For those who don’t know me, my hair is down to my butt now and it’s thick and wavy. I have always been unable to tame it. It’s honestly like a lion’s mane. When it’s humid, my hair grows to one and half times it’s normal crazy with mounds of frizz. If you look, that frizz is completely grey. I have a layer of grey curls poking out that refuse to be hidden. It’s like they are shouting to be noticed. This year, I let them have their way.
Why is it we see women with grey hair and think they are old, but men with grey hair are distinguished? It’s a double standard. My person and I just had a conversation about our grey. She is one who is embracing her grey, as well. She’s never colored her hair, but this year, grey decided to come in full force. My person is gorgeous and no one would ever even notice the grey, but, as women, we have been conditioned to “stop signs for aging”. She may end up dying her hair at some point, but, for now, she’s embracing it. I think that’s when I started to notice more people I know embracing the grey. I came across a picture of another friend on FB. She, like me, always wears her hair up. In the picture, she had it down. Ponytails hide grey fairly well, so you can’t always tell how grey a person is. In the picture, I could tell. Know what? She still looked beautiful, too. As do every one of my other friends that I started paying more attention to who are embracing the grey. I have one friend who has a beautiful streak of grey. One that people pay to get professionally done. Without this pandemic, she would have had it covered up. Instead, she's embracing that streak.
After this past year and half, all the stress and backwards anxiety, I’m honestly just too emotionally drained to care about my grey. Instead of worrying about it, I began embracing it. I still joke about it to cashiers when they ask for an ID. I ask if they just want to see the grey. Sometimes I’m still shocked, if I ever have my butt-length hair down, and see just how much grey there is, but I’m not about to run out and get it done or do it myself. Then I think back on all the time I have spent coloring or getting my hair colored and I definitely don’t want to do that again any time soon. My time is way too precious. I’m still going to color my hair purple at some point. I’ll probably do blue, also. Maybe even together. Who knows? But I’m not doing it to cover up those stubborn grey. In fact, those grey hairs will be the brightest purples and blues on my whole head!
We all get older. Society has told women it’s a bad thing. You must look like you are 20 all the time. The older we get, the more society wants to tame our wild spirits and grey hairs. I call their bullshit. Getting older means, hopefully, getting wiser. Becoming more comfortable with yourself. By no means am I saying that all women shouldn’t color their hair. Some women love coloring their hair and that’s great. Like make-up though, it should be done for self and not others (I could go on and on about make-up, but I won’t, this time). The older we get, the more we should be doing what makes us happy, not society. My mom is 85. She refuses to wear short sleeve shirts, even when it’s 90 out. It’s not that she’s cold. In fact, she’d be more comfortable with short sleeves, but she has “ugly” arms. She told me she doesn’t want to “subject anyone to seeing her arms because I wouldn’t want to see someone’s arms that looked like this”. I repeat she is 85. I asked her who gives a shit what other people think and she should do what she wants. She never learned the lesson to embrace who she is and do what she’s happy with. I hope that when I’m 85, I have the same crazy mane I have now, whatever the hell color I choose it to be, wearing black nail polish, snarky t-shirts, and jeans (please don’t let me wear polyester, elastic waistband pants!). I hope that by 85, I’m fully embracing who I am, instead of trying to please others.
Stop worrying about what other people will think of you. Pay attention to what you think of you. If that means embracing the grey, then embrace the hell out of it!