A few months ago my friends and I met up for brunch at one of our houses. (As a side note, I highly recommend meeting for brunch because it makes you sound way fancier than you actually are and you get to eat dessert at 10 AM.)
After the kids picked at their eggs and ran off to play, the conversation among the adults turned to gray hair.
Because, you know, real women start to get gray hairs in their 30s. No one likes to tell you that, but they do.
Some of us at the table were already hiding grays. I'm still teetering on the edge at age 34, where every once in a while I'll catch my reflection and spot a strand that's possibly more white than blonde. But it's hard to say.
"So are you going to dye yours?" someone asked, pointing a fork at me.
Good question.
I mean, I kind of have to, right? When's the last time you met a woman under 70 with gray hair?
I can name exactly one. In our old neighborhood there was a gray-haired couple who were probably in their 50s. The weird thing about it is that while the husband's gray hair made him look his age, it made his wife look like his mother.
I am that unused to seeing an age-appropriate head of salt-and-pepper hair on a 50-year-old woman.
It's kind of like a funny story Phillip retold one day when he came home from work. One of his male coworkers went on a first date with someone; somehow they started talking about driver's license photos and his date handed hers over, warning "I didn't have makeup on that day, so this isn't really what I look like."
Of course we were sort of giggling at what a silly thing that was to say, but deep down it's not that far from the truth.
Women have collectively forgotten what we even look like. But when female celebrities of every age are Botoxed until they look like they're 25 and we're awash in a sea of impossibly blond 50- and 60-year old women every day, who can blame us?
Some days I wish that like men, we could just look how we look. But cultural norms say that older men look distinguished and older women just look old. There's no product called Touch of Gray for Women for a reason.
So will I color my hair when I start to go gray?
It's easy for me now, sitting at brunch with my not-really-graying hair, to laugh and say "Ain't nobody got time for that!" with a dismissive wave of my hand.
But when I'm looking in the mirror at a head of hair that's increasingly turning silver, will I feel differently? When my choice is between a box of Clairol Age Defy Dark Blonde #7 and looking like I could be my husband's mother?
But I hope I won't.
I hope I'll be proud of my laugh lines and my gray hair. We are who we are, after all, because of the experiences we've gone through to earn them.
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After the kids picked at their eggs and ran off to play, the conversation among the adults turned to gray hair.
Because, you know, real women start to get gray hairs in their 30s. No one likes to tell you that, but they do.
Some of us at the table were already hiding grays. I'm still teetering on the edge at age 34, where every once in a while I'll catch my reflection and spot a strand that's possibly more white than blonde. But it's hard to say.
"So are you going to dye yours?" someone asked, pointing a fork at me.
Good question.
I mean, I kind of have to, right? When's the last time you met a woman under 70 with gray hair?
I can name exactly one. In our old neighborhood there was a gray-haired couple who were probably in their 50s. The weird thing about it is that while the husband's gray hair made him look his age, it made his wife look like his mother.
I am that unused to seeing an age-appropriate head of salt-and-pepper hair on a 50-year-old woman.
It's kind of like a funny story Phillip retold one day when he came home from work. One of his male coworkers went on a first date with someone; somehow they started talking about driver's license photos and his date handed hers over, warning "I didn't have makeup on that day, so this isn't really what I look like."
Of course we were sort of giggling at what a silly thing that was to say, but deep down it's not that far from the truth.
Women have collectively forgotten what we even look like. But when female celebrities of every age are Botoxed until they look like they're 25 and we're awash in a sea of impossibly blond 50- and 60-year old women every day, who can blame us?
Some days I wish that like men, we could just look how we look. But cultural norms say that older men look distinguished and older women just look old. There's no product called Touch of Gray for Women for a reason.
So will I color my hair when I start to go gray?
It's easy for me now, sitting at brunch with my not-really-graying hair, to laugh and say "Ain't nobody got time for that!" with a dismissive wave of my hand.
But when I'm looking in the mirror at a head of hair that's increasingly turning silver, will I feel differently? When my choice is between a box of Clairol Age Defy Dark Blonde #7 and looking like I could be my husband's mother?
The fact that I wear makeup now, almost every day in fact, makes me wonder if I will cave and start coloring my gray when it shows up.
I hope I'll be proud of my laugh lines and my gray hair. We are who we are, after all, because of the experiences we've gone through to earn them.
