it's just hair
In early 2021, I decided to stop dyeing my hair.
What’s weird is that at the time I didn’t know why I was dyeing it. When I was younger, in my thirties, I used to dye my very cropped hair blue-black — literally, covering my hair every four to six weeks, every time I cut it short, with navy blue dye. My natural hair colour was black, but this was like black-on-steroids. I wanted it as dark as possible.
Over time, I traded my inky-black colour to a brown-black hue, but by early 2021, I realized I was dyeing my hair mostly out of habit rather than any sort of hair dyeing philosophy. And besides, I’d always said that as soon as the white was evenly distributed all over my head, I would stop dyeing it. Problem was, by 2021 I didn’t really know how silver I was (except I knew the very front of my hair was pretty white). But I was impatient and decided to just go for it.
On April 14th, 2021, I decided to cut all my dyed hair off, and go completely dye-free.
To be honest, I was a little nervous: while I didn’t care about looking my age, I didn’t want to look older than my age (whatever the hell that means). And how would folks react? Would people treat me like an old woman? Whatever the hell that means?
Almost 17 months later (and about 6 months into growing it out), this hair experiment has been a trip. First of all, let me start by saying that at first, it was a little weird having everyone actually believe me when I told them my age — I’d been used to people protesting that I looked so much younger (whatever the hell that means). But secondly, at least to my face, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, overwhelmingly — as in, if I’m ever in any public place, usually someone will compliment me on my hair. I’ve even had people ask me if I’ve dyed my hair to look like this (which I find HIGH-LAIR-EE-US. I’ve learned that the silver isn’t evenly distributed around my head, and the back of my head is considerably darker than the top and the front. I promise you, if I were to artificially colour my hair to look like this, I would pay to have it done all over and not just the front).
The kind words are lovely, of course, but honestly, I don’t think they’re actually responding to my hair. I mean, there’s nothing really special about my hair — thousands of people all over the world have salt-and-pepper hair. I think folks are more responding to the fact that I’m comfortable with it — the same way folks might react if I’d dyed my hair an unusual colour and I was comfortable with that. And really, it almost feels like I’ve dyed it an unusual colour: I’d never experimented with dramatic hair colour before, so having my hair look like this is really sort of novel and fun. I can’t wait until my Afro grows in, so I can see what it looks like to full effect.
Still, I know that for some, the idea of going grey seems like a stupid idea. Take, for example, this recent story from Canada: award-winning TV anchor Lisa LaFlamme was reportedly fired from her job for letting her hair go grey during the pandemic (with reports of a senior official asking “who approved the decision to let Lisa’s hair go grey?”). The good news is that the backlash has been swift: even Wendy’s and Dove have responded with campaigns, with Wendy’s Canada changing the haircolour of their famous redheaded mascot to silver, and Dove celebrating folks who #KeeptheGrey.
This is great, but honestly, I will never understand why news agencies care about a woman’s hair colour (because we all know that Canada television is no stranger its male anchors having silver hair, see here and here). It’s hair. There’s nothing about platinum hair that makes it difficult for folks to do their jobs.
It’s hair.
Anyway.
Despite how it might seem, I’m not anti-hair-dye — as I mentioned, I dyed my hair for many years. But I will say that letting my hair go grey has made me keenly aware of the ageist reactions to silver hair that are everywhere — from Hollywood, to the news anchor desk, to even my own internalized ageism, evident in the fears that I had before I cut my coloured hair off.
(For the record, I deeply prefer my hair this way now.)
So I’ll just offer that if you’re on the fence about dyeing or not-dyeing your own hair, for sure, you should do whatever makes you feel better. But (and especially since, after all, I’m in the middle of writing a book on joyful aging), I’d also invite you to take a moment to ask yourself if your reasons behind your hair decisions are based in any negative views you might have about aging… in others, but even in yourself.
Just some (hair) food for thought.
You gotta get past the prickly bit.