The Hair Color Dilemma
Decade N° 5: A Not-so-Average Blog on Middle Age
Month 2
After years of uncertainty, at age fifty I made peace with my decision to go grey naturally.
By Carrie McConkey
I’ve never tried one of the apps that make you “look old”; doing anything to rush the aging process seemed like bad luck to me. It also felt ironic, since the majority of us — women, most notably — put great effort into cushioning the journey through various means. While cosmetic surgery may not be readily accessible, hair coloring is a quick, easy, and affordable way to hide the universal sign of growing older: greying hair. According to Statista, in 2019 over 29 billion U.S. dollars were spent across the globe on hair coloring, with numbers expected to rise. So why was I fighting the idea?
I remember the “early days” of discovering the mismatched hairs in 2012, age 42. My office was located in a beautiful historic home, and the lighting and generous mirror in the bathroom highlighted the few (immediately plucked) strands. Working at a local non-profit three years later, I was horrified when I pulled my hair back into a ponytail on the day of a walk/run fundraiser and realized both temples had pronounced streaks of grey hair. I’m talking full-on Bride of Frankenstein. How had I not noticed this coming on? At the event I remember feeling like everyone was looking at me, curiously wondering why I didn’t cover up those horrendous skunk stripes. Would I ever be able to wear a ponytail again?
Even after this disastrous discovery, I put off coloring my hair. I resisted the commitment, feeling overwhelmed by what I perceived as never-ending hours at the beauty salon, constant worries about whether my roots were showing, and the cost. Plus, once you start, when do you stop? At what age do you make the decision to embrace your natural hair color, and how startling of a transformation will it be? And don’t even mention frosting, or the weird, purpley hues commonly found among older gals. No sir, this hair color decision needed to be made another day.
As I let the white streaks live on, many times I wondered whether I was sabotaging the opportunity to be enigmatic about my age. I’m a workoutaholic and have kept my figure in somewhat decent shape, and there are lots of expensive creams and serums to repair my sun-damaged skin. Was I surrendering the chance to keep people guessing? Or… was I ready to let the grey give it away? After all, throughout my life it had been a constant frustration when folks assumed I was younger than my chronological years and therefore less mature, experienced, knowledgeable, etc. Once, as a home-based business owner in my twenties, I greeted a new client at the door and she asked if my mother was home.
I decided to seek the opinion of my cousin-in-law, Cathy Morrison, who is the sexiest silver-haired woman I know. She’s always been stylishly ahead of her time (Cathy wore a bikini in the mid-seventies while tan and nine months pregnant with her first child, and looked GREAT, I might add), so I asked her what prompted the decision to embrace what God had given her.
Cathy’s reasons for letting go of hair coloring in her early forties were simple: she was an avid horsewoman, and the frequency and expense of keeping up with her hair hue took valuable resources away from her passion of riding. And her then-job as a condominium property manager led her to meet a couple of active silver-headed seniors playing in a weekly bridge club. Cathy remembers, “They dressed really cute, wore fashionable jewelry and didn’t look like OLD ladies. So I thought if they can pull it off at their age, why can’t I?”
I felt my own ambivalence toward going grey slowly abating. Grey no longer has to be immediately associated with being old… one can wear their natural hair color and still be thought of as youthful and vibrant. “I do NOT want to look my age,” says Cathy, “and hope to never look my age!”. She has accomplished just that: no one would ever guess she has just turned 70. And what if they did? She’s happy, beautiful, and… herself.
I knew I had turned a corner as I listened to the entertaining audio version of The Chiffon Trenches, the recently published memoir of famed fashion writer and style icon André Leon Talley. Talley describes his final visit with his dear friend Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy. Radziwill had “let all of her hair go pure white”, which Talley found quite elegant. I found myself distracted from his narrative as I reflected, “Ooohh… I hope these skunk stripes are a sign that the rest of my hair will end up white.”
Record scratch. What did I just say?
I realized that the resistance to coloring my hair was not procrastination, just a slowly unfolding awakening. By going natural, I had allowed myself to grow — naturally — into a fifty-year-old entering the second half of her life with bridled optimism. Grey hair can offer a style of its own and will allow me to reinvent myself as the years go by and the gradual shade shifts occur. As I develop spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally, it will evolve along with me at just the right pace. It’s a unique, one-of-a-kind part of who I am.
Maybe I’ll try that app after all.
