Yesterday I set a task for myself: to go out & buy a blue rinse.
Boots, Sainsburys, Asda, Superdrug … no luck
But then judging by the pictures on the packets, no woman over the age of 25 dyes her hair these days.
I chickened out of the idea of going in to see if Toni & Guy could offer this service “for my friend.”
The earliest quotes found by the OED are from the 1940s (ie wartime), especially Marghanita Laski’s 1944 novel, Love on Supertax: “I think I'll have a blue rinse to-day.”
I doubt if anyone has had a blue (or pink or mauve) rinse since the 1970s, 1980s at the absolute latest – not since the science of hair dyes reached its current advanced stage to bring realistic possibilities of maintaining a more natural looking blonde or brunette, if you insist on trying to hide the grey.
Of course nobody had a blue rinse to hide the grey (unless you believe the explanation in Wikipedia), it was just one of those things – no more rational or irrational than any other fashion.
But why has the term continued in use – particularly by male political journalists, particularly when attached to the rather military sounding 'brigade' – as a dismissive term for older women? And particularly, of course, for those who belong to the Conservative Party?
Perhaps they do not mean to be derogatory. Perhaps they just have fond memories of Grandmother’s wash day.
But I doubt it, as the following quote (again from the OED) makes clear:
“The blue-rinse vote went down the drain, and … the Northern liberals and the coons went with 'em.” (1964 Punch 28 October).
[You should point out that Punch was a satirical magazine - Ed]
Interestingly, this seems to be a reference to the Labour victory of 1964. Did the blue rinse Tory ladies defect to Labour, the Liberals, or ‘None of the Above’
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