St. Baldricks which is an organization that raises money for kids cancer research. I did for a short period of time sport a blond mohawk and subsequently about 3 and 1/2 weeks ago shaved it all off. My TBM family is starting to get used to me now that I'm 40, out of the MORG and out of the closet.

I have colored my hair (blonde) for all of my adult life. I started out as a child with light blonde hair. During puberty, it became dishwater blonde. Later on in life as I started my family, it got progressively a little bit darker with each pregnancy, but not dark enough to be really considered brown, although it wasn't exactly blonde anymore either. My natural color is just a muddle of nondescript colors and is not attractive. That particular muddle of color doesn't catch the light and thus makes my hair appear rather dull, too. The closest to a real color it is is blonde, and my skin is very fair, so I get highlights in a true blonde color because blonde is the closest I come naturally to a real color. Besides, light-colored hair works far better with my skin tone than going darker. My skin would look like it glows in the dark by contrast if I had dark hair. (I used to let my face tan, but can't do that anymore because I'm no longer willing to speed up aging in my face. Ah, the never-ending joys of aging and becoming uglier despite having to put extra effort into maintaining physical appearance!). Now that I'm getting a few stray grays showing up, I am even more glad that we aren't stuck with the hair color that grows out of our heads. Can't do anything cheap about the wrinkles, but I can get rid of those stray gray hairs for relatively little money and feel 100% better once I forget that gray was there.

Nothing wrong with dying one's hair blonde, and IMO, nothing particularly mormon about dyed blonde hair either.

nt



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2013 08:38PM by Tupperwhere.

I thought about this thread this morning and had to resurrect it.

I let my roots go gray for a couple of months just because I wasn't motivated nor did I have the time to do it (finals.) I also got my haircut once during this time. Can I just tell you how rude people were about it? I heard from friends, family members, random grocery store people and 3 of the people where I got my hair done that hey...."You need to get your hair done!"

Geez Louise. I didn't think it was that bad but apparently it was. Anyway, I dyed it this morning and I'm back to being chocolate brown with red highlights. For hells sake....people should be glad I bothered to thread my eyebrows this entire time, wash my face and brush my teefs. :(

I do feel better now though. I will admit to that.

A lot of Mormon women are older. You generally look better when older with lighter hair, but not gray. Part of it is demographics.

Many Mormon women have a fair northern European background and complexion, which makes it a little easier to carry blond hair.

And they aren't averse to a little plastic surgery either, so altering one's appearance isn't really frowned upon except those nasty tats.

I think I didn't fully articulate what I meant about the Mormon/blonde correlation.

I guess what I was trying to say is that though I don't see it as uniquely Mormon, I notice that certain social circles have a higher number of light blondes than the average...sororities being one of places.

But really, Relief Society seems like nothing else but a sorority that accepts all ages, charges high dues, without the parties, alcohol, and sex.

mine is black/brown/red. Always has been even when I was TBM. But I have a relative that is a bit older than me and she was ex'd as a teen. She got conned into being re-baptized a few years ago. She also had dark hair like me. When she went TBM again she dyed her hair blonde and it looks absolutely horrible on her. It clashes with her skin tone and makes her look years older than she is. And it's brassy. Our entire family has told her how bad it looks but she just says "I just feel prettier when I'm blonde!"

Too bad she isn't.

I've 55, have very little gray. My hair was light blonde as a child and gradually turned to dishwater blonde then BROWN when I was pregnant. My TBM daughter begs me NOT to dye my hair as she finds her "mormon mothers" dye jobs horrendous. She has 4 or 5 women who are my age who she is friends with, but they don't dye their hair blonde--most are BLACK. Even the stake RS president dyes her hair black. It doesn't look good. She usually has my color.

My younger sister--inactive since age 17--highlights her's. It looks mostly blonde. It looks good.

Oh--and I was wondering about that new YW's presidency. I need to go back and look at the picture. My TBM daughter posted it on her fb, too.

I've been coloring my hair since 7th grade. It's naturally a very dark brown with a touch of red, but I've had pretty much every "natural" hair color you can think of, and several "unnatural" colors, too. The kids I taught in Primary thoroughly enjoyed my royal blue hair while it lasted (although I've never been more self-conscious than first day I walked into the ward house with blue hair). I also had green tips for a while, and went purple highlights once.

Somewhat ironically, I didn't go full-out platinum blonde until after I'd left TSCC. It didn't last long - WAY too much upkeep!

My mom has a Mormon hairstylist who loves to give everyone blonde hair, regardless of how it actually looks. My mom eventually had to convince her to keep her hair a light brown as that's what makes her look better. It's still lighter than her original color, but not gray.

Personally, I prefer my medium to dark brown hair, as it fits my eyes and complexion better. I found out the hard way maybe 3 years ago that I look washed out as a blonde, when my mom thought it would be a nice birthday gift to have me see her stylist. It took me over a year to repair the damage by getting regular haircuts and to go back to my natural color. Now, if I get anything added, it's red highlights as that looks more natural on me as I do have some red in my hair.

that reminds me of when I was younger I took two nevermo friends of mine for a visit to Salt Lake (we lived in Idaho at the time and we wanted to go shopping.) They both decided to get their hair cut when we were there. They both walked out of there with Mormon do's. They were SO UPSET lol I just laughed all the way home.

I had a samoan friend from indepdence, MO. The islander population there is so large and they're all brown skinned with the black hair.

In High school he said, the european descent girls all bemoaned how their hair wasn't black and they weren't brown skinned, since they considered the female islanders much more beautiful and vibrant than themselves.

Just goes to show you how much your attitude can change with the prevailing populace/culture.

Hair coloring was involved in a case I tried back in late 1982. The clay, used to resemble plastic explosive in the bomb, contained two hairs. One of the hairs, by description, matched the maker of the bomb and the other, a black dyed hair matched his mother. My client had been framed and was acquitted. The actual hoax bomber turns out to be a serial killer who later graduuated to live bombs.

We weren't able to figure out the black dyed hair until we had the mother testify and my client noted that it was black at the time of bomb and, at the time of the trial, was white.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2013 03:10PM by rhgc.

I'm blonde and lighten my hair. Most blondes put highlights in it because mousy looks bad. I've tried other colors but I look ridiculous. I know what you mean about all those blondes. I think it's odd too. But if you are blonde your whole life you tend to stick with it.

Judging from photos of JS' wives, he went whole hog for black-headed women. Must be a revelation in that somewhere. Some women spend their lives mastering/mistressing physical appearance, although a person may look like an absolute dog but be overpoweringly irresistible. How is that? Any man who has followed this thread is without question a voyeur, so I shall pretend I didn't post on it.

Walk into any office run by Mormons all the women are blonde...all of them...every single one. You wonder if brunettes get lesser treatment.

Unlike women with richer, deeper hair colors like brunette and black, a lot of women (probably most) who highlight their hair to light blonde have dark blonde or light brown hair, which, left to its own devices, can make us look washed out and tired or mousy, so many of us just look much better with a lighter, brighter shade that better compliments our skin tone.

A convert friend was visiting from Alabama last August and as we strolled around City Creek Mall in downton Salt Lake City he said "Why do all the women look the same--same shade of blonde, same haircut and same clothing?" I was at a loss to explain the Mo Wo uniform, but knew exactly what he was referring to. . .

Amen, sistersalamander! As a fellow rebellious, independent ginger, I couldn't get a date from a TBM man if I were the last woman on earth. I was teased enough as a child to now be somewhat vain about my hair color, especially since so many women try or wish they could color their hair red. My mom is also a redhead and her hair is turning strawberry blond. Ugh. I dread the thought of turning blond! I plan on spending insane amounts of money keeping my hair red when I grow old.

This list reminds me of some other things.

I'm from the Chicago area and some of these strange Utah mormon things happen here. My mom growing up as a YW and YSA could never get dates. She is italian with the dark hair/olive toned complexion and from pictures of her as a YSA very generous bosom. She complained other men from church would never ask her out or never date her. yet outside of the church she was always getting hit on. She later married a non-member. she claims the RM's never knew what to do with her because she was too large breasted and obviously a woman with her curves. Cracks me up.

Also, my family was in Boise for Christmas one year. We talked around the boise mall and my brother turns to me and says this place is so boring everyone looks the same. I agreed that was the problem. There were no blacks, asians, latinos, etc. Being from Chicago we see an enormous mix of races and skin tone. The whole fair skinned/light hair was boring because of the monolithic nature of it.