These 30 Women Who Ditched Dyeing Their Hair Look So Good, They May Convince You To Do The Same

Martha was interested in answering the question 'Is it true that my silver hair is ugly, makes me look old, and means I'm no longer good enough?' And after many, many selfie submissions and even more comments under them, she's found the answer. "I’m only in my twenties. If that is true, how will I feel and what will I believe about myself when I’m in my 40s, 50s, 60s?" Martha told Bored Panda in an earlier interview. "I want to challenge the way we think about what we consider 'beautiful,' and why, and propose that we have more important things to spend our precious time, energy and resources on if we find our hearts aren’t aligning with the things we find to be someone else’s biases."

Rudimental hair dyes have a long history. They date back to ancient Egyptian and Roman cultures (pickled leeches or urine hair baths, anyone?) but emerged in their modern form around the turn of the 20th Century. And as the image of the "perfect housewife" made its way into the 1950s pop culture, brands such as L'Oréal and Clairol began marketing safe and discreet at-home natural hair colors. If women wanted to remain fertile and youthful, their appearance had to look accordingly.

Interestingly, most of what we consider 'premature' greying actually isn't. Professor Desmond Tobin, a hair and skin pigmentation specialist at the University of Bradford in the UK, told the BBC that it is perfectly normal for people from European backgrounds to start greying in their early 20s. A research he collaborated on found that different races have different average aging rates - with African and East-Asian backgrounds tending to whiten later. But while some people do have a genetic predisposition to lose pigment or go bald more than others, a lot of other factors influence our hair follicle production, too (including hormones and stress).