From “bronde” to fairy floss pink, the celebrity world is home to a vast spectrum of wonderful and weird hair colours.
Yet there’s one shade we rarely, if ever, catch a glimpse of on the heads of famous women: grey. Natural grey, that is, not the “silver” trend that gathered momentum among Hollywood’s hip young things last year.
So it’s refreshing, if not a little astonishing, to see Demi Moore making no effort to hide the silvery streaks appearing in her hair.
Image: Getty
In recent years, the actress has been photographed at various events with a visible sprinkle of grey in her dark hair.
The fact Moore has grey hairs shouldn't come as a surprise. She's 53, after all, and research indicates the average woman gets her first greys at 33 (though it begins at a much earlier age for many of us). It happens to every one of us.
Yet that's the 'real world' we're talking about; it's a radically different story in Hollywood.
Image: Getty
With some exceptions (hello, Helen Mirren, Jamie Lee Curtis and co.) A-list women seem to do everything in their power to suppress the physical evidence they're growing older, for various reasons. Grey hair? What grey hair?
As a result, we're accustomed to seeing celebrities of all ages with full heads of impeccably coloured hair. The frustrating upshot of this is that when a famous woman dares to be seen in a more 'natural' state, it sparks genuine shock and in some cases even horror.
Just ask Kate Middleton, who whipped up a media frenzy early last year when she had the audacity to step outside and be photographed without having her roots topped up first.
Royal hairdresser Nicky Clarke declared it a "disaster" and firmly advised the Duchess, who was pregnant at the time, to cover those unsightly strands. Lo and behold, we haven't seen her with an errant grey since. It was simply a blip.
Watch: The Duchess' hairdresser Richard Ward shares his blowdrying tips with Mamamia. (Post continues after video.)
Of course, these expectations aren't consistent along gender lines; male celebrities simply find themselves upgraded to "silver fox" status as their follicles age.
What makes Demi Moore's grey hairs even cooler is the fact she's letting them happen without making a fuss. Or, in Instagram meme-speak, she's all "grey hair, don't care."
So often when celebrities opt to go au naturel in some way — for instance, makeup-free — they feel compelled to make a 'statement' about it, whether that be through a hashtag, a carefully-explained Instagram caption, or even a magazine cover.
You can't really blame them for doing so — whether wrongly or rightly, when a famous person steps out from behind the smoke and mirrors it's generally seen as a big deal, a cause for fanfare.
Gallery: The "silver" hair trend of 2015. (Post continues after gallery.)
Take singer Alicia Keys' recent announcement that she'd stopped wearing makeup, or model Sarah Murdoch's insistence on being un-airbrushed on the cover of the Australian Women's Weekly back in 2009, both of which made big headlines.
Perhaps if our favourite stars took a leaf out of Moore's book and put themselves out there — wrinkles, greys, freckles, cellulite, pigmentation and all — without care or comment, the natural, ageing appearance of a woman's body and face would cease to hold the shock factor it currently does.
Do you have grey hairs? Do you feel pressure to cover them?
Featured image: Getty.
