I came late to the hair coloring game. Thanks simply to good genes, my hair only started greying late in my forties. My then husband would find a lonely, corkscrew strand in my tresses occasionally. “Pull it out!” I’d cry, hoping to banish it as quickly as the melanin had vanished. I wanted no evidence of my aging.
I don’t consider myself vain. I wear little makeup and do even less to maintain said hair – it refuses to cooperate even when I put in some effort, and I simply cannot be bothered to keep weekly “salon” appointments like my mother and her cohort did in Howard Beach, Queens. They would sport hair sprayed-to-destroy-the-ozone beehives that they’d wrap with cones like those dogs wear after surgery to maintain the updo until the next appointment. Even though a blowout lasts days for me, it’s just too much of a hassle.
My clothes come mostly from the Gap or Uniqlo – so practical and reliable, yet fairly uninteresting. It’s not that I don’t care how I look; I just recognize opportunity cost when I see it, being the good Economics major that I was, and find my time is better spent doing things that offer more of an existential return than sitting in a nail salon for hours. Mind you, I do not judge or criticize those who do spend more time on their appearance than I. Quite the opposite: I have a curious admiration bordering on jealousy of those women we all know who just seem to wake up looking more put together than I ever will.
But the greys got to me, and so after years of blissful unawareness that literally every other woman I knew, including my mother and sister, were dyeing their hair regularly (I always wondered why some women had odd “stripes” of different color atop their heads – yes, I was that naïve) I marched to the drug superstore and perused the aisles for just the right color. Which, for those of you who look at the thumbnail sized swatches of color on a box of dye know, is virtually impossible. But I had no intention of getting hooked on a $125 a month habit with a colorist. I could do it myself, I stubbornly insisted. Which I have, for over fifteen years. I found an ammonia-free dark brown Garnier shade and that’s what I’ve worn for years. When I couldn’t find the exact same product during my year in England, I first panicked, then considered going teal (until I realized that’d require bleaching out all my natural color), and finally found a John Freida substitute that matched closely enough.
Pre-Covid, the squiggly colorless wisps would show themselves around my brow line and roots monthly, on a background of darker but duller brown like doodles on a matte chalkboard. I’d do touchup every thirty days or so. If, as in a 60s romcom, someone who I didn’t want to date called, I could comfortably say, “Oh, thank you, but I can’t tonight, I’m doing my hair.” The whole process takes about an hour. It’s messy, and even without the ammonia, the chemical odor just reeks of death to me. I leave the bathroom exhaust fan on before and after to exorcise the synthetic scent. I toss the box, bottles, shower cap, and gloves in the big trash can in the garage to further expel the offending stench.
But when I remove the superabsorbent blue towel that I wrap tightly around my wet hair to prevent the pigment from leaching onto the sofa, I feel renewed: younger, having banished the telltale sign of aging from my temples. I can pretend I’m not 61 – or at least that my hair isn’t 61. But like everything so many things during this pandemic, I’ve let it slip. I wear fleece lined leggings that stretch to accommodate my coronabelly. I don’t even think my jeans would fit. My bras will last a very long time because they have sat, virtually untouched for a year, while I wear comfy sports bras, or nothing. My boobs will probably rebel when I start harnessing them up again to present myself to civilization. I will likely have to throw away most of my make up soon because, it, like the lingerie, has languished, lonely, in the drawer.
“You should just let it go grey,” says my younger son. Often. I tell him that I’ve thought about it, but that I don’t have that stunning silver mane that so many older women proudly sport. I’m probably 40% grey, so it’s more a very weak salt sprinkling in a bowl of pepper than a snow white shock. “So what?” he asks. “So what?”, indeed.
“So what?” may sound like a flippant question, but it’s one that my college roommate, Randy, and I ask each other in our moments of despair. Often that seemingly insouciant inquiry makes our deepest concerns seem as trivial as the question. “So what?”, indeed.
The whole quandary makes me question why we groom ourselves; particularly to what extent it’s for ourselves, and to what extent for others. One evening at dinner with my family (including my boys, my ex, and his wife) I confessed that one of the reasons I’ve dyed my hair for so long is that somewhere in my subconscious, I believed it would likely make me more attractive to suitors. What man wants a half-assedly grey girl? But nearly fifteen years of suitor-less singlehood have debunked that myth. And, as the same sage son said, “if a guy doesn’t want you because you have grey hair, fuck him.” Or, actually, don’t. Out of the mouths of babes.
When I was in high school, my nightmare did not find me unprepared for a test or showing up to school pant-less. Instead, my bad dream had me sitting in the cafeteria realizing I’d forgotten to wear mascara. Clearly at that age, the significance of my appearance haunted my dreams. But as I mull this thought experiment about grooming now, from the vantage point of 61 and not 16, I have reached the following conclusion: there is in this, like in everything, balance. I polish my nails, not to because I want to impress my friends and colleagues, but because they don’t chip and flake when they are covered, and because the ritual and the result make me feel good. I like picking colors, imagining how they will look on the fingernails, which grow longer in the warmer months and stay stubby in the cold. I like taking off the old, faded polish and meditatively applying coats to the new, sleek-hued surface. My maternal grandmother always polished her long nails with iridescent, pearly whites and pinks, and I feel I’m channeling her when I care for my own.
When I crawl out from the layers of fleece and start venturing outside again, I will resume matching my copious scarfs with my outfits, not because I think it will impress people, but because it makes me feel more composed and confident. I “put on” eyebrows (something my mother would not leave the house without – I remember the stubby red Maybelline eyebrow pencil in her fine fingers) not for fear of scaring Zoom-mates, but because I feel less depressed when I don’t look like a living corpse.
So the Garnier Olia 4.0 is going in the trash with the plastic gloves and black rat-tailed application brushes, and I will join the ranks of so many women I know who have discovered that they need not spend so much time and money primping during pandemic – and who may never go back to their old ways. Let the coarse corkscrews of grey emerge, telling everyone exactly how old I am and what I really look like. Only friends and suitors who embrace me, greys and all, matter.
I am SO an the same page with you, Diane! Wonderful piece ❤️✌🏼❤️