Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash
I’m a Pinterest fanatic and I was really fascinated when I started seeing pins of women of all ages with gray hair. Gray hair had become the latest fashion trend and it was gorgeous. Gray actually looked good on all ages not just senior women. Young girls bleached the natural color out of their hair and then infused it with a ghostly shade or a brilliant color of the rainbow.
I was especially drawn to the senior women. Radiant in their natural beauty and proud of their silver strands. Yes, there were wrinkles and many imperfections, but the joy of having lived and seeing the map of their lives written across their faces was beautiful. I loved seeing women of age celebrated and taking the stage. Guiding the public into an era that was embracing nature and realizing that our very survival depended on it. The future looked brighter without chemicals in our food, our beauty products, our water and air. It was time to stop, get smart and start focusing on living in sync with our natural world.
Since I loved this look so much, I decided to try it. It was great at first, giving up the long appointments with the hairdresser. I no longer had to tolerate the bleach that sat against my scalp for at least 30 minutes and irritated my skin. It took 30 minutes or more to achieve the color you wanted. And then afterward, watching it fade away day by day. The expensive color would drain away and fade into bizarre hues. This was often accompanied by the loss of precious strands of hair because of the chemical stress put on the hair follicles.
So after arresting this unpleasant process, eventually the grays peek through. The grays are natural and free and many times curly. Your hair becomes a map of two opposing lands that are so different and don’t really blend.
That’s when it becomes challenging and can be fun, depending on your perspective. You can take many approaches to this. If you love the salon, you can have your stylist help you with blending the old and new. It’s usually a novel experience for them and at first a bit confusing. First you are met with disbelief, “You want to have gray hair?” “You don’t want me to cover your roots?” Then if you’re lucky and they accept that you are absolutely sure that going gray is your chosen path, it becomes fun.
Another route, is going it on your own. There are scads of cover up products to help you on your way. It’s easy, just style, then cover. You will also need a purple shampoo to counteract air pollution and deposits that create a yellow tinge, if not washed away. This whole process usually takes a few years. At three years, my grays were in and the complements rolled in like waves on the beach. Virtually every acquiantence had a compliment and loved seeing a rare head of gray hair.
