Grey hairs

I got my first grey in high school.

I saw it in the mirror, poking out at an awkward angle, and pulled it out right away. I was 16 or 17! That’s much too young to be getting greys.

I started dying my hair in my 20’s. Fun colours, reds or purples. I was blonde for a while, when I had to be presentable for work. I kept going to the hairdresser, or using a box dye or some semi-permanent colour when my roots started to poke through, dark brown with hints of silver.

Over the summer, I dyed my hair to what was my natural colour, a dark brown, almost black. I didn’t know what to think of it, at first, but it grew on me, and I liked it, so I thought, hey, maybe i’ll keep with this. Let my hair recover from the constant bleaching and dying of the last decade or so.

My hair grew in, and I saw the silver.

At first, I was alarmed. There was so much of it! I’m not old! I hemmed and hawed about what to do over it, and, before I knew it, my roots had grown to almost two inches and I had a salt and pepper stunk stripe down my head.

And I liked it.

As soon as I sat down, my hair dresser asked, so we’re covering the roots, right? When I had lunch with my dad after, he asked why I hadn’t dyed my hair. You aren’t even 40 yet.

Youth is the ideal. No one wants to be old, let alone look it. And that puts a lot of pressure on people, especially women, to look young. Dye your hair, fill your wrinkles, keep your body in the same shape it was in your 20’s, before you had kids.

What’s wrong with looking your age? What’s wrong with being old? Today, people are living longer than ever. How can we keep pretending that life ends at 25, or 30 or 40?

No matter, though, I’m not afraid of my grey hair. I’m not afraid of being almost 40. Maybe, the most subversive, wild thing I can do is say hey, I’m ok with who I am, and Im not going to change myself for you.

I’m not going to dye my greys, at least for now. In a few months or a year, maybe I’ll want to be red again, or lavender. Maybe I’ll shave all of my hair off and get a wig.

No matter what I decide to do with it in the future, I’m not going to do it because I’m afraid of my grey hair or showing my age.