Hair

“Nana, I met a new friend on the playground today.”

“Oh yeah, tell me about her.”

“Well, she’s taller than me, and she has brown hair…”

It’s a natural thing to describe someone in this way. We all do it. I know we say we don’t find our identity in our looks, but we do. “I am ______.” Fill in the blank with any number of adjectives; some that come to mind are: tall, skinny, fair, curvy, athletic, medium-build, freckled, red-headed.

There has been lots written about American culture and its worship of physical appearance, especially as it relates to youthfulness. If you are anything less than perfect (and the definition of perfect keeps changing) than you can feel pressured by advertising, social media influencers, movie characters, etc. to spend lots of energy and money to get closer to the current ideal. How much money do women spend trying to look 20 years younger? Gracious.

Here I am, Nana to a dozen grandkids, 62 years old, married to the same loving husband for 38 years, and still struggling with the pressure to measure up. You’d think I’d know by now!

My latest revelation was hair color. I started coloring my grays when they began to come in fast and furious at age 36. I was considering letting it go but I remember the day so clearly when my stylist said, “What are we going to do about these grays?” (My stylist was a man, btw.) When I told him I was thinking about letting it go, not covering it up, his reply was, “Oh, you look way too young to do that.” I bought it. I drank the Kool-aid and began a once-per-month ritual that lasted 25 years (just did the math: over 1,000 color treatments, and I don’t even want to know how much money that is…). I never really thought too much about it, until about two years ago. On my sixtieth birthday, I started thinking about how long I would do it. My roots needed touching up every 3 weeks which felt like a lot of chemicals. Other things about me were changing, aging, and I knew at some point I would look ‘off.’ Super wrinkly, with very thin eyebrows but vibrant beautiful chocolate brown hair! That felt silly to me, and not right for me.

Two things happened around that time: I discovered the #silversisters community of women on Instagram (I guess there are some good things about social media) AND my stylist cut her finger and couldn’t work for a few months. The timing was perfect. I was a little late to the silver sisters party, as many ladies ditched their hair color during the pandemic, but I jumped on board with a little creative test-run of my own.

Since my hair was dark brown for my entire life, would I like the way I looked with gray or even white hair? I did not know how much gray I really had, what the pattern of my gray would be. I was not willing to go all skunk-stripe cold turkey, just letting it grow out. Nor did I want to go into seclusion while I grew out a few inches, and then chop it all off into a short hairstyle.

No - I decided to buy a can of silver hair paint from a Halloween costume website, and give myself highlights. It was pretty hilarious, and I’m so glad no one found me in my bathroom with a paper plate, trying to section off pieces to paint silver. My hair brush still has some paint on it from this experiment. But when it was all done, I was pleasantly surprised.

When my stylist was ready to work again, I took this idea to her: could she give me some gray highlights, just around the crown of my head, and below the natural grown-out gray so that as it grows out it will be much more gradual? She agreed, and coached me through the maintenance process. I needed to see her every 6 weeks or so to have the highlights toned with purple toner because they tended to fade to yellow. But I have not had any more harsh chemicals on my hair since that initial highlight treatment. I eventually also cut about 4 inches off the bottom since the ends were getting really damaged. And I have stopped with the purple toner (as evidenced in some of the photos below where the yellow is showing pretty strong).

(I want to insert a little something about those closest to me, my husband, my mother, my kids. Once I decided to do this, I made a little announcement first to my husband, “I want to stop coloring my hair, and let the natural gray color come in. This will change my appearance, but I promise that I will continue to care for my body and be as beautiful as I can be. I will need your support, verbally and otherwise.” He agreed. He’s been great. My mom had a little bit of a hard time with it, but she’s been more and more encouraging. Must be tough to watch your daughter aging. My daughters have been fantastic and cheer me on.)

I’ve really had nothing but positive feedback. People have been great. Friends and acquaintances at church, total strangers. I am feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin, gaining more confidence by the day. I keep an eye on those social media influencers, and feel more philosophical about it than I thought I would, looking with a more critical eye at culture.

All of this feels exceptionally shallow, especially for a deep-thinker like me. But it is the reality of the world we live in. I want to live confidently in the body (and with the hair!) God gave me and set an example to the younger women in my life.

One of the mantras I have embraced is, AGING IS A PRIVILEGE. Indeed, it is.