Oh for goodness’ sake.
There’s an article in TIME Magazine reporting on the latest hot controversy: Should aging, i.e., senior women dye their hair? Apparently senior women should be ashamed of “not being honest” if they don’t let all the grey hang out. Anybody else (I suppose we could call them “junior women”) can color their hair with abandon.
Oh c’maaan. Anyone who believes that dyeing grey hair is a controversy has too much time on their hands.
In the interests of full disclosure I should admit that I’m a recreational hair dyer. I have a great relationship with my hairdresser, and she and I both enjoy choosing colors (yes, colors, plural) for my hair. Every few weeks I trundle down to her shop and she hauls out the color samples. (The resemblance they bear to the fabled old Native American scalp belts is probably an unfortunate coincidence.)
“Hmmmm. Let’s go with the five-sided copper (and don’t think for a minute I know what the heck ‘five-sided” means), maybe some of that blonde and this blonde, and that brown and….how about this kinda purple one?”
“Purple!?” she gives me a long, considering look, “You don’t want purple. How ’bout we stick with grownup colors?”
So we stay in the realm of reality, she mixes up the chosen colors and paints them on with abandon. I like the look, she’s happy with it, and it never fails to get compliments. (Of course, those could be the bemused ramblings of the dazed, caught staring at my hair. I really don’t care–I’m the one that has to see me in the mirror.)
But here’s the deal: My hair could very well have turned grey (or chartreuse) at the age of 30. How the heck would I know? It’s dyed.
And what the heck constitutes “senior?” When I turn 40? 50? 60? 90? When I’ve gotten very, very good at being a woman, regardless of my age, and therefore can graduate from “junior, woman in training” status?
Why is it that people so concerned with preserving our freedoms always get so hung up on making sure that we think (and apparently groom) to their standards?
Lord almighty, people. Get a life.
Well, sooner or later we all wind up on the side of angels, if only by accident. So even though you didn’t realize it, Bev, you were striking a blow for the liberation of womankind by not coloring your hair and I was setting back the cause and plunging us all into..I dunno…male chauvinism or something…by coloring. 😉
Hmmmm…I wonder if true liberation is when you can do whatever the heck you want without someone slapping a label on it?
How odd. I thought I was the controversial one because as a 44 year old blonde, my hair is now about 30% grey and I don’t color it. I’m a rarity among my peers and many times I think I should go darker, or red, or something.
So I’m not “colorless” because I don’t “believe” in coloring it, but because I’m cheap and lazy. Plus, I’m fortunate to be greying in all the right places and the right color – from my temples back and it’s silver, not yellowish – so it looks like an expensive highlight job.
In fact, the guy who used to cut my hair tried for years to get me to color it and finally one day looked at it and sighed “I guess you don’t need to. It looks pretty good.”
I have been a “suicide red-head” (dyed by my own hand) for 40 years and I’m going to keep going until I get the colour right!
The Dot (54-ish) colors HER hair. It looks great. And… I damn well better notice it when she does!
Sometimes she’ll go into class with her gray-ish hair and then BANG come in wild after a weekend. Keep them little folks on their toes…
GcB