Don't you mean "too blonde"?

my reaction is that there is a clear bias in place involving blond hair, and perhaps the girls themselves, and the headmaster's own personal issues. in the article, the girls have a very mature point of view on the whole thing (we won't dye our hair, we should be worrying about our exams, this whole thing is ridiculous)...the weird male/female/authority power dynamics of the whole situation cause me to wonder how this would be handled in the USA.

I always wondered about those "unnatural colour hair" dress codes. How would it be enforced for non-white people? On non-whites, any colour other than black or dark brown is obviously "unnatural." So does the rule mean only white people get to dye their hair blond or red? Or that non-whites are allowed to look more unnatural than whites?

Some battles never change - I remember a similar kerfuffle from my high school, circa 1984 or thereabouts. We had a uniform and dress code including personal appearance standards - which to that point had apparently never had to address hair color. A younger student (freshman or sophomore) showed up after a break with a rather wild color combo (blonde with purple streaks, or something of the sort), and the faculty went wild about it. The problem then, though, was the purple and not the blond part. An eventual compromise was negotiated; the student died her hair black in protest, and a new rule was instituted that hair needed to be a "single natural color". The "single" part was interpreted fairly loosely , as nobody ever got into trouble over naturalistic blond, red, or brown highlights, even fairly dramatic ones, but "natural" was enforced - nobody ever showed up with purple, green, or hot pink hair again.

In this case, I definitely think the school is over-reacting - although these girls have definitely bleached their hair, I don't see how platinum blond hair is overly distracting in the school environment. Which is, after all, the principle argument for dress codes and the like to begin with.

I do think kids will always seek to rebel in small or large ways, and hair is a fairly safe way to do so.

What I find most interesting is the idea that the headmaster wants them to dye their hair to make it more "natural."

A classmate of mine dyes her hair every few months: purple, hot pink, banana yellow. Whenever we see her with a new hair color, everyone stares and makes comments for 10 minutes; then we get used to it. I don't think hair is such a distraction.

And it's not such a liberal school dress-code-wise (it is intellectually): if you wear pants, they have to go down to your ankles (and if you're male you don't have the option of a skirt in summer).

I never understood the argument that breaking with the norm is distracting. Nobody makes that argument in a university environment.

You can see the roots on the girl on the right, and she is clearly a natural blonde. Just not *quite* so blonde. So does she really have to dye it brown? This is just weird.

I went to high school in a small town in Alabama, and I used to dye my hair all sorts of unnatural colors, and I was the only person in the school who did that. I thought the school was going to have a fit, but because I was well behaved and had good grades, they never said anything.

I heard a story from a friend who is half Japanese with really light brown hair and used to attend junior high school in Japan. She was told that she needed to dye her hair black, ironically because dyed hair was not allowed at that school, and she was the only student without black or dark dark brown hair. Her parents were furious and spent a few hours with the principal explaining how she was not breaking the rules, and in how if she did what she said, then she could be technically punished and her parents would not allow her to break school rules even if instructed to.

The whole thing ended, I believe, when the parents called the superintendent and hinted that racial prejudice would make that international minded school look bad. After that, the issue was ignored and never spoken of again.

I get the feeling that we are not getting the whole story here. There is something "out of context". I mean could someone really be stupid enough to tell someone to dye their hair to be "more natural"?

I heard a story from a friend who is half Japanese with really light brown hair and used to attend junior high school in Japan. She was told that she needed to dye her hair black, ironically because dyed hair was not allowed at that school, and she was the only student without black or dark dark brown hair.

Similar story from a friend of mine from Hong Kong. She has natural red highlights (especially when she gets a lot of sun) and every year she would basically have to get a note from her parents to each of her teachers promising that her hair wasn't dyed. So it sounds like the teachers freaking out is a lot more distracting and time-consuming than the hair itself...

Moreover, another friend of mine has a cousin with an asian mom and a blond dad, which somehow gave the kid *bright* fire-engine red hair. What the heck would that kid be expected to do? No one would ever believe the color was natural, not even by seeing the parents. :p

i realise it's probably just for the photo, but at the high school i went to, we'd get scolded for wearing that much makeup and wearing jewelry like that before we were ever told to change our hair colour.

first of all in that picture there not even wearing alot of make up
and i'm doing a science fair expireament that involves hair color. and on govermental websites they say blonde is just a darker shade of white and in white there is just very few color pigments across the head. So yes blonde should be a "Natural" Hair color. if i were a parent i would take this into a deeper converstation with the school board and i wouldnt make my child change her hair color.

Sorry but can't they wait until they leave school at 15 or 16, then they have a whole life time to make fashion statements and dye their hair any colour they want.

The one on the right is natural, whats wrong with the headmaster?

I've read about hair color debates before, and this is by far the tamest one I've ever seen. They're blond, for God's sake! If blond is an unnatural hair color, the Germans and Poles have been fooling all of us for a looong time. In any case, the girls could claim that their hair had been blond the whole time, they just removed some pigment to get at it.

Seriously, when I was in school I wanted to dye my hair blue, pink, purple... If I hadn't been able to at least experiment with drugstore colors I probably would have experimented with other things instead, if you catch my drift. Why do stupid authority figures have such problems with innocent things like hair?

what a dickhead

This is ridiculous,i would be outraged if i had to die my hair even more to make it look "natural". =/

They make it seem like it's such a big deal to dye hair. I've been dying my hair since I was 8 years old and never had a problem despite the fact I've had every colour imaginable - in fact, at this moment in time it's hot pink as it has been for several months. All schools are trying to accomplish with the rule about having 'natural' coloured hair is to make everyone look the same. Why should it matter what colour your hair is? The way you look doesn't affect how you learn.

It's not an unnatural colour because my niece and nephew both have pure blonde hair. They are 5 and 8. Would say along lines of blue and green

Good job i'm not still at school. I have black and purple hair. Lol

*too blonde

what principal doesn't know that, BRITISH WHITE PEOPLE have BLONDE HAIR?!