In The Grey Zone

I have recently accomplished what many women my age have only dreamt of….I have stopped colouring my hair. Oh, you were expecting something more daring, more interesting?. If you think this is not a big deal then you have not tried to be a woman in this society that has coloured her hair for thirty or forty years to maintain a façade of youth.  Our head of sometimes impossibly unnaturally coloured hair is our shield, our defense against aging. When we squint into mirrors, catch a glimpse of ourselves in a passing window or see a photo of ourselves, an illusion of youth is maintained by the colour of our crowning glory. How do we often describe someone to a stranger? By their height and hair colour. Its an important feature.  I was always a tall blonde, that made it simple to pick me out of a crowd.  My husband has been blessed by the gods of genetics with a lush head of mostly dark brown curls. He is the envy of his peer group and has been often accused of dying his hair. He does not and has the attractive touches of silver threads weaving through the brown to prove it.  So the desire for and envy of the hair colour of our youth runs through both sexes.    

                                                                                                                        ...aren't I cute?

I’m a natural blonde, white haired as a child.  As with most blondes, my hair darkened as I aged and I began adding highlights as a teenager. For years I had the long straight hair so admired by the sixties generation but it required a bit of lemon juice or the new favourite spray,“Sun In”, to maintain a “natural” streaky look. 

..."sun-kissed" in '74

Through my twenties and thirties those highlights were courtesy of my hairdresser at the salon.  Time consuming and expensive to keep up but necessary I felt, particularly as the grey hairs started to creep in.  At thirty-nine I lost all my hair to chemotherapy and when it grew back the colour was a uniformly depressing shade of medium-blah. Look it up, it's not nice. As tough as it was being bald, having an inch of medium- blah hair isn’t much easier when you are trying to recover your health and feel   positive about the world.  So off to the drugstore I went and on went the blonde dye when I got home.

Fast forward through another fifteen years of home colouring, salon colouring, highlights,etc.  Month after month, right before colouring it, I peered along the part in my hair and watched as the medium-blah shade changed to light-blah and then silver as the years passed.  When that half inch of roots was light enough I decided to take the plunge. That was over eighteen months ago and I quick cold turkey.  I knew that by fifty-seven I wasn’t fooling anyone with my blonde hair, no one would take me for a forty year old anymore so why bother trying to pretend?  I had read many stories of women who went through the same process.  One formerly dark-haired woman wrote that watching the grey hair grow in was like watching a glacier slowly creeping down her head. I loved the imagery, hated the idea but was curious to have the experience.

The good news is that for me it was a pretty painless process.  My hair is now a mix of very light blonde, silver, white, all shades of grey and some dark ash blonde. I like to call it Arctic Blonde.  Other than one semi-permanent colouring right at the three month mark  before I wedding I had to attend, there hasn’t been any need for additional highlights or gradual colour changes. I am free!  I have crossed one item off of the seemingly endless To Do list of maintenance on my middle aged body.  It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.  On the days when I get out of bed and see a grey haired hag staring back at me in the mirror I shake it off and remind myself of all the upside, including the hours I have gained back from the chore of colouring my hair.

Honey blonde at 50
 Men proudly wear the badge of Silver Fox when they go all grey and I have decided on the title of Silver Siren. So if you dare, put down the bottle of dye and the rubber gloves and give in to the call of the Siren.  You know you want to.

     Silver Siren at 58