How to Go Gray… Intentionally

64 Comments

1. I am; I’m 32. Just leaning into it slowly. I have very dark brown–almost black–hair and pale skin, so I’m hoping for a Stacy London look with my silvers and grays that are coming in mid-crown. I get my hair keratined about 3 times a year and I find it helps keep the wiry look at bay. The women in my dad’s family–I look most like that side–have done this with good success, too. Mom has mid-brown hair that has probably been gray or white since she was 50 (she’s turning 70 shortly), but she just goes lighter and lighter, like Kat mentioned. It actually works on her.

   1. I have the Stacy London look at 28 (have had it since about 5th grade and let it grow out just a few years ago). I hope that I eventually get my grand mother’s all-over white gray hair. It’s beautiful, but she didn’t start that transition until she was in her 60s.

2. No. I have black hair, and am in my 40s with no grey hair yet, but plan to keep it black whenever the greys come.

   1. I have black hair (Indian) as well, and I’m 38. I have been coloring my grays since I was 30. No plans to stop anytime soon. Every Indian woman I know over the age of 45 with the exception of my MIL colors their hair. My 70 year old mother is gorgeous and looks so young, and she’s still coloring her hair as well.

      A big advantage I have is that I can do it at home, since it’s hard to mess up black dye. If I had an unusual hair color it would be a huge time sink because I hate going to the hairdresser. I feel so much more confident and pretty without my gray.

      I use Naturtint dye — it’s ammonia free and supposedly better for you than other dyes, but who knows. I buy it from Whole Foods.

      1. Thanks for sharing! I am not Indian, but Central Asian, so similar skin tone and hair color.

      2. Same. I’m Indian and started getting grays a couple of years ago. I’m 40 and got my hair colored for the first time about 6 months ago. I get haircuts regularly every 6-8 weeks and I’ve started getting my hair colored every other time. My mom is in her 60s and still gets her hair colored. It still looks natural. I remember when I was younger seeing older ladies with orange-ish hair from using henna as a dye for years.

   2. You might want to consider going lighter. Black hair can accentuate aging skin in the face. And if your natural hair is completely silver, the skunk stripe at your part is going to be really hard to deal with.

      1. I’ve noticed that women with darker/asian complexions often age more gracefully and can often do very well with maintaining a darker color.

3. I’m in my 50s and, while I am getting grayer, I still have little enough gray that I can cover it with highlights and it just blends in.

   1. Same. I let the highlighting go for a while and didn’t like it, so I’m back at it. I have chestnut brown hair and random silvery strands (not a cool stripe like Stacy London) so I get lighter golden brown highlights to give my hair multidimensionality and make the silver strands stand out less – it’s impossible to expect they’ll catch them all in the highlight foils.

4. Does anyone have any PPD-free hair color options that really work to cover grays on medium brown hair? I’m involuntarily going gray naturally. . .

   1. Ditto! Would love to hear any recommendations on this. I had been getting my hair “glazed” for a while to cover the grays, but last year had a terrible allergic reaction (eyes swelled shut, fever, etc.). I had my hair done again with PPD-free dye that my stylist ordered from Canada, and still, another bad reaction. I’m desperate for any solution other than henna that will cover my grays and not put me in excruciating pain!

5. I have not considered artificially going gray, which I think it what this post is about. But I’m not taking any steps to color or pluck the gray hair I do have, nor do I intend to.

   For reference, I got my first gray hair around 30 and at 44, have plenty of gray in my brown hair. I like my gray hair and I like the way it blends into my natural hair color.

   Side note: the last time I got my hair cut, the stylist described my hair as “virgin hair,” because I don’t color it.

   1. Mine is virgin hair too, very healthy, so I’m reluctant to start adding chemicals. I’m 50 so it’s not like I would be fooling anyone as to my age if I colored it (I’m about 6-8% gray). But wondering if I should rethink this as I’m actively interviewing.

      1. I’m 27 and have the occasional gray hair but I also have never dyed it and have no plans on starting. Honestly, the upkeep seems exhausting. If I go gray, I go gray. I’m surprised I’m not there already, the women in my dad’s family gray very early.

         1. I’m 31 and noticing more and more grays every month. Never dyed it – I’m super vain about my hair color – and reluctant to start now, so I’ll see how this goes.

            My grandmother was almost completely gray at 30, but she had seven kids by that point, so …

6. I have brown hair that has slowly darkened over the years. It’s short, not chemically processed, and healthy/shiny. My greys are noticeable but don’t really bother me. I’m 40 and a lawyer- a little gravitas isn’t the worst thing in the world.

7. I began going grey at 16 and colored into my mid-30’s. I would have it professionally colored every 6 weeks and it still brassed out and looked horrible. I finally decided the money wasn’t worth it and talked with my hairdresser. She had me grow it out for a bit, placed a couple brown streaks, and gave me a pixie. This continued until she was able to trim off all the brown and I was able to grow it out again.

   To my surprise, I discovered my hair is a super soft silver. I wound up changing my makeup and some of my clothing to avoid looking washed out. I get a lot of ton of compliments (from both men and women) and am happy with the decision (and money saved).

   1. This is me, almost exactly. What pushed it over the edge for me was I needed touch ups every 3-4 weeks and it was too much time and money. My hairdresser lightened my hair overall, added some low lights and it took about a year for the complete transformation. The key for me was to keep my hair neatly trimmed/styled during transition so it looked intentional and not messy.

      There were a couple of awkward phases, but I love how it turned out (full on silver, with a few dark streaks still left) and would advise anyone else thinking of it to take the plunge. I’ve inspired at least 3 other women at work to give it a try.

   2. My story is similar. When I was 37, I got it cut into a short pixie when I stopped coloring, which I loved and still have. I get a lot of compliments from both men and women, friends and strangers. I was worried about the texture of the gray hair when I stopped coloring because I had been told that coloring makes it softer. Turns out that when I stopped color all together, the texture feels pretty decent.

      I know it sounds silly to say this, but it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

8. I’m totally fine with my greys (started finding some around 30, and now at 40 have a few noticeable streaks in my otherwise dark brown hair).

   However, Kat’s comment about keratin reminds me that I’ve been thinking about giving this a go, and wondering if other folks with hair similar to mine (curly/wavy, very very fine but lots of volume) have had experience with it they’d like to share (positive or negative).

   1. This is my exact situation – same hair type and approaching 40. Greys are starting to be too numerous/noticeable in my dark hair but super worried about damaging my fragile hair. I figure grey is better than broken.

   2. I have similar hair to yours, it sounds like, and while I was happy overall with the keratin treatment I got, I noticed that because my hair is fine, when it was slick straight I could not go a day without washing it (I was averaging every other day beforehand) – it was just way to greasy and dry shampoo didn’t help since there was no volume/texture to help blend it in (if that makes sense). And since the more you wash it, the faster the treatment fades, I only got maybe 3-4 good weeks out of it, which I didn’t think was a great value for the money (at least in the winter – I may give it another go in the summer since the humidity somehow makes my flat and extremely frizzy at the same time).

      1. Thanks – this was exactly what I was worried about. I may give it a try anyway, but good to know.

9. I am considering making the transition now actually. I am 42, and have been dying my hair since my mid/late 20’s when what started as one shock of white at my temple slowly got bigger and then just went all over. I regret ever dying it as now I’m stuck with long hair I love and how to go grey. I think I will just get a pixie cut, and suffer through the 3-4 months of growing out the colour, and then start growing it long again. I had a short pixie for over a decade in my youth and I think my face can probably still pull it off. It is a hard choice though… I naturally have a LOT of grey, so really it should be ok for me to show it off….but there is a part of me that sort of feels weird about it. Like I”m officially old. Which, or course, is completely a result of my covering it up in the first place and not just letting my body be what it really is.

   1. I think there’s a way to strip dye – ask your stylist! Of course, if you enjoy a pixie cut, go for it, but cutting long hair to get rid of dye just seems so tragic.

      1. You can pull some of the dye out but it doesn’t go back to your natural color. Might enable you to get something closer to what is your current ‘natural’ color though

10. I’ll admit it, I haven’t totally accepted how gray I actually am. I’m 37 and feel like I’m too young to rock the grays, which really came in full force during my second pregnancy at ages 33-34. I have a pixie cut that I color religiously every six weeks, in something slightly different from my natural color. Right now I have burgundy highlights with a dark base and looove it.

    With my overall appearance and style tendencies, I already have to make a conscious effort to look modern and un-frumpy, so I can’t get on board with going gray. (Yet. I don’t love the maintenance or expense of keeping up my hair.) Plenty of people rock it and look great, but I’m pretty sure I’d just look like my grandma.

11. I’m 40 and am probably about 30% silver in the front of my head; the rest is a mix of steel grey and dark brown (my natural color). Not as sure about the back. The ends are a brassy brown from old color. Several years ago my stylist/friend moved so I didn’t have access to cheap, convenient color anymore, and I decided I was both too cheap to pay full price for color and too lazy to do it myself at home. Plus, I don’t really dislike my grey — there’s enough silver that it looks shimmery, and it’s still fine and soft rather than wiry — and the more I thought about it, I didn’t want to contribute to the fiction that women never go grey. It’s taking a while; I switched to semi/demi color about 3 years ago, then had my last color about 18 months ago, and have just let it go since then. There was no line of demarcation, though the ends of my hair definitely look different than the roots. My hair is about shoulder-length and I should have all the old color cut off in the next cut or two.

    I don’t work in a corporate setting, so the “old hippie” edge that grey hair gives me is fine. But I do find that I need to make sure the rest of my look is sharp in comparison. I’ve been thinking about a straightening treatment or a gloss, to give the grey more of a purposeful look.

12. I got my first grey hair at 21 and colored for years. In my mid-40s, I decided I wanted to see what was under the hood so I grew it out. It’s a lovely color and if it were evenly sprinkled, I’d have stayed that way. Unfortunately, I have a snow cone appearance with blobs of the silvery gray clumped around my head and most predominant on my part line.

    I have been coloring since then, and will continue to unless I have surgery on my head or chemo. At that point, I’m confident I’d just go with what I’ve got since I’d have bigger fish to fry.

13. I started going gray in my 20s, and I let it go gray for a while in my late 40s, back in the mid-aughts. Then one day I was at the dentist’s office a picked up a magazine article about gray hair, and it had a bunch of photos of famous women of a certain age, some who have gray hair and were photoshopped to look dyed, and some with dyed hair who were photoshopped to look gray. (Here it is online, with only one photo, alas: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1658058-1,00.html) Every single one of them looked older with gray hair.

    I left the dentist’s office, called my hairdresser, went back to blonde, and have never looked back.

    YMMV, of course, but it was the right choice for me.

    1. Counterpoint: What’s wrong with looking older, especially, as you get older?

       1. Nothing, but some of us don’t want to look older than we need to.

       2. As I said, YMMV. Nothing wrong with looking older in the abstract, but the reality is that looking older can hold women back both professionally and personally (if you’re out there dating).

          And yes, I know there are exceptions.

          1. I agree with SA. There is nothing inherently wrong with looking older. But my boss and most of my coworkers’ ages are such that I could have given birth to them. I color my hair, keep up with and use current technology, and am familiar with current popular culture even when it’s not my jam. I am not trying to fit in, which isn’t possible given the age difference, but I am trying not to stick out any more than I have to.

       3. Personally, I have zero interest in looking older & plan to fight it every step of the way. That said, YMMV, BUT I think there’s still a lot of age discrimination in the workplace that it’s worth thinking about how it could impact your career. I know people who are only in their 40s but pretend to be a decade younger to stay relevant. I think the curve is skewing even younger. In fields like law/finance, etc. being older may not have quite the same stigma, but I’m even seeing it in law, especially in Valley in-house roles. Since most people on here are career concerned, it’s something to consider in your decisionmaking.

          1. I feel like women can be stuck between a rock and a hard place on the age / looks thing. I understand that isn’t new or shocking to anyone, but it’s still frustrating. I’m 35 and fortunate to look younger. But the back side of that is I recently did not get a job which I was told I was the strongest candidate for, because the supervisor was overruled by the next line up, who decided they were looking for someone older with more “experience” and gravitas. Granted, there could be other factors as well, but it felt a little surprising over a decade into my career. It feels like there isn’t going to be a “sweet spot” where I am taken seriously for my accomplishments and experience but haven’t yet been put out to pasture. And I get that it’s early to think that darkly, but I worry that it’s going to be more of an instance flip, going suddenly from “too young” to “too old,” with no in between.

             It doesn’t seem like men have this issue, but maybe I’m just not seeing it around me.

    2. A friend of mine in her early 40s stopped coloring her hair and the difference was dramatic. She now has a nearly 100% gray pixie and has aged 15 years. I admire her gumption but I could never do it.

       1. Same. I’m still trying to be taken seriously as a 53 year old woman in business and I don’t need anyone thinking I’m even older. It’s unfortunate but that is how it is, at least where I work.

14. Has anyone tried Elumen? It’s supposed to be gentler on hair but not sure if it covers grey.

15. I am currently in the third trimester of my first pregnancy and miss my color, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Nor was I sure I could deal with the smell without inducing nausea. Haven’t decided if I’ll make time/budget to get it recolored after baby’s arrival.

16. This is a topic near but not at all dear to my heart. *Sigh.* I am going grey (at 40) entirely around my hairline. Widow’s peak, temples and above ears. I hate it. I would dye it if it actually covered the grey, but it only lasts for a week or two and then you see the telltale silver poking through again. So why go through that expense and time for something that doesn’t even work?

    I used to pluck the stands but am now letting them grow in. I’m doing a brown Redken Shades EQ gloss at home every month to camouflage the greys until they’re long enough to not look super weird. It’s just a gloss so it washes out fairly quickly.

    When I was young I thought having grey hair would be cool. I didn’t think about how you don’t get to keep your 25 year old face as you go grey. I was ok with my wrinkles before, but now combined with the grey hair it just makes me feel old. I plan to be job hunting in a year and I’m sure the grey hair will hold me back. I really resent that, especially because it doesn’t seem true for men.

17. Heck no. My grays are so drastically different in texture from my colored hair that daily styling and management would be untenable. I will stop once it’s totally gray, but the in-between time will continue to get color treatment.

    Plus, my gray doesn’t come in as a cool Rogue streak. It comes in as Paulie Gualtieri wings.

    1. Aw Paulie Walnuts?

    2. Mine is coming in as a Rogue streak. Do you know anyone who has gotten away with it? I kinda want to accentuate it, but I’m afraid it would just look silly or make me look older (late 30s)

18. I started getting greys in my late 20’s. Natural color is medium brown with lots of lighter shades mixed in.

    I started in my 30’s doing some semi-perm dye +/- a few highlights. It kind of masked it, and with long hair and my mix of colors I could get away with it.

    But as more grey came in by my later 30’s… it was so much work. So expensive. Tried the mono-color dye once and it looked awful…. so artificial to my eye, after a lifetime of a mix of colors.

    At 37 I had certain life events that led me to take time off work. I could afford the time or money to dye, and went au naturale (? > 40% grey). Now I have a lot of grey mixed in with my aging brown. I have a pixie.

    Recently, a stranger (male) thought I was my brother’s…. mother. We are one year apart in age. I dress well, skin is good, but the grey hair…. especially to MEN…. puts you in a completely different generation, I have found. And the only men that have made overtures to me are > 20 years older than me…. I kid you not.

    When I return to working in a very competitive field (probably next couple years), I will dye my hair again. I DREAD this, as I will have to touch up every month. But as was also taught to me on this site…. age discrimination is real.

19. I have just started to get the little gray wispies. More because I’m bored than to cover the grays, I’m getting highlights for the first time this weekend. My stylist swears I won’t have to touch them up more than every few months unless I want to, and maybe adding some more dimension will make the silver look more intentional.

    Although my actual nightmare really happened a few months ago: I noticed I had kind of a chin whisker that I couldn’t see in the mirror. I pulled it out… and not only was it super long… it was WHITE.

20. Started going grey in college. A few years later, my blonde hair (which I always loathed) made the transition towards mousy brown.

    I’ve been rocking red hair for over a decade, and you can pry my henna from my cold, dead hands.

21. I am 36 and am the same as I was when I was 16; luckiley, b/c I am blonde, there is no gray. While that I am fortunate for, I am NOT so lucky b/c my tuchus is 2x the size I was at age 16. I was a size 0 in college and law school, and now I am flirting with a size 4, and that is tight with some of the European designers. I would really love to be abel to wear the clotheing I did in law school, but my tuchus says NO! FOOEY!

    So even if hair is not an issue for me, my tuchus is. DOUBEL FOOEY!

22. I’m 55 and had been trying to cover the gray invasion since my late twenties. I had long very dark brown hair and eyebrows. Working the last five years, I had to have biweekly touchups to cover the skunk stripe and decided, I’d had enough. I wasn’t frustrated, just was ready to move on, embrace it! I found a hair color professional, that understood that I didn’t look at the process as a simple hair color change, but that I was letting go of the old me, sounds silly to some, but it was MAJOR to me. The transition took 14 months because we tried to keep at chin length, did blending, with silvers and such. Then when I reached a point of mostly my natural silver, We cut it off to a short, I guess you would call, a pixie. My brows are still naturally black and I have a medium light complexion, btw. I love my silver! I’m not kidding, I get so many compliments and “love its” from people! I feel free and just, I don’t know-fresh, uplifted!

    1. And to add, my husband keeps telling me how pretty my hair is and I receive compliments from both men and women.

23. My hair is very dark brown, my eyebrows are black. I started coloring my hair in my 30s with an at home kit. I later switched to having salon color, first low lights to blend the gray, and then finally just did all my hair. The salon dye was relatively gentle, and needed to be done at least every six weeks. I was reaching the point where I probably needed to go every five weeks when I got tired of the time, the cost, my hair texture, and the way the color builds up on your hair. I also try to be environmentally conscious, and the chemicals in hair dye were starting to concern me.

    I told my stylist I wanted a change, and we trimmed my hair to just above my shoulders. I went about eight weeks with no dye, and the I had highlights put in. We did the highlights every 8 weeks for about a year, with regular trims. One thing I would do differently is stretch the time between highlights, even if I needed to just get a trim. At one point, I thought my hair was too blond, so we did a glaze to tone it down.

    It’s been 15 months from start to finish, and now my hair is slightly above my shoulders and is a mix of brown and silver strands. I don’t have any streaks of gray. My hair feels so much better, and has more body and is easier to style. I take very good care of it, using a deep conditioner a few times a month and a moisturizing cream ever day. I think it’s really important to keep gray hair in good shape and well styled so it’s clear it’s a style I chose and am rocking.

    I don’t know if it really makes me look older but I’m really happy not to be drenching my scalp in chemicals.

    1. I’m a 51 y/o African American women and I’ve been gray more than 1/2 my life. I decided to let my hair go for a year. June will be a year and I love it at times then don’t but I’m going to stick with it to see how it comes in. When I was coloring my hair the color did not last cause my gray is so strong and I’m a runner so my hair would never last long when I got it done.

24. I’ve got some wispy grays here and there with a patch in my bangs that bothers me more although my husband says it’s not noticeable. My hair is very dark brown so I’m not sure the highlights route would work for me. Recently I experimented with an indigo and henna mix on just my bangs. I did lots of research first but I’m pleased. It blended away the grays and it’s natural. For now this is working for me as I’m afraid gray around my face would wash me out.

25. 51, dark brunette/fair skin (ashkenazi Jewish), stopped coloring at 45, am now salt and pepper; no intention of coloring again. Fortunately I have great skin and my natural coloring suits the gray. People are shocked to learn my age even with the gray.

    I think if you are modern and confident the gray doesn’t matter at work or in life. I call BS on that!

    I’m done living my life to please others.

    You do have to update clothes colors amd makeup to go with the gray.

26. I am 62 with medium brown hair, with about 40% of it gray. I am flabbergasted that the standard in this country is for women to cover up their gray hair. I look around and see that something like 90% of ALL women are dying their hair. That’s a lot of effort and a lot of poison and a lot of buying into youth culture. I have never, ever dyed my hair (except the occasional spray of temporary purple for decoration on festive occasions) and I do not think I ever will. I find it fascinating that we even need instructions on “how to go gray.” It happens naturally. :)

27. No way! I am 39 and I have a few grays and they annoy me. Once they become more noticeable I will dye my hair. Gray hair is incredibly aging. I have a friend who just turned 43 and who is all gray now and I honestly was shocked to find out that she was only 4 years older than me. Her skin tone is great but the hair makes her look at least 10 years older. I get that dying hair is a pain – I am lucky I don’t have to do it – but lots of beauty treatments require maintenance. My hair needs keratin to look decent. Worth the time and investment to keep it up.

28. Am 48 and have never colored my hair. I’m really lucky that I have a cool Bonnie Raitt streak thing going on. Every time I go in to get my hair cut, my stylist grabs hold of it and tells me firmly that I am NOT allowed to color it. Mo worries, my dear! Not planning on it.

    My mom went grey beautifully; it looked like impossibly delicate silver highlights. People would stop her on the street to ask her how she did it. Hoping to follow in her follicles.

29. I started coloring my dark brown hair in my late 20s because of gray. By the time I was in my late 30s, I was having to go in often because of the roots. I got cancer at 41 and it all fell out with chemo. It was SO gray, I thought, when it grew back that coloring it was going to be a huge challenge. So, I went with it. And people raved. It didn’t make me look older until I hit my mid-50s. Now, I’m 60 and it has continued to get grayer. It’s silver streaked with almost black, so it’s a pretty color. I think it makes me look older than I am now, but then I see women my age and older who are still covering their gray, and that often has even a more aging effect. It’s just not worth it. I spend my time and money now on killer cuts. It’s a whole lot easier to grow it out from bald, but I don’t really recommend that.

30. I found my first grey hair in law school when I was 25, the night before my Con Law exam. Go figure.

    But I don’t feel a need to dye, since they’ve been coming in slowly since, here and there, and I suspect I’m going to go grey just like my mother. We both have that “dishwater blonde” sort of light brown hair, and her grey came in right at her temples and sprinkled in evenly through the rest of her hair. People actually ask her if she gets silver highlights, which she finds hilarious since she’s never dyed her hair before, not even once. Her mother, my grandma, had more brown hair when she died than my dad did at the time, and she was in her mid-eighties, so I think it just runs in the family.

    Not that I’d be sad if my hair went the same way as my dad’s. He’s now in his mid-sixties, and has naturally gone full-on Santa Clause white. (Or Sean Connery, depending on what time of year it is and how long his beard is…)

31. I’m turning 41, with naturally very dark thick brown hair, that is a little longer than my shoulders and pale skin and dark eyebrows. I started going gray/silver/white in my early/mid 20s and colored it until I was 39 when I was doing roots every 2 weeks. It was getting ridiculous and expensive and time consuming — even with doing the touch ups at home.

    The first 6 months were painful because all I wanted to do was to color- at that point we did some grey/silver/white highlights to help ease the process, but it was very subtle. I also got really good at twisting the front back with a bobby pin or putting it all up to make the growth less noticeable. I’m lucky in that my hair actually went white and it’s primarily at my hairline and natural part so it looks a little like Stacey London or Rogue from X-Men.

    I changed my makeup routine so I don’t look washed out and started wearing brighter lipstick. I also use a purple shampoo once a week to prevent yellowing and to give a little more shine. I probably get compliments on my hair at least 4 times a week- mostly from women and young girls (who think I did it intentionally). My older sister doesn’t have any grey and my younger only has a few, but my mom (mid 70s) went from dark to almost completely white in her 50s and 60s. Next step is to cut off a few inches to help with the final growing out phase.

    It was scary to commit to it, but after I got through the first 6-9 months, it looked a lot better and I was more comfortable with it. I’ve always looked young, so I don’t think it aged me too much, Plus, my theory is, with all the money I now save from not coloring I can spend it on every anti-aging solution/cream/product there is!

32. My natural hair was brown – started going grey at 18 – I was 30% by 30 and always colored it because with my skin (fair, blue eyes & freckles), I look all washed out with grey hair next to my face. I’m in my late 50s now and blonde – I don’t want to think about how much I’ve paid for the highlights, lowlights and color. I wish I could have gorgeous grey hair, but I’m not Emmylou Harris. I wouldn’t even have nice white hair like my Mom had – her original hair color was black.

33. I’m 43 and stopped coloring my hair about 10 years ago at the behest of a boyfriend who was 10 years older than me and loved my grey hair. I’m about 40% grey and I love it. As it’s greyed, my hair’s texture has also changed and it’s curlier and a bit dryer. I currently wear it wild and curly and get compliments on it all the time. Between the black and the grey, my hair looks steely, and people have definitely asked me who colors my hair. Although I love my grey hair, I must say that the carpet is beginning to match the drapes, and that’s a little harder to love.

34. There’s still a lot of fear-talk going on.
    “It ages you by 10, 15 years.” (god forbid)
    “I won’t or don’t have the “right” (ie. fashionable) grey that so-n-so has.”
    “I’ll never get a job.”
    “What will people in accounting think?”
    Omg, omg, omg. The sky will fall.

    The fact that you’re here reading this article, no matter your opinion, means it has struck a chord. Maybe it planted a seed to germinate into freedom from toxic chemicals and toxic thinking the future. That’s how it was with me.

    It took me 3 tries and 8 years to finally ditch the dye. Not a single role model in my life to follow, either. I had to turn to the Internet to find like-minded women to help me during the wobbling moments and there were a lot of wobbling moments. All my friends said I’d would look like a hag or a witch. I laugh now, but at the time those remarks postponed my decision for another 3 years. Negative remarks don’t hurt now. They tell me more about the person making those remarks and about my hair. Not woke yet. Old school. Toxic thinker. Buzz off.

    I never once felt the 23 years of coloring as “pampering myself” or feeling “wealthy.” Every time I pasted that toxic brew on my head it felt like an apology to the world: “Sorry, so sorry. I am aging. I know women aren’t supposed to age. I don’t want to be uncomfortable with any natural hair color. sorry. sorry. Here, lemme pay penance for going gray like the rest of the adult world.” Rinse, repeat, every. six. weeks. Blech.
    I haven’t colored my hair in 8 months. It’s coming in great. I am one of the “lucky” ones in that I have the “right” highlights. The “right” highlights. What another crock! Ladies, whatever nature gave you is the “right” color for you. Do not let anyone tell you that nature can’t match your skin tone. Nature knows! And that fake dye? Most dye jobs look fake. We’re just trained to not notice.
    Color if it comforts you and makes you feel pretty or safe. Color to the day you die as my sis-in-law proclaims she’ll do. But if there is a small voice in your head saying “quit!” LISTEN to her. She’ll only get louder.

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