I think yes, for some people, and no, for others. I'm one of the unfortunates who was born with gorgeous cottony light blonde hair that was a beautiful blonde right up until puberty. The biological betrayal that many blondes face happened then. My light, glossy gorgeous hair darkened to mousy greyish light brown. Not the beautiful, warm light brown that natural brunettes have. A really unappealing nowhere color. I started highlighting it when I was twenty and I've never looked back. I've been varying degrees of blonde. I've also been strawberry blonde to deep auburn. All looked beautiful on me. What didn't look beautiful on me? (And I can tell this from the pictures of the one time I grew it out) My natural color. It just doesn't work.

If I was out in the sun all the time and I grew my hair long, my hair would probably pick up some blonde highlights again. Because I artificially (in the world of nature that is) hide from the sunlight, I don't get that. So I artificially introduce that element, pumped up for good measure. I am never anywhere near as light as I was at say age 5. That would be too light.

Some women have beautiful hair color, colored or not. Some women do not. For those of us who do not, coloring will make it look better. Women do lots of things to achieve what other women naturally have, but we individually do not. We straighten our teeth. We use good cleansers to improve our skin. We use sunscreen to prevent wrinkles. We put on fake tanner or bronzer. We wear perfume. Hair color is no different. If you've got fabulous naturally, hooray! If not, you might color.

On the prevalence of it in the fashion industry and among actors, I wonder isn't that because we view and interact with them through an artificial lens? We only see them on video or film or in pictures. We don't see them in person. Just as they use makeup or more makeup than normal to augment their looks for that image capture, they augment their hair color.

I am going grey, but right now I henna my hair. My normal hair is a medium brown with a red tinge, so the henna just makes it a dark auburn colour. My white hairs come out a bright copper colour. So far, it looks like highlights, but when they come in thicker I will probably phase out the henna as I don't want to have bright bright red hair.

Anna, I don't think any of us on this thread are intending to be judgmental as much as we are giving our views on the topic of why, as individuals, we might choose, or not choose, to color our hair. Given how common it is these days, it seems almost more radical to NOT to color one's hair, especially when the grey begins to become more noticeable. And the view expressed in the book is definitely provocative.

In my opinion, choosing to color one's hair is much like cosmetic surgery; some people embrace it wholeheartedly while others avoid it. But it is interesting to hear the reasons behind our choices because that helps me understand different perspectives which is, I think, a good thing.

It was really interesting reading through all these responses.

Atlantia, I think I would define hair-dos like your streak of purple (or the stylist Elisa’s platinum page boy) as another category which one could think of as a “look”, as opposed to natural or passing as natural. Good point about the gloss too.

Dianthus, I think this effect is what the books are talking about.

Kristin, I think I read you can buy that clear gloss by itself now (like Runner Rae said), but I don’t remember what the product is called.

Jenava, I had never asked myself whether you color your hair, but now that you mention it, it does have that special, lustrous look.

Shannon, I wonder whether you also stripped color, or only added color? I thought if you don’t bleach that it’s not actually damaging.

Mo, I think a lot of men actually like the natural look. If anything I think women like it less. At the same time, a lot of men don’t realize when something isn’t actually natural so I guess maybe what they like is what this book describes as “expensive” (lots of work to look naturalish).

Astrid, I can’t believe you describe your hair as mousey! To me it is a lovely auburn shade. I don’t think it’s just a question of wearing the right clothes.

Queen Mum (my fellow hair enthusiast), in every chapter the author lays out the high-end route and then the best budget alternative to achieving a similar look. I think your approach is a good example of a less expensive way of achieving a good result. In terms of looking “expensive”, she emphasizes considering the price of upkeep in choosing your look and advocates not deviating too far from nature’s plan in order to achieve an enhanced natural look. So Blake Lively or Gwenyth Paltrow are examples of very expensive heads of hair (touching up twice a month), but you can still look “expensive” by being less full-bore about it but having some well designed highlights or something. As an example, she describes the best highlighting strategy for your budget and hair, so for example if you have a small budget just do a couple of highlights to frame your face that are thicker on the bottom (more impact) but thinner at the root so that it’s harder to notice them growing out, and don’t worry about the back of the head at all.

Rae, on the one hand I see what you are saying, but she emphasizes that expensive should not look like you payed a lot for the look, ala real housewives of wherever, but basically that you show good taste and put forth the best version of the real you. So Kate Middleton, for example, has pretty natural looking hair, but it is “expensive”. I am not sure if that is the same look you are thinking of. I kind of associate SoCal with obvious enhancements (bleach blond, fake boobs, etc.).

Shiny, I think what you describe is exactly what these books are getting at--the hair is somehow plumped up, so it’s not really just a question of color but body, and you shouldn’t go more than a shade or two away from your natural shade, so basically “enhancing” what nature gave you.

Gosh, you all make me feel like I should put down the drier, but I love that thing. I am not even sure my hair looks healthier without it, but my hair is pretty resilient and I use a wonderful hair mask once a week.

Jenava, yes I think well-coiffed is a good way of putting it. I would like to look expensive too, but the commitment is just too much for me. At the end of the day I don’t quite care enough (or have the time or money).

Anna, I actually didn’t feel like this thread was judgmental. Your hair color looks great and suits you perfectly. Yes, we are all here because we care how we look and hair is part of this, and I think it's normal to have different approaches to it.

k can shop, actually what you wrote reminds me of something the author said, something like who really has blonde hair like that after the age of 10? I think you are also right that hair color and quality is another lottery in life and we are all free to control our appearance as we please. Also, I wonder if you are right that what is necessary to look striking in media is not just a bit more than what one would really want to see in real life.

Not at all. I think it is a function of age and condition. Your average 10 year old has beautiful glossy hair with great color. Dyeing would not improve it. Fast forward some number of years and our hair starts to thin out. White hairs appear. The condition of our hair reflects our diet, health, and the shampoo, conditioner, products, styling tools we use on it. Hair dye is just one of the arsenal of tools we can use to get the best hair possible for us. Some choose to use it and others don't.

I admit I was taken aback during a hair cut when the stylist asked me if I wanted to get my hair colored. What's wrong with my natural hair color? I have no visible white hair so it wasn't a commentary on going gray or not.

(edited for clarity)

Thanks for your comment, Gaylene - I hope I didn't come across as judgemental (as someone who doesn't color), that wasn't my intention. I was talking about myself and of course coloring or not is a very personal decision to make. I sometimes fear that my posts might have an undercurrent that wasn't intended and I don't even notice it because I'm lacking the language skills.

I agree that not coloring might be more radical. I sometimes get asked what color I used because it would look so nice! My godmother went grey/white in her early twenties and never dyed her hair, I've seen old pictures. She's sixty now and has a most stylish white pixie cut. I love the way she looks.

ETA
Scarlet, I'm not feeling that way anymore now, that was mostly in my teens when I just hated my hair in general - didn't like the color and found the curls unmanageable. All the comments I got about how dying could only improve it didn't help! I like it now.

I wonder what percentage of people the author considers to have well dyed hair?

All I'm going to add is thank goodness for hair color because without it I wouldn't be posting any pictures on YLF!

What a thing to say!

Regular professional colour jobs make you look like what you'd be - well kept. Better, tho, is highly subjective. A lot of people are creeped out by "unnatural beauty." So a good idea to know your audience and what they're accustomed to.

I was coloring my hair, but I have other uses now for the $300 it cost every couple of months or so.

It's our choice & it's important we exercise that choice, but I don't understand why we "have" to dye our hair to look expensive. Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada springs to mind.

I think it depends. My sister's natural hair color is incredible. People pay huge amounts of money to achieve a shadowy approximation of what nature blessed her with.

My hair, on the other hand, is practically a non-color naturally. It's medium dishwater blonde with undertones of green and grey. It's just not pretty. It looks a zillion times better highlighted, like I used to wear it, and a million zillion times better dyed brown as I currently do. I can't afford salon coloring (it would be that or clothes!) so I dye it at home. Tints of Nature is the best coloring product I've used and I've tried a lot. Bonus that it's safer. I don't think it rivals the look of a fancy salon job with all kinds of high and lowlights woven into a base color, so I wouldn't say it looks expensive, but that's fine with me at this place in my life.

Hmmm.....Sounds like the manufacturers may be touting this. My personal belief is that adding more chemicals to our body cannot make it look better. Just like adding chemicals in cosmetic surgery makes a person look better. It is all superficial. Of coarse with that said, I suppose clothing is superficial also. At least we can take clothes off.

"who really has blonde hair like that after the age of 10?"

My 18 year old daughter!!! Her eyebrows and lashes are white. Her hair used to be too, and it has darkened... but I do not think she'll ever wind up mousy. There ARE some natural blondes out there. Heck, just go to Scandinavia. That's the kind of blonde my daughter has. (Mine was never quite THAT blonde as a kid).

Scarlet~ thanks for explaining the authors approach. That makes sense.

Okay, I just Google-imaged Elisa Nalin and wow, I think I'm in love. I'm not sure I'd want to dress like her but I just love everything about her look. LOVE it. Wow, wow, wow.

What a great topic Scarlet. And your luscious mane certainly doesn't look like it's been over-dried, so I wouldn't worry about that, lol!

I really know what you're saying about looking *expensive*. I wasn't that impressed with the ladies in the video--but someone like Heidi Klum or Nina Garcia--now their hair looks very, very well-maintained and expensive to me. I wonder how they would look to me in person in the daylight. Sometimes hair color looks amazing on TV and in photographs but then not so glossy and natural in real life.

Since I'm greying (especially) I have no doubt that a really skilled colorist could give me color that would improve my look, make me look younger, more expensive and not brassy like the boxed color used to do. In fact, while we're on the subject, I got so much sun on my hair this summer that my friends have asked me if I was getting highlights (and wow, it really does look good, but bummer, it's already growing out. Oh well.) Since I don't have enough money to get my hair colored really well and maintain it, I'm resigned to letting nature have it's way with me.

I have similar natural hair to Diana, it sounds like--I've had it highlighted a few times in bleach (which sounds scary but fades to auburn once it's mixed with my natural color), but the color doesn't last long and is difficult to manage with my long length. I also just like maintaining my "virgin" waist-length hair--it takes several years to get it, and isn't something that can be easily reproduced in the salon.

I always feel a little odd reading these threads because I am practically a cyborg at this point. I spend hours in the gym every week, I've had a little nip-tuck, I insist on contacts rather than glasses even though I see better with glasses, I had braces on my teeth in my 40s, I get regular mani-pedi's and bikini waxes, and yes, I get my hair professionally colored every three weeks and I just got my first Brazilian blowout and I loved that, too!

And you know what? I make no apologies! I am convinced that I look about a million times better with blonde hair than with gray hair, and it's worth it to me to have the colorist do it right -- I just can't get the same results out of a box! My son is grown and gone, my husband travels a lot, and I earn enough money to afford my beauty routine without sacrificing higher priority budget items.

And if anybody is creeped out by how I look, I figure that's their problem.

Mary- more power to you, sister! You look fabulous and need to make no apologies for the effort you put in to taking care of yourself.

On my hair, personally, dyed hair looks much better-and not for the color alone. I have a lot of very fine, straight hair that's prone to being oily. When it's dyed (and I just use a semi permanent drugstore box dye) my hair is glossy but had body. According to my hair stylist, my type of hair needs some type of gentle distressing-dye, drying it by hair dryer-to add body. And she really doesn't have a horse in this race since I dye my hair on my own, and she hasn't urged me tip let her do it.
The longer I go between dyes and cuts, and when I let my hair drip dry especially, it tends to be really heavy and limp.
And my natural color is mousy brown and clashes with my pale skin-it has the same effect on my complexion as soul sucking beige. Once I started adding red tones I suddenly started getting compliments on my SKIN. That was a huge convincer!

There are no absolutes in this, just as there are none when it comes to what looks best on people fashion-wise.

Personally, I am happy for now spending a certain amount of time and money every 6-10 weeks on having my hair professionally cut and colored. My hair is now undeniably going grey, and I'm not ready to embrace that. My natural color from childhood is very dark brown, and as I got into my teens, some reddish tones came out when I spent time in the sun. So I tend to stick to those colors, with a little variation as my stylist and I keep updating my look over the years (I.e., the burgundy streak I now have on one side, with just a splash of blonde underneath that only shows when my hair moves in brighter light).

Does it look "expensive"? I don't know, but that's not my goal. Does it look flattering and current? I hope so, because that's what I want. If it helps me look a little younger than I would appear with my natural greying color, that's all good to me.

I grew up with hair that got a lot of comments -- very dark, thick and curly/wavy. I also had a love/hate relationship with my hair and fought the curls for a long time. Now the curl has relaxed, but I still have days I fight my hair. Simply air-drying and going does not work well for me -- I just have the kind of hair that seems to require a bit of styling, even if it's just 5 minutes. Likewise, I'm greying in a high-maintenance way as well -- it's just not pretty. If I thought for a second I'd have that Emmylou Harris look, I'd let it go grey in a heartbeat. But the texture of my hair just means I get weird coarse wiry strands of grey. Coloring helps even out the texture of my hair.

I have no judgment for anyone about hair coloring, whether they choose to or not. We all do what we need to in order to feel fab. For many of us, hair is very important.

I'm at the point where I'd like to see what my natural color looks like. I have been fortunate in that my hair was very slow to turn gray and it was always healthy and shiny. I now wish I'd waited a couple of years before starting to color it.

My original natural color could not be duplicated with dye. I had lots of red and blonde tones, and it didn't look good turning gray.

A few years ago I went through a bad phase--hair was drying out, breaking off, looking bad. I slowed down on blowdrying and tried to eat healthy and had my thyroid checked. I was low. It looks much better now, but it isn't the healthy hair I had when I was young--say in my 50s.

Everything is relative. I thought by now I'd stop coloring it but I'm not ready yet and I doubt my DH is ready to accept it. He has the same propensity to keep his natural color that I do. At least I've kept most of my hair--he can't say the same. I always tell him that it was the gray hairs that fell out.

I think it is interesting to read the different points of view on this subject. Janet, after reading your post I had to take some time to ponder your perspective versus my perspective. In our time, at least my life, I think commercialism, consumerism, and the quest for the almighty dollar pushes us as a society as well as individually into various levels within the vanity range. And I do not say vanity in a negative way. I think vanity can be very healthy and we would not be here at YLF is we did not strive to be better. I cannot help but think of Marie-Antoinette and others throughout history and their quest to look better, and their quest to look 'expensive'. They, however, did not have the bombardment of advertisers that we do now. This thought then leads me to Dana Thomas' book, Deluxe, and it is all tied together. I would love to know what society will be like 200 years from now. We are such a great experiment!

I have been wondering the exact same thing. The reason I stopped coloring was I had no money. Then, I just got used to not coloring and liked the lazy aspect of low maintenance hair. I used to dye my hair a few shades blonder; it feels like it took forever to get back to my natural hair color. I had some bad episodes of hair loss a year or so ago. Now I am afraid to mess with my hair, for fear it will cause hair loss. Yet, I want to look better, particularly when my hair is pulled back in a pony tail which is all the time because I'm always working, in front of customers. I want to look good when I work. It's hard being a waitress when most are 22 and with youth on their side. I'm like a senior citizen server.

My hair is not a bad natural color if I am in good, bright light. Here you can see. Pic 1 and 2 are on the same day, moments apart but standing in different places hence different light. Pic 3 is inside at night in a ponytail. Recently my bf described my hair as "dirty blonde" and that's what it looks like inside pulled back. I believe my hair strands are very sensitive to light, and can look really blonde in bright daylight but almost brown inside.

Which is my long winded way of saying, I am thinking of coloring my hair again so my hair ALWAYS looks blonde, not just when I am standing outside.

More interesting responses!

First of all, more about the book’s title, because I think this is throwing people a bit. I think she chooses to say “looking expensive” because the book is in large part written from the perspective of post-financial crisis where people have less money to spend on things like beauty treatments. So she outlines what she thinks is important to looking beautiful (from the perspective of a fashion beauty editor), explains the sky’s-the-limit approach and then what the average woman could do to achieve similar results on a budget.

Just some specific comments:
RoseandJoan, I used the term “well-dyed” just to exclude the cases of dye looking really cheap (like shoe polish) or the color being completely wrong for the person, or something like that.

Carole

Rachylou, I suspect you are right on. The regular color maintenance is probably not 100% about looking better or worse, but projecting a certain status.

Caro, I wasn’t sure what you meant by your example. Do you mean because Meryl Streep was gray in that movie? I would bet my bottom dollar that even that was not her natural unadulterated gray.

Queen Mum, no problem.

Ariadne, I agree 100%. She has such a fun, interesting style.

Claire, thanks for the compliment. Actually I like your gray hair. It is silvery and shiny. Similar to what you are saying, in my case, until I start going more white (as it seems I will as opposed to gray), I think my personal best color would be my natural color when exposed to lots of sunlight, but my lifestyle (and this climate!!!) just is not conducive to that. I think my big fear is I am going white, not ready for it, and I don’t really think that dye will ever give as good a substitute as the color I once had. By the way, I only get highlights every 6 months, so it’s not such a big expense in my case, and the book gets pretty specific about how to do it yourself if you were ever feeling adventurous. I would be terrified, I confess.

MaryK, I think you just know what look you are after and you go for it. That’s what we should all do. Of course the look each of us is after will be different and there will be different ways to get there. I don’t think you should feel weird or make apologies.

Kari, I had always assumed you were an enhanced natural red head! It does suit your complexion so well!

Denise, I think your hair is a gorgeous natural color, but I get what you are saying too that it looks different inside. I tend to get compliments only outside

Scarlet thank you. I was bummed when my bf called my hair dirty blonde or dishwater blonde or something like that. I was the towhead kid, and always felt at least medium blonde not dirty blonde. So I suppose his comment has a lot to do with it. A friend suggested I try one of those John Frieda sprays, but like you I am terrified of trying anything myself.

Oh no, MaryK. Now I have this image of a Cyborg Mary! But I have to say, I really love your Brazillian blowout. So sophisticated!

On another note about status: One thing about coloring my hair, I think it made me look older. I don't mean this in a negative way. I've been afflicted with what I think a lot of Asians suffer from - looking like you're 14 forever. Not simply fresh and energetic, but like a little kid. I'd go to interviews and people would ask me if was I there for the internship, ack! Professional color, I feel, says "I run stuff." It's not the only thing that can say that, but it can certainly help get the message across.

On another note about looking better: I also feel context influences perception a lot. Take a Bezerkeley earth mother out to the 'burbs, and she can look pretty frumpy. Take a preened woman from the 'burbs to Bezerkeley, and she can look pretty distorted. I'll never forget overhearing this conversation some millennials were having about how they'd altered their dress to come through the tunnel and not look like freaks.

love all the comments and the spunkiness of all the women on both sides of the dye box. as rachy says, comments always depend on the situational context.

for me, it takes a lot of money to look this natural. i would cut out many things, but not dye-ing my hair. i've gone box before and i'll do it again just to keep my shade.

scarlet, looking "expensive" varies from subset to subset. in the la area...west side moms look just as "expensive" as the bev hills moms, just in different ways. any group one belongs to will always have its signifiers of status--this is usually money or (leisure) time.

The operative words are "well dyed." My sis colors her own hair, and it looks dreadful. She dyes it black, when her natural color is medium brown like mine. Also, she's been coloring it for so long that it's not in good condition. It's dry and brittle. No one in the family has the nerve to tell her, either.

My DD has had both good and bad hair coloring experiences, both at home and at the salon. Because of her vitiligo, which affects her hair (she has as many white hairs as I do), I don't mind that she keeps her hair colored. Who wants white hairs at age 19?

I can't get the semi permanent hair color to grab onto my white hairs, so it's useless to try. I'm happy with the highlights (done at the salon) for now. I have a very good stylist, which makes a difference.