Going gray is something that one expects with age. I just wasn’t expecting it at age seventeen. When I got my first gray hair, I was in study hall. My best friend shrieked, “You have a white hair!” and promptly yanked it out of my head. I don’t know if, as the wives’ tale tells, two grew back in its place, but I do know that twelve years later—judging from the roots that show when I’ve gone too long between colorings—about half of my head is gray.
Going gray in one’s twenties is, in some ways, not as bad as going gray later on. In your twenties, you don’t feel or look old, you don’t have laugh lines or crows feet, so the gray hair is kind of cute. And at that age, looking older is sometimes a plus, especially in the workplace, where twenty-four-year-olds who look sixteen tend to not be taken that seriously. But as you get older, the novelty wears off.
I’ve been dyeing my hair regularly since I was nineteen. Recently, I’ve begun to resent it. It’s expensive, it dries out my hair, herbal dyes don’t work on my stubborn grays, and the chemicals in permanent dye can’t be healthy. But mainly I resent it because there’s an unspoken expectation that a woman will and should dye her hair.
My dad’s hair is completely white, and it has been since he was thirty-five. Fortunately for him, he’s a man. Other women are always telling my mom how handsome he is, and comparing him to (a younger-looking) Kenny Rogers. (My mom’s friends seem to have a thing for Kenny Rogers.) Men end up looking dashing, debonair, wise, and powerful when they have some extra salt with their pepper. Take George Clooney, Richard Gere, Paul Newman, Harrison Ford, Warren Beatty, Anderson Cooper, Jon Stewart, Sean Connery … the list goes on.
Women just look old. What sexy gray-haired female icons do we have? Uh, Emmylou Harris? Judi Dench? Any newscasters? Can’t think of one. High-profile politicians? Hm. And how about any hot gray-haired ladies younger than fifty? Because you know they’re out there, hiding under some Clairol.
I know that there is the occasional man out there who loves silver-haired women. But in general, society is unkind to women with gray. For some reason, aging, for women, is socially unacceptable.
This, of course, makes me want to let my gray show—just to be defiant. Then again, I had the same reaction to armpit hair when I was eighteen and that lasted about a month. Maybe I’m not ready though, because there’s no way around it: as a woman, you can’t go gray at the age of thirty without it being some sort of statement.
In her book, Going Gray, Looking Great!, Diana Lewis Jewell interviews women who, though they love their gray hair, admit that it can sometimes be a challenge. One woman says friends have told her she’d look much younger if she colored her hair. Another says women stop her on the street to say how “brave” she is. And a few women voice suspicions that they’ve been passed over for jobs due to their hair color, either because they’re perceived as old and out of touch, or because of a subconscious double standard concerning women of a certain age.
My mother was openly horrified when I told her I was considering letting my gray show. It’s one thing to let your own hair go gray; it’s another to admit that you are old enough to have a daughter with gray hair. But she also just wants me to look young while I can—a valid point.
I haven’t decided if and when I’ll let my gray freak flag fly. My rational brain says that it’s just hair, that society should accept that sometimes thirty-year-olds go gray and get over it. But my vain brain—which, let’s face it, is the dominant half—makes it very hard to let go of being a brunette and whispers that gray hair is nature’s way of letting you know you’re dying.
