If anyone is ready to go grey, if anyone is able to watch the glimmers of light appear throughout her hair and celebrate the shift, I thought it would be me. I really did. I’ve been preparing, anticipating, and strategizing for decades. I’m pro-aging, I’m a Vermonter surrounded by bad-ass earth mommas in silver and white, I’m the person who began saying “I’m pretty much 50” soon after her 45th birthday. I like the way “fifty” sounds, and I announce it with pride. While our culture stridently fights all signs, I say bring it on — when everyone zigs, I zag, and that means walking confidently and proudly into age.
So, naturally, I planned to go grey with ease. But there’s been a snag.
Instead of luminous, silvery strands framing my face, I got limp hay the color of mouse turds. My deep chestnut hair, which used to light up with copper bolts in the sunshine, has turned to dirty dishwater. My hair hasn’t turned grey, or white, or pewter, it’s been drained of color. Remember those cotton string mops that you used to glimpse in the closets of your elementary school, or the one you used to push in your first job at the ice cream shop? That’s what’s we are talking about, shades of old, used mop.
And I’ve had to admit that I’m not ready for this. I find this development completely unacceptable. Not cool. This light-sucking hue does terrible things to a face. A face that is morphing and changing in small subtle ways that are all adding up to “old” — the lines, the spots, the thinning, the sagging, it’s all happening just as it should, and there is no stopping it, but I don’t exactly want to put an accelerant on it.
Maybe it’s the “undertones” in the skin that are the real kicker for me — I’ve got yellows and pinks, and lots of freckles and age spots from my Floridian childhood. My skin turned brown over long summers in the swimming pool, no such thing as sunscreen in the 1970’s, and Panama Jack was standing tall as an oily sentry beside the beach chairs in the 80’s. I have the green eyes and thin mottled skin that holds onto the damage done by burns and deep browns only to bloom into a variety of spots in later decades, the types of spots that keep the dermatologist employed. Maybe if I had smooth olive skin, or rich brown skin, anything but spotted pink — maybe then shades of limp dust rag would actually harmonize and flow and work the grey maned magic that I’ve admired on others.
But what I’ve got is a goddam mess. And when I let it grow out, when the $6 box of dye begins to wash out and fade across my entire crown, I try to let it be. I’ve done this enough times to know what happens. My mood takes a little downturn. I don’t smile in the mirror. All my clothes look frumpy. I slouch more. I don’t flirt with strangers. I don’t feel sexy. I kinda want to hide, like a toad. And I realize I’m already hidden — grey hair is a cloak of invisibility, surrounding the middle-aged and older women and ushering her aside for the brighter, bolder ones.
To my utter fascination, and relief, the moment the new box of dye sets in, the whole mood lifts. I look in the mirror and think There you are! My clothes fit again, I smile at the cute one across the room, everything is as it should be. I did not expect this, not at all. As much as I thought the cultural prejudices were purged from my being, it’s evident they are still at play and more powerful than I thought. But mostly, it’s that I look like shit with a crown of streaked battleship grey. Keeping a darker, colorful frame around my face feels better because I look better. There’s little to be done about the wrinkles and the spots and the thinning of eyelashes and so much more — but the hair is the one thing I can do that has an instant effect. For 10 minutes and $6, I can feel like me again.
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An excerpt from Five By Fifty