Grow it long, go blonde and don't shampoo: How I nailed holiday hair at 64 By Christa D'souza For You Magazine Published: 12:01 BST, 10 August 2024 | Updated: 12:01 BST, 10 August 2024 e-mail View comments It’s a little eccentric, I’ll grant you, having dyed blonde waist-length hair (actually, it’s almost down to my bottom now) at the age of 64. I’m always being told by friends to chop it off. ‘It would take years off you,’ they say, and they’re probably right.
But I never could. This is the hair I dreamed of having as a teen, like Eve Plumb’s in the legendary 1970s US sitcom The Brady Bunch. And I feel vindicated come beach season, when it rocks to go a bit wild, whatever your age.
Holiday hair: I remember back in the 70s what a thing that was. If you’re of that era you’ll remember Sun-in, the spray that was meant to make your hair blonde but, in fact, turned it orange. The old lemon-juice trick, meanwhile, turned it to straw.
This was particularly true of my thick, brittle Indian hair, which hurt my scalp it was so heavy and was a nightmare to wash. Combine it with sand, salt water and general lack of hairbrushing, and by the end of the holidays I’d have to take a pair of scissors to my hair to cut out the knots. Scroll forward to today and you’d think, given that I spend most of the summer in Mykonos these days and practically live in the sea when I’m there, I’d have a short back and sides by now.
Instead, I have adapted by coming up with a holi.