"Blue hair brigade"

[CervixSampler]

I expect this might be deleted but fingers crossed.
I'm posting on behalf of my Dd who is bombarded with gender woo at school and has queried me about the blue hair brigade stereotype. I don't know much about it except that my plans for a blue rinse once I reach a certain age has been shelved. I'm going for apricot now instead. It better matches my natural colouring anyway.

Can anyone explain the whole blue hair thing in a young teen friendly way please? She is miffed that blue hair is not cool among the GC.

Whilst I get who it's a shorthand for, I'm not wildly keen on 'the blue hair brigade' as a dismissive term. It's not quite 'when they go low, we go high' from my perspective. I think it also perpetuates the unhelpful myth that this is simply a right/left old/young issue.

I know GC women with brightly dyed hair (including blue), and even more with a history of bright hair. I wouldn't automatically assume a blue-haired young woman was signalling her allegiance.

It is worth noting that amongst incel ideology the blue haired brigade also refers to feminists and non traditional women as an insult!

It's sad to see this overlap with GC!

As a personal, I have teal blue hair and it's:

• amazing and often compliment
• my lowest upkeep hair (blonde/pink/silver were bigger efforts!)
• suits my skin massively
• I am in no definite camp re 'lefties', conservative or GC. Hold overlapping views.

My youngest daughter told me huffily that I'd been misinformed when I said her blue hair might be regarded by some people as a signal that she was a straight kid trying desperately to hitch a lift on the rainbow, but within a couple of days her hair was orange, which suits her much better. I'm sure in reality there's no correlation between making a feature of your hair and having particular views on gender ideology.

It's a shorthand for young, (too?) socially progressive radical.

What it means varies a bit depending on who is deploying it, as @GalactatingGoddess notes.

Aw, it's not the blue hair really. I've always rather enjoyed seeing people with silly hair colours and have been known to randomly compliment them in queues.

It's a certain category of young people who think they are different from any young people before. They are 'queer' and 'nonbinary', and as there are no 'nonbinary' stereotypes for girls to adopt they need a visual indicator of their great difference so do funny hair colour. It's easier for boys who can just be nonbinary by wearing a skirt, blue hair rarer among the boys in my experience, though some do if they actually want to be pretty stereotype conforming but still identify as special.

I actually quite fancy silly colour hair once I've gone properly white. I never did it when I was young as my natural hair colour is dark and I didn't fancy bleaching it. It would be more of a not taking self too seriously gesture than a aren't I special gesture.

This has been very interesting, thank you. I appreciate the different viewpoints and do think it's important we don't enforce stereotypes

OP, there’s a good analysis of the relationship between blue hair, social alienation and existential philosophy as presented in Blue Is The Warmest Colour, which came out in 2010, here: www.yourfilmprofessor.com/blue-is-the-warmest-color-exploring-the-intertexual-layers-of-meaning/

DD may find that interesting, but the film is an 18, so perhaps not suitable for her?

Even if you don’t want your hair to shout ‘existential nihilism’, blue hair is probably the most flattering of the unnatural hair colours. There’s a shade of blue to suit almost everyone, and it fades out nicely too. So it’s a good colour for anyone looking for a non-conformist statement or just a bit of fun. I know a very respectable middle aged professional who dyed her hair blue because she was bored.

So glad you brought this up OP as I’ve been wanting to ‘reclaim’ blue hair on MN for ages. It’s too good to abandon without a battle!

@DomesticatedZombie

I had blue hair back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Thank to quite shit dyes, I also had blue ears.

Haircolour/earcolour means very little, OP, it's what's between the ears that counts.

I had blue hair back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Thank to quite shit dyes, I also had blue ears.