When I first dyed my hair, the difference in how I was treated made me assume life got better the more you lightened your look. I have now spent years testing the theory ...

I saw the light at 22. Since my teens, I had been dyeing my naturally mousy hair very dark brown. Shades such as “mahogany” and “praline” were unforgiving against my pale skin, but that wasn’t important to me. As a teenager, I was desperate to be taken seriously and thought of as smart, maybe even intimidating. I wanted to be brunette to signal that I had chosen books over looks.

Then, one day, shortly after I started my first job, it dawned on me: I didn’t have to do all that. It took two sessions with a professional to lighten my defiantly darkened hair, but I felt lighter at once. It was as if the bleach had seeped through to my brain, lifting not just my locks but my disposition.