Headband dyeing, hanging ear dyeing, gradient color... Hair coloring has always been an essential weapon for fashion trendsetters.
But if you think that hair coloring is the patent of modern people, you are naïve. You know, the ancients more than 3,000 years ago will dye their hair, and there is more than one way. The materials used to dye hair are even more varied, only you can't think of it, and there is no ancient people who dare not try.
01 The beauty trend of the Roman period
As today, the ancient Romans believed that hair and clothing could reveal a person's identity and status.
The source of the image is | Full history
In many paintings and sculptures, we can see scenes of women grooming their hair. Complex, exquisite hairstyles are often a symbol of nobility, after all, rich and idle aristocrats have the heart to slowly do hairstyles.
However, the hairstyle was still too easy to be learned, so the noble women decided to create a new trick in the color of their hair.
I don't know who first unlocked the strange use of pigeon dung, but smearing pigeon dung on hair once became a hair trend. And pigeon dung alone is not enough, but also urine, it is said that this can make the hair color lighter, the effect is similar to today's "bleach".
In addition, the ancient Romans also used animal fat mixed with plant ash to dye their hair. It has been documented that this mixture can turn hair red. If you want to make your hair black, you can learn from the practice of Pliny Sr., the writer of the time: soak leeches in red wine for 40 days until they decay, and then apply it to the hair after fishing it out. This is said to keep the hair black for up to two months.
In contrast, dyeing with henna is much more elegant. However, the henna used by the ancient Romans is not what we often call the hydrangea flower, but the henna flower, and it is not its flower that is used to make dyes, but leaves.
Henna | Internet
Until now, in West Asia and North Africa, there is still the custom of dyeing hair and eyebrows with henna leaves.
02 People can be old, and their hair cannot be white
The average life expectancy of the ancients was relatively short, and they often had a deep sense of aging. Han Yu, a great writer of the Tang Dynasty, once lamented that he was not yet forty years old, "and looked at the vast, and his hair was pale, and his teeth and teeth were shaken."
Han Yu | Internet
The appearance of white hair is relentless in revealing that life will shift from rising to falling. Did the ancients also dye their white hair back black?
The Tang poet Liu Yuxi once wrote in "With the Singer Mi Jiarong" that "in recent times, the young ancestors of the world have been born after the birth of good hair dyeing", lamenting that men in the Tang Dynasty were good at dyeing their hair and advocating young fashion.
The earliest record of hair coloring in China is Wang Mang more than 2,000 years ago. When Wang Mang was 68 years old, he made lady Shi Shi empress, and at that time he was already "white-bearded", and in order to hide his old attitude, he specially dyed his hair and beard black.
The Hanshu Wang Mang Biography states that he "wanted to look out for himself and dye his hair." | Internet
In the "Sui Dynasty Emperor's Harem Herbs", there is a kind of hair dyeing recipe - soybean frying, black soybeans are soaked in vinegar for 24 to 48 hours, boiled together, filtered out the residue, and then slowly boiled over low heat to make a thick paste.
This is a natural hair coloring balm, when used, wash the hair, dry the hair and apply the ointment once a day. Vinegar paste is rice vinegar, with black soybeans, can dye white hair, is a more popular hair dye in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
Black beans | Internet
In the Tang Dynasty, the "Thousand Golden Formulas for Preparing For Emergencies" and "Thousand Golden Wings Fang" also recorded many prescriptions for dyeing black hair, such as "raw oil stained Ume, commonly used to lay the head liang", "black water stains, painted hair to make black", "washed with salt soup, raw sesame oil and reed ash", etc.
The Ming Dynasty 'Compendium of Materia Medica' also cites many materials that can be used for hair coloring, such as barley, needle sand, galley, brahmin, langye grass, raspberry, etc.
In general, ancient hair dyeing relied on the technique of "dyeing black with black".
03 Why does hair dye fade?
In 1856, the advent of chemical synthetic dyes finally freed people who loved beauty from their excessive dependence on plants.
At the time, 18-year-old William Henry Perkin was still working in the lab and washing bottles. After a failed experiment, William, as usual, added alcohol to the beaker and washed the experimental tools. But surprisingly, a brilliant purple color suddenly appeared in the beaker! This is the famous aniline violet.
William Henry Perkin | Internet
As the first chemical dye that can be mass-produced, aniline violet quickly contributed bright colors to textiles such as clothes and curtains. Of course, the hair did not fall.
Perkin's mentor, Augst William von Hoffmann, drew inspiration from aniline to synthesize a substance called paradiphenylamine, which changes color when reacted with oxygen and is the main ingredient in modern hair dyes.
The source of the image is | Internet
Modern hair dyes can be divided into disposable hair dyes, semi-permanent hair dyes and permanent hair dyes.
Small molecules such as paradiphenylamine in permanent hair dyes can pass through the crevices of the head layer, and then the keratin layer in the middle is oxidized, which will not only change color, but also become larger in volume, unable to pass through the stratum corneal gaps, and eventually remain permanently in the cortical layer.
Hair structure | Internet
The molecules in semi-permanent hair dyes are slightly larger than those in permanent hair dyes, and although they can also pass through the gaps in the stratum corneum, they do not undergo a chemical reaction of discoloration on the hair, and the molecules do not become larger. During the process of washing hair, it is very easy to "run" out of the gaps in the stratum corneum. Generally wash the head 6 to 12 times, the color will fade almost.
As for disposable hair dyes, the molecules in them are simply too big to be willful, and people have no idea of penetrating the stratum corneum at all, but just form a thin film in the head layer. So, as long as you wash your hair once, you will change back to Cinderella in seconds.
04 Is hair dye carcinogenic?
In the list of carcinogens released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization in 2017, p-phenylenediamine, resorcinol, and hydrogen peroxide belong to class III carcinogens. That said, there is currently insufficient evidence that such substances have carcinogenic effects.
The source of the image is | Internet
In a 2020 study published in BMJ, the world's top comprehensive medical journal, researchers followed 120,000 American women for up to 36 years and concluded that the association between individual use of permanent hair dyes and most cancer risks and cancer mortality was low.
The source of the image is | Internet
Hair dye allergies are more common than carcinogenic. Many people will have different degrees of allergies to hair dyes, and sometimes allergic reactions do not occur immediately, so it is necessary to do allergy tests before hair coloring.
Finally, I wish everyone a beautiful and healthy hair!