Jokey or rude?

[AwkwardatChristmas]

Awkward moment at our family Christmas. Eight at ours including adult children. We FaceTimed my elderly mum and my sister who were together for Christmas day. My husband’s brother said hello and immediately asked my mum, “Have you dyed your hair?”. She’s 88 but has never gone fully grey. It was a bit odd, especially as he’s not seen my mum in years, they certainly don’t have a jokey relationship. Anyway, after a pause my sister said, “That’s an inappropriate question.” which tbh made it more awkward. My husband said “He was trying to make a compliment” but my sister just repeated herself. I mumbled something about the lighting. The conversation moved on and the FaceTime ended soon after.

My husband is now saying that my sister was out of order. I’m not sure, can that be an OK thing to say to an elderly woman who you don’t have a close relationship with? My sister is a bit blunt sometimes. My mum looked like she didn’t know what to say, don’t think she was upset.

If your DM hates being on camera it was a bit off having the brother in the chat at all. What he said was clumsy, your sister made it worse by drawing attention to it in a po faced way.

Jesus the faux-naivety on this thread.
Everyone knows it's bloody rude to ask a very elderly woman without grey hair if she has dyed her hair when genetics and basic biology would make it impossible for her NOT to have grey hair, and knowing full well that women of that generation, dying it to hide the grey, would absolutely NOT appreciate being asked if they dyed their hair, and would in fact be very embarrassed, just like if you asked if they were wearing control underwear or fake tan.
We're not talking about some 14 year old who's turned up with pink hair here.
Either reading comprehension is off the scale on this thread, or people are being purposely obtuse, or there are a lot of people who have gone online today who haven't a bloody clue how much grace their friends and family are giving them for all the times they walk around with their foot in their mouth.
While sis was confrontational, she probably felt quite defensive of her mother being asked an obviously rude question. When sis said it was inappropriate, BIL should have STFU and changed the subject to something more suitable. If your DM is in her late 80s, how has your BIL got to his 50s-ish with no clue how to talk to other humans politely? What a buffoon.

What a fuss about nothing.

Me too! My friends & colleagues notice this about each other all the time and point out it looks nice. I can’t even imagine being offended by it

Definitely a rude/awkward questiion/way of putting it in the context unless you know the person well, but one I would happily answer. "Can you repeat that? What a funny question, Steve! Yes I felt like a change." Rather that the sister's calling the question out which makes it more awkward all round. I certainly wouldn't need someone to fight my battles for me.

Another thread with some absolutely weird comments.

No doubt the pp who think asking people you scarcely know personal questions about whether they have dyed their hair is normal behaviour are the same rude people who go up to strangers and tell them them they are looking haggard and older or that they have put on weight.

What is wrong with people that they don't know that making negative comments on someones personal appearance is bad manners? And yes, asking someone elderly if they have dyed their hair is both a personal and a negative comment.

No wonder OP's sister said something. She must have been feeling very defensive on behalf of her DM.

I genuinely don’t see why asking someone about hair colour is rude? It’s not like he told her she’d gained weight or asked for her bra size.
I mean I probably wouldn’t ask someone in their eighties that question as I would assume they had coloured it if it wasn’t grey but I’d take as he thought her hair looked different and asked a question.
No you shouldn’t be annoyed at your dh or bil and yes your sister made a non event a bit awkward.

Same here! It’s just hair colour does it matter if you colour it or not??

Me too 🤷‍♀️

The comment was neither jokey or rude, it was just a random thing to say. This thread is odd!

Doesn’t necessarily sound jokey OR rude to me. Maybe a bit blunt. But possibly just conversational. I think we’re all supposed to draw a discreet veil over the fact that an 88 year old woman’s hair would be anything other than grey/white.

In saying that, my auntie is 84 and only has a few silver strands through her black hair, but I think she’s an outlier!

Your sister made it awkward. It was a bit of a personal question but all they had to do was laughingly answer yes or no. I don’t think it’s a rude question. The whole making everyone FaceTime seems the most ill judged thing in the whole scenario, it was only ever going to lead to awkward interactions.

I’m trying to imagine someone asking the question to my 87 year old DM. I think she’d just answer the question, presuming it would be followed up by some kind of compliment.

Oh come on! I hope some of you are on the wind up. It's like asking if someone's toupee is real hair or not, or asking what brand of concealer someone used to cover an enormous zit. It's drawing attention to something they might be trying to hide, of course it's rude.

OP's mum doesn't owe a straight answer to personal questions either. I hope you are not all bringing up your children to "just" give straight answers to questions that feel intrusive or too personal.

Thank you @CuboidRectangle and @Makemeanonymous for seeing that the context is critical. I'm not wondering if it’s rude to ask Lauren in the office if she's dyed her hair when it's clearly a new colour and my next comment will be "Really suits you."

This is a man saying a brief “Hello. Happy Christmas” /pause/ “Have you dyed your hair?” to an elderly woman. Their first interaction in years.

it didn’t occur to me to say in the OP but mum has early dementia and he would probably know that, my DH certainly does.

I am increasingly thinking it was plain rude. The only people saying it was just conversational or isn’t rude at all don’t see to be taking account of who it was said to.

🙄

I don't understand criticism of your sister - if she spends relevant time with your DM she probably has a level of protectiveness activated against all sorts of arseholes.

The man brain farted and she told him so. It's not her job to smooth things over for his benefit.

Smoothing it over wouldn’t just be for his benefit though it would be for everyone’s. DS could have laughed and said ‘what kind of question is that?’ And moved things on. As it was it was just made awkward for everyone, including presumably DM. Unless she was sure he meant it maliciously there was no need to go into scolding mode. It seems obvious he felt put on the spot and just blurted out the wrong thing.

"Scolding"? MN really does bring the (internalised?) misogyny.

This is a very confident, well-travelled man in his late 50s. He need have said nothing more than 'Happy Christmas'.

He does have form for shitty 'banter'.

And there it is. He does have form for shitty ‘banter’. If only there had been some way of conveying this in the first post🤔 People are replying based on the information you provided in that first post. No mention of shitty banter there. People thought he might have blurted something out without thinking and now we know he has a reputation for saying insensitive stuff dressed up as banter. Changes things a bit.

Also, using ‘scold’ as a verb isn’t misogynistic. Men can scold. It’s simply a telling off. Calling a woman a scold is misogynistic though.

Well you’re sure you’re right OP and you were there and know the full background, so I don’t know why you started the thread.

That's my opinion, @Funnywonder. DH would disagree. As I said, I tried to write the OP as neutrally as I could. I was really unsure when I posted. Interesting that many posters immediately assume that an adult man is making a silly blunder rather than anything else.

Scold has a misogynistic tone in any form. A dictionary definition doesn't change how it's used. As a pp said, faux naivety is such a MN staple.

Scolded absolutely isn’t always misogynistic. ‘The father scolded his son’ is a normal sentence. It just means a high handed level of rebuke. It’s not being misogynistic to think your sister overreacted. But as you’ve now revealed your DM has dementia and BIL has form for shitty banter maybe she was correct.

Exactly. My mum had dementia and I would certainly have defended her, as someone particularly vulnerable, from an idiot bloke who had form for saying stupid stuff. In light of this information I would be Team Sister. But yeah, that information wasn’t available before.

Your family sound incredibly uptight

Interesting that many posters immediately assume that an adult man is making a silly blunder rather than anything else.

We can all only reply / offer an opinion based on the information given by the OP.
I would have said the same had the person been put on the spot to say something to an elderly lady he/she barely knows been a woman.

You are determined to be proven right here.
Clearly, from the majority of people who have taken the time to reply to you don't think you are.
Generally, the point of asking strangers for their opinion about a situation is to get some insight from a neutral standpoint.
You are just wanting to be proven right.

Generally, the point of starting this kind of thread is to sort your own thoughts and use the ithers as a sounding board to gather some ideas. Than you assess the ideas, sift through them and evaluate their relevance. And than you find out what aspects from the general context are important.

It's impossible to write the original post which covers absolutely everything, but keep it reasonably short.