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Embracing Gray: A Journey to Greater Self-Acceptance
A reflection on the natural aging process and the pressure to deny it
To color or not to color — that is the question.
When I had no gray hair, I frequently colored it. Now that my hair is gray, I’ve stopped. That’s me: living life in reverse time order. Throughout my 20s and 30s, when I had the least expendable cash, I spent triple digits monthly keeping up with coloring and root maintenance. I didn’t give it much thought; it felt automatic. I’d acculturated to it, steeped in L’Oreal’s media message: “It costs a little more, but I’m worth it.”
Maybe this mentality took hold because, from a young age, I’ve had an old soul look. I’ve always appeared older than my age. When I was 13, I attended a church camp with a friend, and the other campers thought I was her mom. I felt mortified. Later, when I became a mom in my 30s, people often mistook me for my kid’s grandmother. If you start the math at 13, it makes sense — or at least it did to them. I resented this perception and began resisting the fuddy-duddy image that seemed to trail me.
By my 30s, I had started developing gray hair, so I began coloring in earnest. It became less about style and more about camouflage — a way to mask my age. Before then, coloring had been a trendy thing a…