Hair changing colour with age?

[Harald]

Damn it, voted for the wrong option. My hair is darker than it was as a child not paler.
One day when I was in my teens my mother suddenly looked att me with a confused look in her eyes and said: "But, your not blond". I was a bit surprised since I had never really considerd myself to have blond hair.

 

[Tee Kay]

It seemed like this phenemonon only affects Caucasian males and not others.

I think my hair haven't change colour but then I'm Asian and its hard to notice.

 

[S.P.Q.R.]

Getting darker, as for most other guys here: My hair used to be really blond when I was a kid, but now it's of a rather dark blond.

 

[cthom]

blond --> brown, now with a touch of sun-bleached hair. at least that's how i explain the grey.

 

[Gabryel Karolin]

Was blonde until age 10 or so, then it turned brownish in my teens, now it seems it's getting lighter again, still darker than when I was a child though. Something to do with hormones most likely.

 

[Catharsis]

From Wikipedia (re: fertility, and baby-blondness):

Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, under the aegis of University of St Andrews, published a study in March 2006 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that says blond hair evolved very quickly at the end of the last Ice Age by means of sexual selection. According to the study, the appearance of blond hair and blue eyes in some northern European women made them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair was produced higher in the Cro-Magnon descended population of the European region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses and finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men. This hypothesis argues that women with blond hair posed an alternative that helped them mate and thus increased the number of blonds.

Blond hair is common in infants and children, so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light-colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair, although such natal hair usually falls out quickly. Blond hair tends to turn darker with age, and many children born blond turn from anything between a light brown to dark brown before or during their teenage years.

And I have gone from blond to light brown over time.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

From Wikipedia (re: fertility, and baby-blondness):

...

This makes no sense. A woman with green hair would certainly stand out among all other women but that does not mean that green-haired women would be more likely to attract mates.

 

[Speedo]

My hair was red as a child (not the bright, fire-engine red of most true redheads, but a darker red more like blood), started to darken by the mid-teens, and by now I'd say that it's pretty much just plain 'ol brown.

Not that it matters, 'cause I have it shaved now.

 

[Slaughter]

I have black hair, but it's still the same right now. I think that it's natural and mainly to have black hair. To me, man that have any other hair collor are either europeans, born with that, or gay. But I think my hair will begin to grey out soon, for my grandfather and dad got grey hair when still young, but at least it looks nice!

 

[LucyDuke]

I was ridiculously blond as a child. Now my hair is light brown and occasionally purple. I still think of myself as blond, for whatever reason.

 

[Rossiya]

I was blonde upto around 3, then dark brown ever since.

 

[azzaman333]

My hair has been dark brown all my life so far.

 

[Sophie 378]

This makes no sense. A woman with green hair would certainly stand out among all other women but that does not mean that green-haired women would be more likely to attract mates.

Otoh, blonde hair is recessive to darker hair, and blue eyes are recessive to brown eyes. This makes it slightly easier for a man to tell if the children produced by a blonde-haired / blue-eyed woman are his. This would probably be a plus to consider, when choosing a mate.

(E.g. A man who is homozygous for brown eyes will always have brown-eyed children with a woman who has blue eyes. A heterozygous man could result in children with brown or blue eyes. Two recessive people would find it easier: if the children have brown eyes, they're not his.

Yes, this is simplified, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but in general it's supposed to be easier for a man to tell the paternity of "his" children if the woman has recessive genes for easily-detectable phenotypes (e.g. eye colour) and he has dominant.)

 

[Brighteye]

Surely this would only work if all the other men also had recessive types, promoting dominant genes?

 

[Sophie 378]

Not necessarily ... it's complicated. It's the sort of stuff they spend one lesson on in late-highschool biology classes, and if you ask more they tend to say "go read some textbooks"; but the generalisation they give is "if she has recessive genes, it's easier for him to detect paternity".

 

[Mirc]

I've been born blond, and now it's impossible to say if my hair is blond or brown... it's exactly halfway between those.

 

[Cuivienen]

I was platinum blonde when very young, but it's darkened to a more typical blonde now. My eyes have also darkened from green to green-brown.

 

[downtown]

My hair has always been Black...as I've grown older, its become thicker and a little curly.

HOWEVER, after my exams at the end of my freshman year of college, I discoved a few white hairs! At this rate, I'll be Anderson Cooper by the time I'm 30!

 

[Bad Player]

From Wikipedia (re: fertility, and baby-blondness):


...

When there is a shortage of men surely the men would have taken multiple female partners which would negate any advantage of attraction. Unless maybe they only fed the attractive partners!

 

[Bad Player]

Otoh, blonde hair is recessive to darker hair, and blue eyes are recessive to brown eyes. This makes it slightly easier for a man to tell if the children produced by a blonde-haired / blue-eyed woman are his. This would probably be a plus to consider, when choosing a mate.

(E.g. A man who is homozygous for brown eyes will always have brown-eyed children with a woman who has blue eyes. A heterozygous man could result in children with brown or blue eyes. Two recessive people would find it easier: if the children have brown eyes, they're not his.

Yes, this is simplified, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but in general it's supposed to be easier for a man to tell the paternity of "his" children if the woman has recessive genes for easily-detectable phenotypes (e.g. eye colour) and he has dominant.)

Interestingly men with blue eyes show a sexual preference for women with blue eyes, presumably for this very reason.

...Springer Science
Eighty-eight male and female students were asked to rate facial attractiveness of models on a computer. The pictures were close-ups of young adult faces, unfamiliar to the participants. The eye color of each model was manipulated, so that for each model’s face two versions were shown, one with the natural eye color (blue/brown) and another with the other color (brown/blue). The participants’ own eye color was noted.

Both blue-eyed and brown-eyed women showed no difference in their preferences for male models of either eye color. Similarly, brown-eyed men showed no preference for either blue-eyed or brown-eyed female models. However, blue-eyed men rated blue-eyed female models as more attractive than brown-eyed models.

In a second study, a group of 443 young adults of both sexes and different eye colors were asked to report the eye color of their romantic partners. Blue-eyed men were the group with the largest proportion of partners of the same eye color.

According to Bruno Laeng and colleagues, “It is remarkable that blue-eyed men showed such a clear preference for women with the same eye color, given that the present experiment did not request participants to choose prospective sexual mates, but only to provide their aesthetic or attractiveness responses…based on face close-up photographs.” Blue-eyed men may have unconsciously learned to value a physical trait that can facilitate recognition of own kin.

1. Laeng B et al (2006). Why do blue-eyed men prefer women with the same eye color? (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology DOI 1007.1007/s00265-006-0266-1)