CONVENTIONAL WISDOM in Hong Kong once held that if you sported dyed hair, you were either a budding triad or a drug trafficker. Locks of a different hue to their natural colour was tantamount to evil - unless it was turning ageing grey strands back to black.
In 1994, Canto-pop diva Sammi Cheng Sau-man was one of the first celebrities trying to change public perception of dyed tresses when she became a platinum blonde. She jokingly crowned herself Kam Mou Keung, or blonde Keung - a common Cantonese nickname for men with blonde hair. She regularly colours her hair in tones of brown and red.
Today, natural black is out. While triad members continue to dye their hair as they did 30 years ago, mothers who once yelled at their sons for having yellow hair now also wear their tresses in different colours. The stigma, it seemed, has long been washed away.
So it must have come as a shock for 35-year-old Senior Police Inspector Sharon Lim Shiow-hwa this month, when her chances of promotion in the force were denied for two years as punishment for sporting brown highlights in her hair - especially as her natural hair colour is brown. Lim is considering an appeal to the police commissioner over the reprimand for a breach of police guidelines, introduced after the officer highlighted her hair.
'Why can our hair be only black or white?' asks marine toxins researcher Ironside Lam Hoi-yeung. 'Why can't we go for other colours? It's no big deal to dye your hair today; times have changed and we should be more open.'
Lam has a shocking-yellow pate and his eyebrows are light purple. He also has a PhD in ecology and biodiversity from the University of Hong Kong. Such a combination may sound unusual for an academic notwithstanding the rising popularity of hair-dyeing, but Lam says his appearance has raised few eyebrows in learned company.
'In the past, hair-dyeing might have attracted allegations that you were a triad member because of the way TV and films depicted people with dyed hair,' he says. 'But it's so ordinary now. I have had no problems at work or on the street.'
