Ilya Mechnikov, a scientist arguably quite ahead of his time, shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908 for his work on human immunity. His research interest was garnered by his (not arguable) horrid experiences with diseases caused by bacterial infection. After his first wife died from tuberculosis, he attempted to take his own life with an opium overdose, but managed to live. His misery didn’t end there however. When his second wife developed typhoid fever, he wanted to die with her, and inoculated himself with a tick-borne disease. They both survived, but it made him realize the salient significance of the body’s natural immune system.

In the wake of their bodies’ perseverance, Mechnikov grew dedicated—obsessed—with research in human immunity. During the cholera epidemic in France in 1892, as part of his self-experimentation, he drank a culture of Vibrio cholera, the bacteria responsible for the disease.

He didn’t get sick, so he gave the culture to a volunteer in his lab—who didn’t contract cholera either—but a second volunteer became stricken with the disease and subsequently died. In further lab experiments, he found that some microbes stimulated the growth of cholera bacteria and some hindered it.

He thought the human gut flora was responsible for this and hypothesized that if ingesting a pathogenic culture can make you sick, then surely a good one should promote health. “With the help of science man can correct the imperfections of his nature,” he wrote.

The use of fermented foods—which in essence and most cases are cultures of “good bacteria”—has been around for centuries. Research shows written records of the health benefits of fermented milk (yogurt) and fermented milk products date as far as back as 6000 BC in ancient Hindu scripts. The Greeks made written reference to fermented food products in 100 BC, and it is reputed that Genghis Khan fed his army fermented mare’s milk because he believed it instilled bravery in them. It was not until the 20th century, though, that a Bulgarian medical student—Stamen Grigorov—discovered a lactic acid bacteria (Bacillus bulgaricus) in yogurt cultures.

Bacterial fermented foods, thought to promote digestive health, are prevalent throughout history and ubiquitous in every corner of the globe, from Eastern European sauerkraut to Korean kimchi to Japanese natto.

In current times, a growing body of research shows that maintaining a healthy gut and microbiome with diet can have a significant impact on health and well being. Further, it is contended that the right balance of gut bacteria can help stave off disease.

The Second Brain In Our Gut

A microbiologist once told me, “You are over 90% bacteria and about 10% human.” What? Really? I then looked it up and found out it was indeed true. We have 10 times more bacterial cells cohabiting our bodies than human cells. The human microbiome is collectively the 10-100 trillion microorganisms, mainly bacteria, living in our gut weighing between one to three pounds; every microbiome is specific to a particular environment (all microorganisms interacting with each other in a particular area in the body, such as the gastrointestinal tract or gut) or body part.

The microbiome also refers to the combined genetic material of the microbiota in that environment or organ. These trillions of bacteria interact and communicate with the enteric nervous system or what scientists have labeled the “second brain.”

As Michael Gershon, Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University and “father of neurogastroenterology” writes, “Once dismissed as a simple collection of relay ganglia (a cluster of nerve cell bodies), the enteric nervous system is now recognized as a complex, integrative brain in its own right.”

The enteric nervous system comprises about 500 million neurons or two-thirds the amount found in a cat. It is embedded in our gastrointestinal tract—starting at the esophagus and ending at the anus.

Together, the second brain in the gut and its microbiome have a significant effect on the brain, influencing mood, behavior, and disease. As such, the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the U.S. launched the Human Microbiome Project in order to identify and characterize the human microbiota.

The Great Brain-Gut-Microbiome Connection

Recent evidence shows that the brain interacts with the enteric system in the gut (second brain) and the gut microbiome in a bi-directional manner. It’s a three-way communication circuit called the Brain-Gut-Microbiome Axis and involves three systems—central nervous, gastrointestinal, and immune. A common example of a brain-gut interaction is that “butterflies in your stomach” feeling. Your palms are sweaty and trembling, your heart rate increases, your skin becomes pale or flushed, and you (maybe) feel like you want to throw up. This is part of the fight-or-flight physiological stress response and evidence of how our gut is related to how we feel.

So just how do the microbes in our gut influence mood? In truth, scientists are not 100% clear on how these microbes directly influence our brains, but they propose that it’s through multiple pathways. For example, it is well known that the four main chemicals associated with happiness and mood in human beings are dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Research shows serotonin (although its function is complex as it is involved in many physiological processes) to be a mood regulator playing a major role in the treatment of depression and susceptibility to both depression and suicide.

The enteric nervous system in our gastrointestinal tract is now recognized as a complex, integrative brain in its own right.
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And guess what? About 90% of the body’s serotonin is made in the digestive tract; researchers at Caltech showed that gut microbes are integral in serotonin synthesis. Similarly, gut bacteria are implicated in the synthesis of other chemicals and neurotransmitters involved in mood regulation and disease. Further, scientific findings in the journal Behavioural Brain Works illustrated that some bacteria affect how these mood compounds are metabolized. Perhaps the most fascinating finding, however, is that some microbes can activate the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body and a main line of bidirectional communication between the brain and gut.

90% of the body’s serotonin is made in the digestive tract.
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Advancements in genome sequencing technology is enabling research into the impact of the gut microbiome on disease. By mapping the genome of the gut microbiome in diseased vs. healthy humans and animals, conclusions on the role of the gut microbes in disease proliferation can—and have been—deduced. And a very interesting way to glean this information is to analyze feces.

Your poop can be very informative. One study using genetic analysis of clinically depressive folks’ poop compared to those who aren’t, found several correlations between the human fecal microbiota (representative of gut microbiota) and depression. Although they report that their findings need to be further tested in larger cohorts, their results were specific for a particular strain (sub-type of microorganism) and genus (group or class of species):

 “The Oscillibacter type strain has valeric acid as its main metabolic end product, a homolog of neurotransmitter GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid), while Alistipes has previously been shown to associated with induced stress in mice.”

“Valeric acid structurally resembles GABA, and has been shown to bind the GABAa receptor. Therefore, it is possible that bacteria involved in valeric acid production and/or metabolism could also be associated with depression.”

The work of professor Bernhard Lüscher and colleagues at Penn State University shows that enhancing the activity of GABA in the brains of depressed mice has antidepressive effects, similar to that of antidepressive drugs, bringing mice back to “normal” behavior. Noteworthy is that GABA is implicated in mood disorders and its agonists have been shown to be antidepressive and antimanic.

This includes less of a certain type of bacteria in human fecal microbiota in depressed individuals compared to healthy ones.

Your poop can be *very* informative. Studies have found several correlations between the human fecal microbiota and depression.
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What is even more interesting is that researchers at the University College Cork in Ireland showed that if you transplant the microbiome from a depressed individual to animals, these animals will exhibit the same behavior of the depressed individual. These include anhedonia (not wanting to do the things you usually take pleasure in) and anxiety-like behavior.

This study also showed that depression is associated with decreased gut microbiota richness and diversity. Further, in humans, fecal microbiota transplants—introducing healthy feces into the microbiome of a diseased person—have been successful in the treatment of gastrointestinal disease and colitis and clostridium difficile infection with an efficacy rate of almost 90%.

Auxiliary Advances

Across the globe, the International Diabetes Federation report 425 million adults (or 1 in 11 adults) with diabetes while the CDC reports 30.3 million in the U.S. (with over 100 million living with diabetes or prediabetes) and 3.4 million in Canada, according to Diabetes Canada.

Diabetes and obesity are oftentimes linked as it is well-documented that obesity has a strong correlation between insulin resistance and diabetes. In a promising and growing area of research using humans, a small clinical trial in the Netherlands showed that a fecal transplant from a lean donor can temporarily improve insulin resistance in obese men.

In another growing area of research, large differences are seen in the gut microbiomes of people with Parkinson’s disease compared with healthy individuals. Further, a study published in the journal Cell show that when fecal microbes from persons with Parkinson’s disease was transferred to mice, they exhibited more severe symptoms of the disease and the aggregation of α-synuclein in the brain. (The formation of plaques in the brain via aggregation of α-synuclein is found in persons with neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and dementia.) Meanwhile another study revealed that probiotic supplementation in patients with Alzheimer’s disease showed improved in cognitive function.

But Just How Did We Get Our Microbiome Anyway?

It has been shown that the vaginal and maternal gut microbiome changes significantly during pregnancy. Science journal PLOS|One as well as a Finnish study in Cell, respectively, showed that pregnant women exhibit lower vaginal bacteria than nonpregnant women as well as a lack of population diversity in gut microbiota.

In the International Journal of Obesity, researchers found that children exposed to prenatal antibiotics in the second or third trimester had an 84% higher risk of developing obesity compared to children who were not exposed. Further, Caesarians were linked to 46% higher risks of developing childhood obesity; your first microbe colonizers are acquired via exchanges with your mother largely during the birthing process, when you are—quite literally—slathered in vaginal bacteria.

In addition, as research shows, any disturbance to this microbe exchange such as delivery by C-section, perinatal antibiotics and formula feeding is linked to an increased risk in metabolic and immune disease. After birth, a child’s microbiome continues to grow and is changed by ingestion of the microbes in breast milk which stabilizes neonatal gut microbiome. As we grow older, our gut microbiomes can change throughout life depending on diet, environment and the drugs we may take, such as antibiotics.

So How Do We Promote A Healthy Microbiome?

There is still a lot of ongoing research on the brain-gut-microbiome connection, but it’s quite clear that the gut microbiota can have a significant impact on mood, health and disease. So here are a few ways—and foods!—that will keep your gut microbiome healthy and thriving:

1. Probiotics – research shows they can be used to maintain a healthy gut and restore the gut microbiota to health (after disruption as in the case of illness and the use of antibiotics).
2. Prebiotics foods – these cause the growth and stimulate the activity of beneficial microbes in the gut.
3. Whole grain foods/foods high in fiber – these have been shown to promote the growth of specific bacteria only digested by certain bacterial types. For example, apples and artichokes have been shown to increase Bifidobacteria (a good bacteria) in humans.
4. Fermented foods – people have been eating these foods for centuries. They have been shown to reduce the number of disease-causing bacteria in the gut and promote the growth of beneficial bacteria. It has been shown that people who eat a lot of yogurt have less of the bacteria linked to inflammation (Enterobacteriaceae).
5. Diversity in food – a diet comprising a diversity in food leads to a diverse microbiota which is considered healthy.
6. Polyphenols in red wine and grapes – these have been shown to improve specific beneficial microbiota.

This past June, the European Union and dozens of pharmaceutical companies—including AstraZeneca (which sells Movantik constipation tablets), Glaxosmithkline, and Pfizer—announced they’ve been awarded a $131 million research grant aimed at studying neurodevelopmental conditions. The aim of the grant is to “increase our understanding of autism and help to develop new therapies to improve health outcomes and quality of life for autistic people.”

But the research program has been heavily criticized by many of those in the autistic community, who describe the Autism Innovative Medical Studies-2-Trials as not only offensive—many neurodivergent people feel their differences should be celebrated, not “fixed”—but as potentially serving as an argument to stop autistic people being born altogether.

Panda Mery is a university researcher in London and a former journalist, lecturer, and software engineer. He’s also autistic, and when he found out that a huge U.S.-based charity called Autism Speaks was involved in the AIMS-2 project, he grew highly suspicious of what “solutions” this research was seeking out.

“[Autism Speaks] are basically a hate speech organization,” he told me in an interview. “They treat autism like a cancer. You want to get rid of the cancer. You want to get rid of the autism. But autism is part of your identity. It’s like, how can you get rid of the Britishness of someone? How can you get rid of the Jewishness of someone? How can you get rid of the autism of someone?”

Autism Speaks is also held in low esteem by the two other autistic people I interviewed. Dr. Damian Milton, a social scientist at England’s University of Kent, said the organization has a “very dubious reputation with the autistic community.” Cos Michael, an autism consultant, added, “They used to have a prize every year called the ‘curing autism’ hero. They hate autism.”

When these comments were put to Autism Speaks senior director of media strategy Aurelia Grayson, she replied:

“These comments completely mischaracterize Autism Speaks, which is dedicated to increasing understanding and acceptance of people with autism. Our national board and staff include adults with autism and parents of children on the spectrum, guiding every aspect of our mission–from research to family services and advocacy.

Research funded by Autism Speaks shows that autism affects each person differently. As you know, some people can live independently; others need assistance with certain aspects of their lives, such as education or employment; and others have significant medical and behavioral challenges requiring 24/7 care. Through research, we are gaining a better understanding of the many forms of autism, which will make it possible to tailor treatments, resources and supports to individual needs.”

With alarm bells ringing, Mery requested a copy of the AIMS-2 grant agreement under EU transparency rules. On receiving the 664-page document, the alarm bells’ decibels became deafening. One section in particular troubled him:

“Currently, there are no effective medical treatments for the core symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Our overall goal is to address these shortcomings by adopting a precision-medicine approach to better target treatments to patients through the use of validated stratification biomarkers and by testing novel or repurposed drugs.”

For Mery, targeting the symptoms of autism sounds a lot like “curing autism”—but autism is not a disease, it does not need curing. Cos Michael also objects to this language of “core symptoms”:

“What are they? Are they good things? Bad things? Who decides? Because they keep changing. Through history, the ‘core symptoms’ of autism have changed. It’s about what other [non-autistic] people call them. And ‘targeting them’? Why? Because we want to take them out? It’s so full of…well, hate, frankly.”

While nobody I spoke to wanted to overstate the comparison, there are similarities with how homophobia views homosexuality—as something to be cured. The American Psychiatric Association viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1987 and still views autism as such. Panda hopes one day that will change.

AIMS-2 is poised as a threat to the very survival of the autistic community. The trials aim to identify “biomarkers”—genes which are linked to autism. There’s nothing inherently wrong with research like this, just like there was nothing wrong with Ernest Rutherford’s research into splitting the atom. Gaining knowledge is rarely a bad thing, but how that knowledge is subsequently used is another story altogether.

Targeting the symptoms of autism sounds a lot like curing autism—but autism is not a disease, it does not need curing.
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Rutherford’s research, of course, was ultimately used to create the nuclear bomb; autism biomarkers could be used to inform pregnant mothers that their babies are likely to be autistic. Given the social stigma of autism, the misconceptions around it, and the reality that raising autistic children can be difficult, this could potentially lead to mass abortion and a declining autistic population.

This might sound like dystopian fiction but, as both Michael and Mery pointed out, in Iceland this is already a reality for people with Down’s Syndrome. Icelandic doctors are required by law to tell pregnant women that there is a screening test available which can indicate (among other things) the presence of Down’s Syndrome in their fetus. According to CBS, nearly all the women whose tests indicate Down’s Syndrome, terminate the pregnancy.

“If you get the biomarker research that they’re aiming for, you’ll be able to eliminate a group of people based on the fact that you just don’t want that group of people around,” warned Michael. “It’s designer baby time. It’s eugenics.”

Dr. Milton agrees that the search for autistic biomarkers is “a bit eugenicist,” but he thinks the search will fail. “It’s a genuine concern, but it’s like the U2 song, they’re not going to find what they’re looking for,” he joked. “Autism is an umbrella term describing a way of being, a way of acting in the world which is part of the diversity of people. It’s a category which is social in nature. Trying to find a biomarker for autism is not going to happen as such. Even sub-types of autism is a bit of a lost cause.”

His concern is that millions of euros will be spent on developing drugs that don’t work and may have side effects, and that parents will be told inaccurately that their children have an increased likelihood of autism. All this will improve pharmaceutical company profits, but increase the stigma of autism.

With all this money wasted, what the autistic community itself actually wants to be researched remains largely ignored by AIMS-2. When autistic people were asked what they wanted researching, they answered with things like, “how to reduce anxiety” and “how to improve mental health, adult social care, and adult autism diagnoses.” But, as the answer to most of these problems are unlikely to be “new drugs,” pharmaceutical companies are not interested.

On one point however, the interests of big pharma and autistic people are, at least partly, aligned. Epilepsy is common in autistic people, and Mery, Michael, and Damian all said they would welcome research into drugs to treat it. Research into epilepsy is mentioned in the AIMS-2 grant agreement, but is not as core to the program as many would like it to be.

With all this money wasted, what the autistic community itself actually wants to be researched remains largely ignored by AIMS-2.
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And while the power may seem to be with the EU and the multi-billion dollar corporations, ordinary autistic people do have some leverage in fact. The tests will need what Michael calls “lab rats,” autistic volunteers. “It doesn’t matter how much money they can throw at it,” she said, “If they can’t get autistic people involved, then how can they carry out their trials?”

(One of the companies involved is the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company—Roche. When contacted for this article, the company denied it was researching a cure for autism and claimed that AIMS-2 was transparent and was consulting with autistic people. Their answers did not satisfy the autistic people I spoke to.)

While I was doing research for my book on female sexual empowerment, I kept coming across a statistic online: that cis women take 20 minutes on average to orgasm. It’s in articles with vague citations like “according to statistics,” “some experts say,” and “studies show”; it’s in blog posts and advice columns by sex therapists. Few of these sources say where the data comes from.

I began hunting down this figure’s source after reading Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It by University of Florida psychology professor Laurie Mintz, PhD. Mintz writes that women take four minutes to orgasm through masturbation on average, which was indeed found in sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey’s interviews and published in his 1953 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. But with a partner, she wrote, women take 20 minutes, while men took two to 10.

Mintz is adamant that the orgasm gap — the tendency for men to orgasm more than women — is cultural, not biological. (Note: Not all women’s bodies have vulvas, and not all bodies with vulvas belong to women. But as I researched this article, I found no data on trans or intersex bodies. This, of course, is its own problem, and has led me to refer exclusively to cis women throughout the rest of this piece.)

Why, then, I wondered, did she believe it took women longer?

Over email, Mintz said the 20-minute statistic doesn’t reflect a lack of sexual responsiveness, and she suspects it would be shorter with a long-term partner who understands the woman’s body. (If that’s the case, I wondered, why is it presented as a property of women’s bodies, not men’s technique? The orgasm gap doesn’t seem to be a problem with lesbians, after all.) Regarding its source, she explained, “That 20-minute stat has been written about by some of the most respected sex educators and therapists and researchers. You can find it, for example, on page 19 in She Comes First (Ian Kerner) and on page 9 of The Orgasm Answer Guide (Beverly Whipple).”

So, I flipped to page 19 of She Comes First. It reads:

“Irony, bigger and cruel, seems to be embedded into our respective processes of arousal: that a woman, so unique in her sexuality…should so often find this vast potential for blazing ecstasy smoldered — a magnificent conflagration left unlit — all for lack of a match that can hold its flame. It’s not a problem with the match, say many men, but rather that a woman’s fuse is too long. Perhaps, but then this raises the question how long is too long? Studies, like those by Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, have concluded that among women whose partners spent 21 minutes or longer on foreplay, only 7.7 percent failed to reach orgasm consistently. … Few, if any, of the world’s problems can be solved with a mere 20 minutes of attention.”

The data Kerner’s citing are from Kinsey successor Paul H. Gebhard’s analysis of interviews conducted by the Kinsey Institute. Women were asked how much foreplay they engaged in and — here’s the kicker — the “percent of coitus resulting in orgasm.” Coitus, as in, intercourse — which most cis women don’t reliably orgasm from at all. A meta-analysis of 32 studies in Indiana University professor Elisabeth Lloyd, PhD’s The Case of the Female Orgasm found that only one in four cis women consistently orgasms through intercourse. Lloyd wrote that since many of these women could be stimulating their clitorises during intercourse, the number of women who orgasm through penetration alone is likely lower.

Casting further doubt on Kerner’s extrapolations from Gebhard’s data, it’s unclear what happened during those 21 minutes of foreplay. Blow jobs? Kissing? Role-playing? We don’t know. Whatever the case, it’s unlikely all 21 minutes consisted of clitoral stimulation, given that many men don’t even know where the clitoris is. Only 44% of college men in one study could locate it on a diagram. And that was in 2013, over six decades after these data were collected.

Along with claiming that “a woman’s fuse” is “perhaps” too long, Kerner goes on and on about how difficult and laborious women’s orgasms are — not exactly helping his mission of encouraging men to give them. After reading that “the female orgasm is a more complicated affair and often takes much longer to achieve” and that it requires “persistent stimulation, concentration, and relaxation,” many men may feel intimidated. Why put in so much work for something that may not even show up?

Per Mintz’s suggestion, I also checked out page 9 of The Orgasm Answer Guide, which indeed reads, “While some women have an orgasm within 30 seconds of starting self-stimulation, most women experience orgasm after 20 minutes.” When I emailed Whipple to ask where this came from, she replied, “I have not conducted or published any research on the average time for a woman to experience orgasm.” She forwarded my question to the book’s coauthors in case they knew. None of them got back to me.

Determined to figure out why people think the female orgasm takes so long, I then emailed Indiana University professor and Kinsey Institute research fellow Debby Herbenick, PhD, author of a Men’s Health article that states, “Studies show that it takes 15 to 40 minutes for the average woman to reach orgasm.” When asked where that statistic came from, she told me she couldn’t even recall writing the article. “If pressed to put a number to it, I am not sure I could, other than ‘seconds of stimulation to more than an hour of stimulation preceding orgasm,’” she replied.

Two experts — sex therapist Vanessa Marin, MA, MFT and Ball State University professor Justin Lehmiller, PhD — actually cited a source: the research of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, who observed people having sex and masturbating in their lab beginning in the late ‘50s. (Lehmiller tells me he believes clitoral stimulation would take less time than the 10–20 minutes he cited but doesn’t know of any data; Marin admits her figure of 20 minutes is a “rough ballbark” since there’s “not much research” and that it applies primarily “when you’re first learning.”)

Marin linked to an article in the right-wing UK tabloid The Sun, known for reporting stories based on pure rumor. Lehmiller at least cited a book: Masters and Johnson’s 1966 Human Sexual Response. I also found that 10–20-minute statistic attributed to Masters and Johnson in a textbook: Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century by psychology professors Wayne Weiten, PhD, Dana S. Dunn, PhD, and Elizabeth Yost Hammer, PhD.

At that point, I didn’t trust anything I read about orgasmic timing, so I ordered Human Sexual Response off Amazon. After the hefty thing arrived in the mail, I spent a Sunday night poring over it. And poring over it. And not finding anything on this topic. Wondering if I was just missing it, I returned to the book’s Amazon page, clicked “look inside,” and typed “minutes” into the search bar. I learned some interesting facts (“frequently, the increment in breast volume is retained for five to 10 minutes after the orgasmic phase”), but again, nothing about how long anyone takes to orgasm. There was something in a forward by Sam Sloan written in 2009 — “it is said to take the woman 7 minutes 30 seconds to reach the level of arousal where she has an orgasm” — but he doesn’t cite anyone, and I can’t find that number anywhere else, let alone in the book. I did the same thing for Masters and Johnson’s Sexual Inadequacy with the same results. Baffled, I asked Lehmiller where in Human Sexual Response he got his information, but he didn’t have time to look. Fair enough.

It was Hammer who finally shed some light on this puzzle. When I asked her where the 10–20-minute figure that Psychology Applied to Modern Life attributes to Masters and Johnson came from, she replied, “The specific statement that appears in the textbook can’t be attributed to Masters and Johnson. The initial misattribution occurred a number of editions ago, was not caught, and was carried over through subsequent editions.” The real source? Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, she said. Numerous articles are misattributing Kinsey’s data to Masters and Johnson, who, as far as I can tell, didn’t even study orgasmic timing.

So, it appears that the 20-minute statistic is coming from nowhere, from Gebhard’s data on the length of foreplay before intercourse, or from Kinsey’s data on intercourse. In either case, the numbers are based on intercourse — which means we’ve been judging cis women’s orgasmic ability by an activity they don’t even usually orgasm from.

“The reason we think of men as being more orgasmic involves the ubiquity of ‘sex’ being defined as ‘intercourse,’” sexologist Carol Queen, PhD tells me. “Intercourse doesn’t offer sufficient clitoral stimulation for most women to allow for efficient, easy orgasm.”

But other activities do. As Occidental College sociology professor Lisa Wade, PhD points out, one study found that 90% of cis women orgasmed when their last sexual encounter included oral and manual sex, and another found that 92% did when they engaged in oral, self-stimulation, and intercourse. “The idea that women would have different rates of orgasm depending on what kinds of stimulation that they give their bodies seems almost so obvious that it’s stupid to say out loud,” says Wade. “But we have to do that because the assumption is that women’s bodies are bad at having orgasms.”

Of the 20-minute statistic, Wade says, “There’s nothing there. It’s crazy to me because I hear this said all the time.”

The idea that orgasms come (heh) far quicker and easier to men is one of the most ubiquitously believed gender differences, yet it’s been known since the ‘50s that this is only true during intercourse. Given that intercourse tends to favor male orgasms, it’s telling that our male-dominated society has defined it as “sex.”

When we look at masturbation, gender differences almost entirely evaporate. Kinsey found that 45% of cis women took one to three minutes to orgasm through masturbation, 25% took four to five minutes, 19% took six to 10 minutes, and only 12% took over 10. He wrote in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female:

“Many of those who took longer to reach orgasm did so deliberately in order to prolong the pleasure of the activity and not because they were incapable of responding more quickly. These data on the female’s speed in reaching orgasm provide important information on her basic sexual capacities. There is widespread opinion that the female is slower than the male in her sexual responses, but the masturbatory data do not support that opinion. The average male may take something between two and three minutes to reach orgasm unless he deliberately prolongs his activity, and a calculation of the median time required would probably show that he responds not more than some seconds faster than the average female. It is true that the average female responds more slowly than the average male in coitus, but this seems to be due to the ineffectiveness of the usual coital techniques.”

Sex researcher Shere Hite similarly found that 95% of cis women who masturbated “could orgasm easily and regularly, whenever they wanted.” She didn’t determine the average time, but she wrote in 1976’s The Hite Report that Kinsey’s findings were “similar to the women in this study.” She elaborated, “It is, obviously, only during inadequate or secondary, insufficient stimulation like intercourse that we take ‘longer’ and need prolonged ‘foreplay.’ But this misconception has led to a kind of mystique about female orgasm.”

Even today, the authors of widely used textbooks endorse this view. “During masturbation, 70 percent of females reach orgasm in four minutes or less,” psychologists Dennis Coon, PhD and ‎John O. Mitterer, PhD write in Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior. “This casts serious doubt on the idea that women respond more slowly. Slower female response during intercourse probably occurs because stimulation to the clitoris is less direct. It might be said that men simply provide too little stimulation for more rapid female response, not that women are in any way inferior.”

There hasn’t been much research on this topic since Kinsey, but I’d venture to bet that women might be even quicker if the data were collected today, given that 53% of American women in one 2009 study had used vibrators, compared to less than 1% in the ‘70s, according to Shere Hite’s research. A 2015 study of 100 users of the Womanizer vibrator found that half orgasmed in a minute or less using the toy. Toys aren’t necessary to make women as sexually responsive as men, as some companies would have you believe. They put us ahead of them.

I’m not saying that orgasm should be the goal of sex or that those who can’t orgasm are in any way inferior or unworthy (stigmatization of those who are anorgasmic is a serious issue). Nor am I saying that those who need more time have inferior sex lives. They may actually enjoy sex more, since they get more pleasure before they crash. They should ask for however much time they need unapologetically. And lastly, I’m not saying women’s partners should give up after four minutes. Everyone’s different, and it can take a while to get to know a partner’s body, regardless of gender.

But here’s why the 20-minute statistic pisses me off so much. As Wade puts it, deeming female orgasms more difficult “naturalizes the orgasm gap.” She explains:

“It makes it seem like the orgasm gap is inevitable and acceptable and just, and it makes women feel guilty for wanting to have orgasms and asking for orgasms from their partners because if their bodies are so bad at it and it’s just a burden, women don’t want to be a burden on their partners. And it also gives men an excuse to not try.”

She’s right: Fake statistics about orgasmic timing do get used to naturalize the orgasm gap. The website for Promescent, an anesthetic penis spray that claims to close the orgasm gap by prolonging erections, claims:

“Today, far too many people believe that when they have good sex, men and women are supposed to orgasm around the same time. But, like many other common misconceptions, the science just doesn’t back it up. On average, men take about five minutes to orgasm, while women take much longer, which means that men climax a lot more often than women do. This difference between the male and female orgasm is what we call the Orgasm Gap. Believe it or not, science is to blame. Because men and women are scientifically different. But the best way to beat science is with better science. And that’s where Promescent comes in.”

On Twitter, insecure dudes talk about how it’s not worth the effort to get women off, while women themselves often complain about men making these damaging assumptions.

There’s also another, deeper reason this stat pisses me off. Supposed gender differences in orgasmic timing are often considered God’s cruel joke on humanity, with women the butts of the joke — the unlucky ones. Female multiple orgasms have been deemed the great equalizer in this equation, but in reality, most cis women have refractory periods like men. “I am suspicious that ‘multiple’ is not really multiple in the way Cosmo has traditionally written about them,” sex researcher Nicole Prause, PhD tells me. “Rather, it seems likely that some women have a relatively short refractory period, just like some men.”

Or, we’re supposed to feel comforted by the “fact” that the clitoris has twice as many nerve endings as the penis, another baseless statistic that’s somehow made its way around the internet without any study ever cited. The clitoris and penis develop from the same structure in the womb, so they likely have around the same amount of nerve endings, says Queen. These supposed advantages are typically cited in praises of women, yet they’re often framed as consolations for not having the supposedly superior male body.

This is part of a larger narrative that says that being a woman is a disadvantage, a curse. It dates back to God punishing Eve through the pain of childbirth. He supposedly made the “female body” an unpleasant place to live in, and the idea that we have less access to sexual pleasure perpetuates that notion. From normalizing painful sex and painful periods to lamenting the “elusive female orgasm,” we learn that men’s bodies work for them while ours work against us. We learn that they’re built for pleasure while we’re built for pain. And when we learn we’re built for less pleasure and more pain, we come to accept lives where we experience less pleasure and more pain. Being taught you were born unequal on a physical level instills a deep-seated inferiority complex.

Spreading a false statistic about women as a group reflects and perpetuates the idea that women are poorly built — and that intercourse is the most valid type of “sex.” It also reflects and perpetuates the notion that female masturbation is threatening — hence the constant omission of that four-minute figure.

Consider this parallel: The clitoris is frequently omitted from medical textbooks. Scottie Hale Buehler, CPM, MA, a PhD Candidate in UCLA’s Department of History who studies this very phenomenon, tells me: “The clitoris embodies many misogynistic fears about sexual pleasure: that penetration and penises may not even be necessary for orgasm.” When asked whether the erasure of female masturbation statistics could reflect the same fears, Buehler told me, “I think your hypothesis sounds convincing,” adding that heteronormativity also likely plays a role.

So, perhaps it’s threatening for men to know that women’s own hands are far better at getting them off than a penis. As psychologist Manfred F. DeMartino wrote in the 1974 book Sex and the Intelligent Women:

“As more women become liberated sexually and thus more confident, aggressive, and demanding in their heterosexual relationships, and because of their ability to reach several orgasms in a short time interval, men may well experience a greater sense of threat with respect to their feelings of virility and masculinity — they may find it increasingly difficult to sexually satisfy women. Past and current research clearly indicate that the majority of women in our society are able to attain an orgasm much easier and faster from clitoral self-manipulation than from sexual intercourse.”

That said, I don’t believe that those who cite the 20-minute statistic are driven by misogyny or fear of the clit. They’re just trying to convince women’s partners to spend some goddamn time on them for once. They want to close the orgasm gap. We share that mission.

But achieving orgasm equality is not empowering if it’s framed as a way of overcoming cis women’s shitty biology. In that case, it’s only feeding the idea that women are inherently defective. Claiming that women need toys or vaginal treatments or extra time to gain equality implies that they’re innately unequal. True orgasm equality means abolishing this hierarchical thinking altogether.

Think about it: We’ve relegated the activities that give most women orgasms to “foreplay,” mere preparation for the main event that produces male orgasms. We need to adjust our definition of “sex” to accommodate women’s bodies, not judge women’s bodies based on a patriarchal definition of “sex.”

All we really need is more respect for the vulva and more accurate information about how it really works. Because, trust us: Contrary to popular belief, it works just fine.

I must confess: I have beautiful hair. At least that’s what people say, and I’m inclined to believe them — even though I’m not entirely sure what they mean when they tell me this. My hair is long and thick, it’s true.

Then again, I’m also always compulsively changing it.

I started saying that I dye my hair to “change my life” when I was around 18 years old, much too young to intentionally change my life at all, as it would inevitably change around me — with or without my help.

In this way, I am not unique.

BASE COLOR // DIRTY BLONDE

The grass is greener than most grass or perhaps it’s the vivid green pitted against the softest pink, the palest, sweetest pink, one can imagine. The child with the dirty blonde hair, maybe three years old, we’ll call her Cassandra, looks dreamily to the right of where the flash must be. Wearing a soft pink t-shirt with brown horses on it, she holds cotton candy of the same pale pink color in front of her. The serving size is larger than her head. She has big blue eyes, and her full pink cheeks show a mouth that looks too timid to smile, but she’s pleased with the soft, sweet, pink candy in front of her and the beautiful green grass below.

Her mother and grandmother always call her their “blonde baby.” She’s never been blonde though. Not really. So their words always surprise her. From a young age, she knew she was supposed to be blonde. Somehow, it would make things better.

This is where she starts. This is her base color upon which everything else relies.

STRAWBERRY BLONDE // Copper Shimmer Color 0356

A neon yellow beer bottle — a lime hanging on the rim — shines in the back of an otherwise black background. There may be a TV on in the left corner, but one can’t be sure. The girl closest to the camera has the biggest smile — it stretches the width of the picture. Her perfect white teeth are shining, her light brown eyes barely open. The girl with the huge smile, let’s call her Chesney, has shiny, short black hair. The girl with the strawberry blonde hair — let’s call her A Little Bit Naive — leans over Chesney’s shoulder what appears to be mid-laugh. Her blue eyes are closed tighter, her smile a little smaller and a little more crooked. Her strawberry blonde long hair covers both their shoulders.

“I’ve never done this before,” A Little Bit Naive says.

“You probably won’t even feel it,” Chesney insists, as she passes the packed bowl and starts to light it for her.

“But how do I…”

“You’re overthinking it. Just breathe in, I’ll do the rest for you,” Chesney assures her.

Chesney is right — A Little Bit Naive doesn’t really feel anything the first time she smokes, but she doesn’t want to be rude so she sits in Chesney’s Land Cruiser and laughs and pretends to feel what she thinks she should.

An often quoted (but largely unverifiable) study done by the hair care brand Tresemmé offers up fascinating facts about women who dye their hair, asserting that almost 25% of women who dye their hair “wish they had never started.” While this may not be the most scientific study ever conducted, it nonetheless offers insightful information into the pathology of why dyeing hair and feeling beautiful are so deeply intertwined. These regretful statistics aren’t that surprising, I suppose, considering the effects that long-term hair dye has on hair; indeed, 75% of women believe that hair dye has damaged their hair, leaving it weaker, thinner, and wrought with split ends.

Let’s be clear: Dyeing your hair is not good for it or you and yet, here we are. We continue to dye our hair for various reasons: to cover up grays, to change our life (guilty), or to simply maintain our self-image. It might be argued that it’s not unlike other self-harm, like smoking cigarettes or tanning, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing, socially acceptable way. A study by Texture Media reports that the average woman spends over $250–350 per year on her hair care and color. Meanwhile, statistics company Statista reports that in 2016, the global hair care market was worth $83.1 billion. Let me repeat: $83.1 billion.

It seems the ways that hair dye damages our hair are largely ignored or understudied, or so our spending habits would suggest. Many of the 5,000 chemicals in permanent hair dye have been proven to be carcinogenic to animals, but we continue to blithely slather it on our hair, and thus, into our skin.

A self-help book for women published in the 1600s, titled Delights for Ladies, offered a handy recipe for women to transform their black hair into brown hair using a few simple ingredients, including Oyle of Vitrioll. The advice cautions to “avoid touching the skin,” which is wise since Oyle of Vitrioll is sulfuric acid. You may recognize sulfuric acid as the common ingredient in battery acid, drain cleaner, or other highly corrosive materials — basically every skull and cross-bones warning label your mother told you to stay away from.

I’m not suggesting that the world at large isn’t dangerous and brimming with things that hurt us, but I am arguing that this one particular habit — done in the search of acceptance of ourselves or others — continues to produce evidence of harm. And this is largely ignored.

BLACK // Leather Black Color 0563

A small girl with chestnut brown hair sits smiling on the lap of another — raven-haired — smiling girl. The balcony they’re on appears to be two or three stories high, with car lights and streetlights shining in the background.

The one with chestnut brown hair, let’s call her Vanessa, squints her eyes tight. One hand softly cups the raven-haired girl’s face; the other clutches a red solo cup. The girl with the black hair — let’s call her Mystified — has her arms tightly wrapped around Vanessa’s waist, her smile wide, wide wide; her eyes stretch open as if she’s surprised. A stray hand belonging, let’s say, to Chace, darts high above the girls’ heads in a fist, as if performing a cheerleaders’ move.

“You stupid fat bitch I don’t fucking want you.”

“I’m sorry, Chace, I had to tell her. Vanessa, you deserve better…”

“Get out of here you stupid cunt, you only wish I wanted you.”

Vanessa stands there with her mouth open, looking from Mystified to Chace. Finally Chace starts coming down the stairs swinging his fist at Mystified, and Vanessa steps in. Mystified has tears in her eyes as she grabs her purse and quickly leaves the apartment. On the way home, Mystified sobs and wonders if maybe all the times Chace had said he loved her instead of Vanessa, and all the times she had rejected his come-ons, she had misheard or misunderstood her best friend’s boyfriend.

When she gets home, she steps into a hot shower and watches as the water runs from clear to black: a mixture of her mascara and newly dyed black hair.

One study published in the Indian Dermatological Online Journal found that more than 42% of those who dyed their hair experienced “adverse reactions,” ranging from “sensitivity” or dermatitis to bronchospasms, but continued to dye their hair anyway.

In 2001, researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California published a study suggesting that those who are frequently around hair dye were twice as likely to develop bladder cancer as those who abstain. There have also been various links to rheumatoid arthritis and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, not to mention the harmful effects on a fetus during pregnancy. Many of these studies have not yet been conclusive, but there are troubling, observable correlations. We dye anyway.

Beauty is more valued than our comfort. Or health. This is not revelatory of course. We’ve always been looking for ways to change. To be beautiful.

In the past, a pigment was added to the hair to dye it. Using henna, indigo, saffron, even gold dust, civilizations as far back as the Paleolithic era found it desirable to have an unnatural color on their head. The ancient Romans lightened their hair with pigeon dung, while the Venetians chose to use horse urine. In the Roman Empire, prostitutes were required to have yellow hair in order to alert others of their profession. As civilization has evolved, the relatively small percentage of natural blonde hair has continued to make it rare and thus, favored. It seems hair color has always been an indicator of status and worth.

BROWN // French Roast Color 0934

Three girls pose together in what appears to be a foggy, maybe smoky, room with red neon lights and many, many people in the background. The girl on the far left with the olive skin and dark hair squeezes her eyes closed and sticks her tongue out. The girl in the middle peeks between the two girls; her eyes are wide-open and flanked by a beautiful smile. Her long blonde hair rests on the shoulder of the girl to her right. The girl with the brown hair winks with one eye and leaves her mouth agape. A tiny airplane bottle of liquor peeks its head from between the brunette’s low-cut shirt, just grazing her sterling silver necklace. The girl with the dark hair, we’ll call her Shelton, has a perfect manicure that gives a peace sign to the camera, joined by a photo bombing hand that echoes it. The girl with the brown hair — the one winking, who we’ll call Happy — leans into the other two girls, perhaps steadying herself.

The lineup for the Beale Street Music Festival offers three different musicians playing at the same time on three different stages on the Mississippi River bank for three days straight. After the first night out, the girls had taken the second day to eat BBQ nachos and rest up for the third day’s main event — Snoop Dogg and Three Six Mafia — the only concerts that all three had agreed to see.

“It’s pouring rain,” Happy says.

“Let’s not go,” Shelton responds.

“We have to go,” Lauren snaps back, “Snoop Dogg.”

“Well we need rain boots because it’s going to be muddy,” Shelton demands.

After going to two different stores with no luck, Happy called a Bass Pro Shop 30 miles away. They were in luck. They only had one style so the three very different girls match out of necessity.

The concerts are great, probably, but as the girls stomp around in the mud, the more the brown mud splashes about their boots, the less they listen to the music. The mud and the rain could’ve been a nuisance, but it isn’t. Not to them. After a few minutes they realize there was no reason to try to listen to the music, no reason to try to stay clean, no reason for their brand-new boots not to be covered in mud. Eventually Happy starts tossing mud, first at Lauren and then at a pissed-off Shelton, until they start laughing and tossing it at each other like kids, and stomp through puddles. The rain keeps pouring down.

Rebecca Guerard wrote a fascinating article for The Atlantic called “Hair Dye: A History.” She, too, is interested in the ways that this ritual has shaped beauty and cultural standards, but even more so, the chemistry behind it. She, too, ponders: “Why do so many people still color their hair? Why would someone go through the rigmarole and tolerate the expense, the itching, and the smell? Whatever drives our desire to change the color of our hair, one thing is certain: People have deep emotional ties to what covers their scalps.”

She travels to a conference for hairdressers from around the country learning as much as she can about the truly magnificent process that goes into hair color chemistry. Even our hair, a living breathing, chemistry project, is comprised of 50% carbon, 21% oxygen, 17% nitrogen, 6% hydrogen, and 5% sulphur.

The natural color of our hair is determined (like our skin tone and eye color) by two types of melanin — eumelanin, and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is responsible for darker hair (like the amount of melanin in our skin tones) and the most prominent melanin in our hair; darker hair colors are, therefore, far more common.

People have deep emotional ties to what covers their scalps.
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Pheomelanin accounts for red hair, and the various shades of color depend on the genetic balance of these two types of melanin. Blonde hair is the result of relatively little or no melanin. This is, like skin color and most features, determined by genetics.

When we attempt to change genetics and construct a preferable shade to color our hair, the chemistry continues to get more intricate. It’s the reactions of the chemicals that make a perfect shade. If you’re hoping to achieve a brown hair color, you achieve this by applying two chemicals — neither of which are brown. They simply turn brown when they react to each other; it’s the reaction that makes the color, not the pigments that are applied.

Not unlike in elementary art class — where we learned that the rainbow was actually made of just three colors combined with one another — the hair color process works with three compounds usually grouped in red, blue, or green. The key is how these three colors interact with each other.

The length of the reaction — the 30 minutes or an hour or what have you — that you sit with the chemicals on your hair, determines the color that you walk away with.

BLONDE // Pure Diamond Color 0134

The blonde girl in the photo, we’ll call her Sexy, leans in toward the camera drinking out of a martini glass. The tall martini glass is filled with brown liquid and topped with foam, like a perfectly prepared latte. In front of her long, golden blonde hair, a glass of water sits to her right. Vodka bottles appear like children lined up by height on a shelf behind her, above a computer, giving the appearance of a bar. At the end of the bar sits a dirty, empty wine glass. Sexy’s expression can’t be seen under the foam hiding half her face. It can only be seen through her light blue eyes turned red by flash, which shine and smile directly past the empty wine glasses into the camera.

Sexy agrees to have a drink with him. Although she barely knows him, they work together, so she assumes it is harmless enough. They settle into the corner booth of the patio underneath a dogwood tree.

“So how long have you been married,” she asks.

“What?” he acts confused as she points to his ring.

“Oh yeah, we’re not really married anymore, it’s complicated,” he says simply.

She watches as he slips off the silver wedding band and puts it in his pocket.

She drinks her vodka tonic. He scoots closer to her.

He smiles at her and she laughs and darts her eyes away, not knowing what to do with the look he gives her. She isn’t used to anyone looking at her this way. She runs her fingers through her newly dyed blonde hair, pulling it to one side then the other until he grabs her hand and pulls her into his lap and she turns to face him. His stubble grazes her face as he starts kissing her. Sexy starts kissing him back just as forcefully, reaching for his softly shaven head. Her free hand feels him get hard beneath her. In the dark corner no one can see as he parts her legs under the table. Under her simple blue cotton dress he begins to play with her clit. She bites his lip harder to let him know that she likes it. She opens her eyes to see him staring at her while he keeps moving his fingers around, knowing exactly how to please her. She feels him getting harder as she gets wetter until her concentration is broken when the thin blue strap of her dress slips off her shoulder. As she reaches to pull it back up, he grabs her hand to pull it back down.

In 2001, Hillary Clinton gave the commencement speech at Yale. She spoke about the importance of hair. “Your hair will send significant messages to those around you. What hopes and dreams you have for the world, but more, what hopes and dreams you have for your hair. Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will.’’ I would like to insert a sarcasm font here, as I like to imagine she did, but she’s not wrong, and that’s why for centuries women have searched for the right color to send the right message to the world.

She runs her fingers through her newly dyed blonde hair. She isn’t used to anyone looking at her this way.
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The reason blonde hair (at least in the U.S.) is vastly preferred by men and women can in part be traced back to the fact that darker hair is much more prevalent. Psychology Today reports that 90% of the population has darker hair, while only 2% have naturally blonde locks. Basically we all want something different, something that sets us apart, to catch a mate’s eye. And that something has historically been blonde hair. The scarcer the color appears, the more it is preferred. There is also an innate youthfulness in the hair color, and a seeming sexuality that follows.

A strange, confusing sociological dichotomy appears, the further you dig into these preferences, however.

Anecdotal study after study shows that men approach blonde women more often, and women feel more confident and beautiful with blonde hair. But men and women alike reportedly find brunettes to be the preferred friend or mate; they’re often considered more intelligent. And yet, more interesting still: If you want to be a successful woman, you should have blonde hair.

Professor Jennifer Berdahyl of the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business researched this correlation after attending a conference for women at the Harvard Business School, and noticed that most of the speakers were blonde. Her research found that 35% of female Senators in the United States are blonde, as are 48% of female CEOs of S&P companies.

Her study found that the same words being said by women with blonde hair versus dark hair had a vastly different reaction from male counterparts. The darker haired women were seen as more authoritative and negatively regarded. Perhaps it’s not that surprising, because after all, it is a Man’s World, and the innate sexuality and youth of blonde hair is a clear favorite among the male sex.

This obsession with blonde hair also taps into racial bias. You can’t talk about hair without acknowledging its undeniable power in determining how one is perceived, overlooked, or Othered. Many pieces have been written about the socio-political underpinnings of black beauty being negated—even criminalized—by a racist, Caucasian-centric aesthetic.

Research from the infamous “Good Hair Study” exposed the implicit bias surrounding black hair. Conducted by the Perception Institute, the study found that in asking 4,000 participants to take an online test—which involved “rapidly-changing photos of black women with smooth and natural hair, and rotating word associations with both”—white women held the greatest bias. They rated natural hair as “less beautiful,” “less sexy/attractive,” and “less professional than smooth hair.”

A 1993 study examined the long-standing purveyor of beauty, Playboy magazine, assessing its Playmates of the Year between 1954 and 2007. This study illustrated an increase in the percentage of blonde playmates through the magazine’s duration; the fewest blondes were found in the mid 1960s (about 35%) while the year 2000 found the highest (around 66%).

These numbers reflect what society defines as sexy. As the authors explain in their abstract, “The study’s findings have numerous implications for social issues and research regarding the psychology of physical appearance.”

Similarly, it’s not unrelated that in the 21st century, 75% of women feel sexier and more glamorous when they go blonde. Being blonde sits at the cross-hairs of intersecting socio-cultural phenomenons, including femininity, finding a mate, the ability to procreate, and the appearance of youth, fertility, and desirability. It stems from a desire to be something or someone that we may or may not be — something we believe to be rare, more beautiful, and worth suffering for.

I’ve dyed my hair so many different colors I could fill these pages twice over. Red, purple, black, brown, dark cherry red, blonde, blonder, brown, strawberry blonde, red red — you name it, I’ve tried it. I should say, colored, not dyed, because you dye wool. You color hair.

Whenever there is a big change in my life, something goes right or wrong, I hit the bottle. I want to see this chemistry make me perfectly shaded — even when I don’t know what that means. If I don’t like what I see — if things are going horribly — perhaps a different look is all I need. If things are going perfectly, then I should probably look even better. Hair color offers one more way to categorize people, to categorize ourselves.

In truth, I am all of these people at once, no matter my hair color. But sometimes I like to think that it affects my life in ways I can’t otherwise control. Or rather, my hair allows me to better control my life with a choice of chemical reactions.

Psychologist Viren Swami, who teaches at the University of Westminster, suggests a compelling explanation for my need to dye: “Because hair is so malleable, it can give women a feeling of control over their bodies that they don’t otherwise have.” When I dye my hair, I feel I am taking control over the way I am perceived.

And yet I also know the person that I am remains the same no matter the color.

My mother says that she has to color her hair to hide the grays or I won’t recognize her. Is this true or does she mean she hopes no one will recognize her because gray hair is not how she sees herself? Is it in pursuit of beauty that we feel the necessity to color our hair or in the effort to hide our true selves? Or is it both? Is that what we’re fighting with hair dye—the fear of being seen for what we really are?

Sometimes gray hair means we are aging. Sometimes we are aging.

Being blonde sits at the cross-hairs of intersecting socio-cultural phenomenons.
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Dyeing my hair does change my life. It changes my public self and my private self, and I’m not alone — 69% of women reported a vast increase in attractiveness and overall good feelings immediately after dyeing their hair.

After dyeing my hair recently, a friend complimented me on it the first time he saw it, and I said, “oh thanks. I really don’t like it.” “Why?” he asked. “Does it make you insecure?” I laughed and said, “Yeah…I just haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

And then I pondered his immediate response about my insecurity and realized this might have been the single most relevant answer anyone could offer for why we don’t like our base color or our gray color or our new color.

Insecurity. Dyeing our hair is a way to make us publicly feel, maybe even look, more beautiful, more acceptable. For whatever reason, we prefer to cover our insides with a more desirable facade. Our public selves must be much prettier than our insides. The private self — the self underneath the color — must be covered. It feels like therapy for your public self; your insides don’t necessarily feel better for any other reason than you feel like your outsides look better.

Maybe that’s what hair color offers us in a sense, too: an opportunity to be better than what we feel. If you’re blonde, it’s a way to be blonder. If you’re getting older and going gray, it’s a way to be younger. If you’re just bored, it’s a way to excite yourself with something transient. A way to be you, but better. A way to be you, but sexier. A way to be you, but more likeable. A way to be you, but more successful. A way to be you, but more approachable. A way to be you, but happier. A way to not be you.