About 3 years ago I made a decision to stop coloring my hair. It seemed like no big deal at the time.  I mean, it is my hair, right?  People change their hair all of the time without big repercussions, right?  Well, it is NOT SO when you choose to go GRAY!

It so happens that my hair has lots of white and gray in it.  The criticism from family, friends, even strangers, came almost immediately!

Let me tell you why I quit “the bottle”.  First, my hair is (was) brown. Brown hair dye fades almost immediately!  It is not like bleach for blondes, or black for really dark headed people, which is more or less consistent each time.  Brown tends to fade with time, turning RED. I am not a redhead, so I was unhappy with my hair color most of the time.

Another reason I quit coloring was the cost.  I paid almost $80.00 every month for color and highlights. I did NOT like the effect of just one color,which was BROWN, all over.  Real hair color has many different colors and intensities, so I paid for them to be added.  Cha-ching! Many dollars spent there! That is almost $1000 a year, folks!  I will bet I spent close to $16,000 over the years on my haircolor! I certainly could use that money now, (like, for college tuition)!   Then, after all of that, it would grow in, showing my silver roots, in just a few days. Then it would start to fade! Then I would be right back in the hairdresser’s chair with my checkbook out for a root job!  What a pain and how expensive!

I really started thinking about how much time and money I was spending trying to cover up the truth.  I was going gray!  It was simply inevitable!  My dad was fully gray by the time he was 40.  Nobody ever said anything to him about being gray; in fact, people gave him compliments!  HA!  Wish it was the same for me!  I had people making  jokes about me being old.  I actually had someone mistake me for their grandma!

There is a stigma about women who let their hair go gray.  People presume that we’ve “let ourselves go” or that we just do not give a care to how we look.  I am here to tell you that is not true!  I do care about how I look – I was tired of being a fraud!  I felt like I was lying every time I colored my hair. Our culture is so hung up on youth!  It is like gray hair is a failure! I am so sick of the images of the thick-lipped, cat-eyed, dyed-hair, no-expression, botox-y babes we see in print and on television and movies.  That is NOT beauty to me!  Oh, don’t forget the perfect C-cups and designer jeans!  Please!  That is simply unnatural and impossible to attain unless you are rich!

It actually felt so unhealthy when I colored my hair.  It was more porous and brittle. It lacked shine.  Not pretty at all. I talked my hairdresser into adding “lowlights”  into my hair to mask the dreaded “line of demarcation” that is that dead giveaway that someone is growing out color!  I slowly got used to the idea of being “salt and pepper”. I also had to look inside of myself.  I know it is funny, but hair is a funny thing.  Why do you suppose so many people color theirs?  They color to avoid the inevitable!  They are aging!

I think I have moved through the stages just fine.  I even like my hair now.  It has lots of variations in color, from dark brown, to silver, to white.  It feels so much healthier!  I do use conditioner more liberally.  I also like the shampoos for “mature” hair or silver hair.  The other thing is that it only costs me $15.00 to get a haircut!  I am saving oodles of money. Oh, and I have even gotten the “senior citizen’s” discount a few times!  I think this is hilarious, because I know my age!  I am the real deal.  I also know that almost every woman I look at who is over 40 has colored hair.  They are still slaves to that bottle!  I try to keep an up-to-date hair style, too.

Hey, I am 43!  Not 103!  I am comfortable with my hair.  I just wish everyone else was!

Tags: beauty, color, confidence, family, gray, hair