Women with natural light-brown hair who have dyed it for years are hitting back at the term “mousy brown,” generally used to describe a hair color that falls between dark blond and light brown.
Two women have gone viral for sharing their thoughts on the term after reclaiming their natural color. Bunny Hedaya, 34, an influencer and content creator, had blond hair as a young child, but it darkened as she got older. “I started dyeing my hair when I was in my teens and really never knew what my natural hair looks like,” she told Newsweek.
But years of bleaching took its toll, and in 2021, under “a lot of stress,” her weakened hair began falling out and she decided to “let it all grow out naturally.”
Dana Myers, 39, a real estate agent, has a similar story. She had “really blond” hair as a child that grew darker. She began coloring her hair in high school, until it became “very unhealthy and was so expensive” to maintain.
“I decided I was going to stop coloring it to try and get it healthy and save money,” she told Newsweek. She had been spending around $400 every eight weeks on highlights.
“I struggled at first because my hair was so much darker than the color I had been dyeing it to be. But once it grew out about 4 inches and I started to see how my natural color of my hair really complemented my eyes and natural coloring of my skin, it was like a light bulb went off,” she said.
Both women have shared their thoughts on TikTok, with Hedaya posting a video to her account, @bunnyhedaya, on January 3 that has received over 100,000 likes. She said she “realized society hates women” when she let her hair grow out.
“When people started seeing my hair color and saying, ‘Oh, you have mousy brown hair.’ Mousy brown hair! That’s the shade we decided to call light brown hair? My hair is gorgeous,” Hedaya said.
She went on: “I wish I would have been told that it’s fine to have light brown hair. You don’t need to dye your hair black, you don’t need to bleach your hair it until it falls out. It’s OK to have light brown hair.”
Myers then reposted the video to her own channel, @danamyers_, on January 4, thanking Hedaya and saying she “will no longer be referring to my hair as mousy brown.”
In her video, which has almost 30,000 likes, Myers said: “I have said over the years that I have to bleach my hair because I have mousy brown hair.”
She went on: “Why do we hate it so much? I’ll no longer refer to my hair as mousy brown because it is beautiful. It’s a beautiful color that not everybody has, and it’s what comes out of my head.”
Hedaya told Newsweek she’d like to change the “narrative” around women’s hair colors, saying, “We shouldn’t be calling hair colors mousy, dishwater, dirty. When we talk about colors, we say baby blue, but why don’t we say baby brown? I feel as though we try to hurt women by calling their hair colors these names.”
Myers, meanwhile, says she has “gotten so many compliments on my natural color since growing it out, and it just reaffirms what I’ve begun to see to be true”—that “we are meant to have the color that grows out of our head because it best suits us.”
“When my hair begins to turn gray, I may feel differently, but in the meantime I’m going to embrace my natural color, regain the health of my hair, and save the money I would’ve been spending on my hair and maybe take a family vacation instead.”
Many women related to both Myers’ and Hedaya’s videos, with one commenter sharing on Myers’ clip: “People act like I’ve committed a crime if i dont go to get my grays colored the second there is a tiny bit of growth.”
Another user said: “Literally so many beautiful ways to describe this color – caramel, honey brown, even just light brown…..and people are choosing mousy brown and dishwasher blonde?”
On Hedaya’s video, one user said: “I have light brown hair naturally and I hate it and I realize now it’s because it’s always called mouse brown hair.”
One commenter suggested: “Meanwhile there’s someone going to a salon wanting this exact hair color but calling it macchiato honey brown or something ridiculous.”
Hair coloring is a huge industry, particularly women’s hair coloring. In 2022 in the United States alone, sales for women’s hair coloring amounted to around $1.4 billion while men’s hair coloring was around $211 million, according to Statista.
Rose Weitz, a sociologist and author of the book Rapunzel’s Daughters: What Women’s Hair Tells Us About Women’s Lives, told PsyPost that we change our hair colors to project a particular identity. This could be rooted in an unconscious desire to identify with certain stereotypes—about blondes having more fun, redheads being feisty, she said.
Hedaya told Newsweek she wants her message to be “to embrace your natural beautiful even when it’s hard.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love all things glam, but I think we’ve lost the plot a little bit on what’s needed to feel pretty,” she said. “And if me sharing my journey, being free and having natural hair, is a step in the right direction, I’m happy to take it.”
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