Because lj is for frivolous polls...

[marnanightingale]

Over on the Bujold List, earlier today, I said:


... the passport guy and I had a whole discussion about my hair colour this summer. Not an acrimonius discussion, just a sort of technical one.

Random people have over the years identified it as red, blonde, light brown, dirty blond, and str*b*rry bl*nde, occasionally on the same day.

It photographs completely at random.

This is why I used to colour it; it wasn't so much a matter of ALTERING the colour as of identifying which faction was winning and sending in reinforcements. My natural hair is verifiably almost every colour under the sun except black and white, and now that I don't colour it, everyone wants to meet my hairdresser.


So, a poll. Name This Colour. Below the cut, two large pictures of my hair, procured this evening under strictly controlled conditions (I shoved my head in the scanner), and colour corrected only to bring the scanner-bed back to white. The top one is the top side of my hair, the bottom one is mostly underside.

[Poll #805169]

ETA: Since you ask: I scanned my hair by opening the scanner lid, throwing my hair in there, closing the lid, and then mousing upside down to make the scan. And the WHY is, to ensure a neutral background of a colour I was certain of and to avoid going and trying to find the camera and then getting Ian to upload the pics tomorrow.

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Answered as best I could, for someone who doesn't think in shades of red often (but wonders sometimes when someone is pointed out to me as a redhead and I don't see it)

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

1: Chinese menu, depending on which picture and which monitor I use.

2: Too short? And can't say anything about hair in the scanner, since I belong to a community that probably would fail to recognize people by the front of their heads.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

It is far too short. If I wanted to make you (and me!) weep I'd post the length I cut off in 2000.

*sigh*

It's at my bra strap, I'll get there.

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

BSL...you're on your way!

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

Ooops answered using my other LJ account - daughter of milan. :)

May I friend you, since I have the greatest respect for you, and find I agree with you on an enormous number of points. You're a plan talking gal and I approve wholeheartedly!

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

More plan talking gals (and plain talking ones too! *g*) are ALWAYS welcome around here; come aboard, by all means!

[ladybretagne.livejournal.com]

I haven't the foggiest idea what I'd actually call that color, other than nearly identical to mine, lol.

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

One assumes you're asking about the non-gray portions, right? :-)

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*grin* That's either scanner artifact or the very light top strands; I saw it too, but it's not grey. If I had grey I'd be bragging about it :)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

That really is red. I might say "auburn" or even "foxy", depending on the light. I don't know how anyone could describe it as any kind of blonde, dirty, strawberry, or otherwise, since if it weren't red, it'd probably be a light-mid brown.

One of my g/fs is definitely auburn, but hers has darkened with age. Another ex of mine is strawberry blonde, and that is quite different. Yet another was dirty blonde, but there's no red at all in that hair colour.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Heh. See, that's what I'd have said, too. Then Marna remarked to me that I had no idea how difficult it was to scan one's own hair, and I took this as a challenge. ;)

So I did it, and although my hair is unquestionably blonde, the scanner made it look decidedly red. Which means I can't tell, really. So I voted for "Fred." ;)

[mycrazyhair.livejournal.com]

I vote that question number one should have had tick boxes instead of radio boxes. Your hair is definitely some form of red on top, and some form of brown with blond tips underneath.

[j-v-lynch.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree with this. Had I not seen you in person yesterday I would have had a very hard time believing that these came from the same head.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Since it is the top layer that presumably is seen most of the time, I voted for red. However, the bottom layer is much more brown than red, in my opinion. Interesting difference. As far as I can tell, my hair is the same, dark-brown colour top and bottom.

[fyrdrakken]

Highlights brought out by sunlight -- in elementary school I had a close friend whose hair was red-blonde where the sun hit it but mousy blond underneath.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Don't know how to answer. The bottom picture isn't reddish - golden blonde seems a nice name for it. The upper picture definitely is reddish; red gold comes to mind; I suppose one could term it golden red to go with the other picture.

The backgrounds don't look the same to me, so it may indicate how our minds fool us - you, me, or both.

Disclosure: DW solicits my opinion on color only when she wishes to shudder. OTOH - I used to run a color evaluation lab. Don't know if those two facts are somehow linked . . .

[o-bunny.livejournal.com]

My sweetie and I have discussions about colours at times. We draw the line between blue and green in different places, makes "teal" a four letter word.

That said, I have *no* idea what to call that colour. The only comment I can make is that I'm always surprised when I see you (on those rare occasions when I do see you), because I always remember you as having much lighter-coloured hair than you do. Even seeing you across the field at the Folk Festival this weekend, I thought your hair was darker than it had been on Friday night.

Wouldn't I make a great eye-witness for a crime? "Uh, officer, the thief had sort of hair-coloured hair, was easily over three feet tall, some sort of colour of eyes, I'm fairly certain they were wearing clothes... Oh, and was carrying a copy of 'Howard Who?', by Howard Waldrop, not the original, but the reprint that just came out, from Small Beer Press, with a bookmark that looked to be about half-way through 'Mary-Margaret Road Grader'."

That settles it. Chartreuse, definitely chartreuse.

And the LJ spell checker doesn't like "Waldrop", and suggests Allotrope, Velodrome, Flytrap, Heliotrope, and Vulture among others. I suspect Howard would be pleased.

[shrieking-ell.livejournal.com]

I said titian. heh heh. it sounds so exotic. or something. (also that was how Nancy Drew's hair was described, wasn't it?)

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

It really is beautiful hair. It has so much color and light to it. People could pay large sums of money to a hairdresser and never come close.

[eruthros]

My hair is that same color. Colors. Thing. Reddish on top, coppery in the sun and in the summer, brown-with-red-highlights-underneath, whatever. And I, too, had a conversation with the person at the passport office, though mine was irritating and perhaps more acrimonious. Mine went something like this:

Me: Hi, I'd like to ask you about the three-letter abbreviations for hair color. What words do you accept? Should I call my hair "red" or "auburn?"
Passport idjit (PI): No. You should call it whatever color it is when it's not dyed.
Me: ... Um, this is my natural hair color. So, red or auburn?
PI: No, no, the color it is underneath the dye!

Lather, rinse, repeat as PI refused to take my paperwork until I told her my "real" hair color. After about ten minutes of "no, no, I understand what you're saying, but I haven't dyed my hair!" I convinced her that yes, honestly, really and truly, this was my natural hair, and we decided on "auburn."

[fyrdrakken]

I've had the debates over my own hair color before -- it didn't help that it was genuinely blond until I hit puberty, and I was about 20 before someone first referred to it as "brown" and I actually noticed how much it had darkened. Nowadays I just refer to the shade as "caramel-butterscotch" or outright "caramel," which seems to get the point across. (I use this icon in part because it's exactly how my hair looked before I dyed it blue a few years back. It's mostly back to its natural color now, aside from the peroxided ends, and approaching waist-length again.)

[editrx.livejournal.com]

Your colored portion (top) is what the British term "ginger." Which is grand, indeed.

In short, your hair (top side) is the color I wish my hair was. The underside color (I assume the more natural and grown-out part) is what I still wish my hair was. Alas, when mine grows out of the former color, it is a dull, ash-dun brown ickiness.

I have some of the Lush henna and want to do the dirty deed, but am afeared I will screw it up.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Henna is hard to screw up; just make sure that you get it nice and gooshy, get the hair all covered, (Husbands v good for this) add a few coffee grounds if you're worried about TOO much red, especially over grey or white, and remember that a) it never makes hair lighter, only darker, and b) if you don't like it, a single application will fade out quite quickly; it's repeated use that makes it permanent.

Also, your natural colour is LOVELY, I think.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

As a former redhead for many years, I vote for a lovely coppery shade, with the second picture *turning* copper if in the sunlight.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

It would be easier if you were a pony. They have a whole systematic registry of colors.

[meretia]

If the first question had been ticky boxes instead of radio buttons, I would have said ginger and brown. Because the first picture is exactly what I think of as ginger (so much so, apparently, that it's endorsed by my ginger cat of the same color who's trying to lie all over the keyboard and I apologize if our fighting over that sends you a weird, half-finished comment) and the second is pretty close to my hair, which I've always called brown.

It's lovely, though. I'm a bit jealous.

[spiritdancer]

I've been looking at too many animal coloration descriptions lately, hence the "red roan". Another appropriate color description would be red merle. Agouti (mentioned early on in the poll) would also fit. Basically, these all indicate a blend of red/brown/white/gray/blonde hairs on the same animal.

Neat color, though!
(here via cadhla's journal/comments page)