In my early 20s, one summer while on a beach vacation I bleached my naturally dark brown hair. When I returned to work, one of my senior colleagues, a very formal German gentleman in his 60s (he always wore a suit and smoked his cigarette in a holder), stared at me sternly, and then said, "Mr. ____, did you bleach your hair?" "Why, yes," I replied with a smile. He hesitated a moment, then said, "It's very becoming."