On Dyed Hair

In all the commentary about the Aurora, Colorado shooting this week, I wanted to reflect on what nobody else seems to be talking about - James Holmes' flaming orange hair.

Nobody really knows much about the motivation of James Holmes at this point; presumably this will become clear in the coming weeks. A few people have made comments about how "crazy" he looks with his wide eyes and orange hair. I don't know how and if his orange hair was any indication of underlying disorders or anything like that. In this case it seems clear that this individual was severely unbalanced and that the crazy way he wore his hair is indicative of his craziness in general.

Dyed hair is becoming more common in our culture, even among Christians. Is it always the case that dying one's hair a bizarre color is an indication that something is "wrong" with a person? While I admit this may be the case many times, I do not think dyed hair is always indicative of any sort of disordered life.

Many people I know take the opposite opinion. My own parish priest, whom I respect very much, takes the position that any well-balanced individual with properly ordered passions would never want to dye their hair orange or blue or green, etc. Therefore, according to this opinion, dyed hair is always a sign of something amiss with the person's interior life. There are several other folks I know who take this opinion, all good Catholics. However, I do have to disagree with this blanket assertion.

Certain behaviors can sometimes be indicative of underlying problems. A man who gets a vulgar word tattooed across his forehead has some issues; same with people that slice their own flesh with razor blades; ditto at girls who think it is attractive to take pictures of themselves making a duck face. But not all personal behaviors that go against social norms indicate a disordered life. Certainly a man may spend all his time alone in his room with the drapes pulled down because he is psychotic immersed in perverse fantasies; he may also do so because he is a saint with his mind on the kingdom to come. A man may wear a skirt because he a transvestite; he might also do so because he is a Scotsman (burn!). 

So it is with dyed hair, in my opinion. A boy or girl may choose to dye their hair because they want to shock and offend people, maybe because they are not properly integrated with their peers and do not really understand or know themselves and are disordered in many ways. I admit this can happen, and in the case of James Holmes, this probably is true. But a person may also dye their hair precisely because they do know themselves, and are very well-balanced. They may do so because they find it beautiful or because they want to be artistic. And why not? Blue hair may not be normal, but it is certainly not "ugly."

If we are to universally be against dying hair of blue, green or pink, I must ask why do we not react the same way against women whose hair is dyed blonde or brown? What about when someone going grey dyes their hair to its original color? If hair-dying is wrong then it is wrong and let's argue about why it is wrong, but let's not make a foolish stand on the colors themselves: brown is okay but green is not, blue is terrible but blond is stylish, dying gray hair black makes you look younger but dying black hair pink makes you look like a freak. If we start arguing about which colors are and are not acceptable, we have clearly moved into the realm of social norms, not absolute morality.

We should never mistake societal norms for absolute morality. Even in the best of cultures, societal norms can be reflections of absolute morality, but aren't synonymous with it. Even in a Christian culture, there are many behaviors that are social conventions that are in themselves of neutral or a least of debatable merit: hairstyles, types of commonly accepted dress, table etiquette, locations of piercings, taboos about what topic you can and can't talk about in polite conversation (in America this is politics, religion, and how much money you make). These are the norms of our society, the "average" of how people behave and talk, but they themselves are not morality, and we should never talk of manners, etiquette and social conventions as if practicing them constituted virtue. We can certainly explain their relevance in terms of politeness, but not morality. We do not want to be like the English teacher Thomas Merton talks about in Seven Storey Mountain who taught his students to recite 1 Corinthians 13 with the word "love" swapped out for the word "gentleman", replacing supernatural charity for mere natural gentility ("A gentleman is patient; a gentleman is kind. A gentleman does not envy...").

Besides, as Catholics we should be implicitly suspicious of prevailing societal norms. It does not matter if we live in a secular society or a Catholic one. The devout Catholic will always find himself going against the grain. It could be Benedict XVI condemning the immorality of the modern age, Fulton Sheen speaking out against the crass materialism of the 1950s, or St. Francis of Assisi protesting the lax Catholicism of his own century - we can never confuse the societal status quo with how it should be, nor conflate cultural protocol with morality absolutely, even if the two occasionally line up. Catholics of all people ought to know better.

In my own experience, a majority of these folks with dyed hair are just really creative people. They are not disordered, unbalanced or suffering from underlying emotional issues. They are just people who like the idea of blue hair and think it looks neat. And I agree with them. I would never dye my hair blue at this juncture in my life, but I do confess that I think hair dyed vibrant colors can be beautiful in its own way. Usually the people who do it are some of the most unique and thoughtful people I have ever met. In their case, the green or blue hair is not an expression of their disorder, but of their uniqueness. And though desire for uniqueness can be a form of pride, uniqueness itself is not. Remember, according to the Scholastics every angel in heaven is its own unique species.

So, while James Holmes' act was horrific and in his case the orange hair is probably an indicator that he was an unbalanced individual, let's not presume that we can always read so much about the state of people's souls by the color of their hair. 

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