Ann Althouse has an interesting post about childhood versus adult hair color, and how people want to be blond even when they aren't blond anymore. There is a status definition to it. Her examples track women's opinions, not men's.
I had platinum blond hair until about age 22, though the beard grew in both blond and red and that gradually crept up the sides. I was progressively balding since even before that, which confused the matter further. As an adult, people would be more likely to say I had red hair despite my white eyebrows and top hair, what's left of that. But I always thought of myself as a blond and filled that in on any form that asked for it. My mother and one of my sons had the same timeline of flax until the early 20s. He shaves his head now and we don't know what the color would be.
The unusual part is that I only regarded it as a status color in those last few years I had it. I didn't like it as a boy; I thought it was a girl-color and unmasculine. Only when it became a way of standing out and being eccentric - especially after Johnny Winter became a guitarists' favorite - did I start thinking this blondness was something I need to be proud of and encourage. People would ask if I were albino, and I thought that was awesome. One college summer when it did not become as blinding as the year before I put lemon on it a few times in September to keep that identity. I must not have done it much, I don't recall how that came out.
White hair is mixing in with the red with the beard and on the sides this last decade and I'm back to being clearly blond again. As I was always meant to be.
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Someone once asked my husband if he was sure our children were all his. We had a brunette, an auburn redhead, and a blonde. My redheaded daughter and her brunette husband have two blond, blue-eyed children (parents' eyes are hazel and green) and they have been asked if they adopted.
My mother, my sister, and I were all born blonde. My mother's and my sister's hair stayed that way darkening only to a slight degree. Mine turned dishwater blonde early and kept getting darker until it could be called, perhaps, very dirty dishwater blonde.
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