WHILE we were in lockdown and hairdressers were shut, it wasn’t toilet roll I stocked up on, but hair dye. I was expected to go for months without colouring my hair? That was never going to happen.
When I realised that lockdown was here to stay, I up-skilled, and frantically bought the correct mixing bowl and brushes to try to colour my hair at home. The front looked great, but I could never reach the back of my head to cover the roots properly. I dread to think what I must have looked like!
Each time a lockdown ended and restrictions were lifted, I was one of the first in line to get to the hairdressers to have my hair coloured and cut. It was a massive mental health boost.
Fast forward a year, and I found myself fed up with seeing the sparkle of my roots, two to three weeks after having them coloured. There was one day in particular when I was standing at the bathroom sink mixing colour to dye my hair: I took a long look in the mirror and asked myself, "What are you doing?".
Someone pointed out my first grey hairs to me when I was in my mid-20s. I have frantically coloured my hair ever since. ‘Going grey’ is not something women are ever encouraged to do. It’s not attractive, it’s a sign of growing older and we don’t want that. The pressure on women to drink from the fountain of eternal youth is a multi-billion pound industry.
Men with grey hair are ‘silver foxes’, women who have grey hair under a certain age (however that age is judged) have ‘let themselves go’. Women colouring their hair has been normalised, but this is not the case for men.
Note that women don’t ‘dye’ their hair, they ‘colour’ it.
I never thought about not colouring my hair until about a year ago. Possibly as a result of lockdown and the pandemic giving them a head start in the process, or because it’s something I have been thinking about more, I have noticed more and more women, of all ages, with grey hair. There are numerous accounts on social media where women of all ages document the process, which is long and frustrating. Ultimately though, the result is exactly what I want.
In the last few months, I have been asking women who have grey hair about the process. One woman I spoke to is the same age as me, and before she embraced the grey, had dyed her hair much darker than mine for years. She was fed up with root growth and had been feeling exactly the same frustration and fatigue as me at having to ‘cover the roots’ every few weeks. This woman went cold turkey, didn’t start the process by lightening her hair, and three painful years later she had the hair colour I crave. The most remarkable part of our conversation was that her teenage daughter offered that she thought that her mummy’s hair was cool. She was right, it was!
I am not brave enough to go cold turkey though. I had my hair coloured dark brown for perhaps the last time in February this year, a week before my wedding. I have thought a lot about letting the roots go, and lightening my hair. I was resolute about going through with it – until the day came to start the process. I hit a speed bump.
All the opinions that have been shared with me over the past few months were in my head. On the positive side – freedom, getting hours of my life back and saving money. Hair colour is expensive! On the negative side – premature ageing, changing my identity. That’s the thing, my dark hair has been a big part of my identity for a very long time.
But I did it and I now have blonde hair with grey roots coming through. I wouldn’t have the confidence to go through with it without the support and guidance of my hairdresser, who constantly tells me to ‘trust the process’. I am slowly but surely buying into the process, whilst trying to bat off the comments that are being made.
Eight weeks in, I tell myself that I need to give this a chance, steel myself and have some stamina. As a natural brunette, perhaps now is the time where I can work out if blondes do indeed have more fun.
To be continued…
