Going Blonde

I had my hair dyed blonde the other day. It was blonde like the colour of wheat, almost platinum blonde. I actually have dark brown hair and wanted to know whether I wouldn’t recognise myself if I suddenly went blonde, whether new possibilities would present themselves. Well, I must admit that it was also partly the fault of Sick Boy from “Trainspotting”, whose hairstyle I swore I’d emulate one day since I first saw the film. I won’t go into the details of the dyeing process. Hamit, my Turkish hairdresser, did his level best to get everything wrong: the result was a bleached scalp and unbearable pain – a peroxide massacre. I’d rather tell you about what happened afterwards. Without any doubt, there was a before and an after. I no longer had a hairstyle; what I had instead was a fashion statement. There aren’t many certainties about manhood anymore, and everything has become more relaxed and more fluid. Only one iron law remains, which is that a man with dark hair doesn’t go blonde! 

I was laughed at and mocked, stared at. The most frequent question I heard from friends and at work was “what did you do that for?” They said the word “that” with such horrified emphasis, as if I’d drowned a retriever puppy. While dyeing is, of course, allowed for women, there seems to be a rule for men that at best only allows Justin Bieber and tattooed professional footballers as exceptions. 

While a man over 30 was evidently entitled to a certain amount of nonsense to date, he now has to be mature, both in terms of character and appearance. I, who had dared to challenge this, was therefore thought of as someone who could be trusted to do all manner of stupid things. My friend asked me whether I was still writing for my newspaper. As if I quit my job or was shown the door because of the dyeing incident. After a few weeks, I shaved off my hair again as the roots were showing. My blonde phase had worn me out. The world wasn’t ready for it, and I wasn’t ready for the world’s outrage. But it was the first time I had a buzz cut, eight millimetres long. The response to this was oh no, that’s another sad story.

Moritz Herrmann is leading the society section at “Stern”. He lives in Hamburg. By the way, Herrmann’s hair has its natural brown colour and is medium length once again.

This column has first been published in the printed edition of 30 Grad in autumn 2020. You can subscribe here for free.