Anne Kreamer wrote a book about going grey and described the experience like this:
“I went to a dinner party full of impressive people—activists, scientists, playwrights. I felt embarrassed that all I was working on was a piece about my hair. But people responded to it. And I realized, going grey is a serious issue! It is emotionally charged. It’s worth talking about.”[1]
So that’s what I’m doing today: talking about it.
I got my first white hair at age 18. My roommate said that in her country, Turkey, a single white hair is considered good luck. I plucked it.
I kept plucking whenever new ones sprang up. Which was fine, until they started coming in further along my part.
Then it felt like the decision to go grey was made for me. I didn’t want a bald patch or constant salon visits, and dying it myself looks horrible. So I did nothing, and the strands of grey became a streak.
My friend Karen said it looked cool, which was nice, but I still felt ambivalent.
And then I read Return to Your Natural Colors by Christine Scaman.
My color palette is true summer: entirely cool, slightly soft, and medium-deep. These are the colors that look best against my skin; the ones in which I come alive.
As you can see, my worst colors are “earthy warm tones with yellow undertones.”
Christine Scaman explains that since hair dye is pretty much always warm—it’s just the nature of the chemicals used to dye hair—dyed hair is hard to get right on “cool season” people. (Professional colorists can get it right, but it’s expensive and time-consuming.)
Kreamer said she decided to go grey after seeing a photo of herself with her dye job looking like “a darkly shellacked helmet of hair.”[4]
This is consistent with Scaman’s explanation.
“Having been blessed with cool silvery lady of the lake skin, why would you compromise it with copper hair? Next to youthful skin, silver hair is modern and fresh. Let the silver come in. It may be the first time you’ve ever had natural highlights.”
It was a relief to learn that silver is actually meant for me. And to know that “Your natural hair color is always just right for you.”
Plus, silver hair is trendy.
Not that I care much about trends, but I’m inspired by the sight of other women embracing their hair.
Plus, I’ve taken a break from the people in my life who kept commenting on it 😛
Before, it felt like I was forced to go grey. Now, I’ve chosen it.
My grey hair represents my decision to accept myself as I am, to honor my natural beauty, and to let my radiance shine—and I love it.
As for aging… I’m at peace with it. (So far.) To be clear, my hair’s not all gray yet; just two streaks down the front. But I plan to become an old woman with long white hair that flows in the breeze, one day.
And I’m still young!
I dance in the shower[6] and sing Sinatra’s words to my reflection:
And even when I’m old and gray
I’m going to feel the way I do today
‘Cause you, you make me feel so young
Notes
[1] Paraphrased from Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters.
Her original wording seemed too long to quote at the start of my post, but I’ve pasted it below, because I love this passage.
To my horror, the host asked each of us to share with the group what we were most passionate about at the moment. I panicked as the others began to speak—thank God I was on the far side of the table from where they started! The first to go was Jacqueline Novogratz, the chief executive of the Acumen Fund, a global organization whose goal is to solve the problems of poverty. Jacqueline was passionate and articulate about a project that Acumen had developed to bring clean water to villages in Africa and India. Next up was Noah Feldman, the codirector of New York University’s Center on Law and Security. I was familiar with Feldman’s book “After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy,” and was thrilled to have the chance to listen to an insider talk about the situation in Iraq. My husband, damn him, was able to talk about the social and cultural revolutions of 1848 (central to the novel he was writing). Majora Carter, the urban activist and a 2005 MacArthur “genius” grant winner, described the work that her organization, Sustainable South Bronx, had initiated to bring sustainable development to the inner city. Her enthusiasm and vision were dazzling. Brian Greene of Columbia University, the leading string-theory theorist, riveted me with his discussion about the frontier of physics. Another MacArthur genius, the actress, playwright, and first Ford Foundation artist-in-residence Anna Deavere Smith, practically moved me to tears describing her work on a new one-woman play about death that she’d been researching. And so on. I had the great good fortune to be included at a gathering that could easily have been an answer to the question “If you could invite anybody in the world to a dinner party, who would it be?”
And then, oh, God, it was my turn. I, the only nobody at the table, with my weird haircut, the guest who’d been acting sort of furtive, was terrified that my silly, self-centered explorations of aging and vanity would seem deeply unimportant, laughable. I mean, really. I wasn’t solving international poverty or changing the way we see the world.
I had no choice but to speak, and I’m pretty shaky at public speaking under the best of circumstances, so you can imagine my fear to be following such accomplished people. I took the plunge and began to describe my “amateur social science” experiment with going gray. And amazingly, blessedly, almost everyone engaged in the topic. Maybe they were all simply too gracious not to appear interested. But after dinner three people approached me to talk further about the subject with genuine enthusiasm.
Several revelations emerged from that experience. First, my eccentric cut proved that no one really cares a whit about what anyone else’s hair looks like. Second, and only somewhat contradictorily, even the most accomplished, serious people on the planet worry about aging and the way they look. And last, there are a lot of brilliant people out there who are tangibly making the world better. I went home inspired.
See annekreamer.com/going-gray.
[2] Image and color analysis by Rachel of Truth is Beauty. “True, Soft, or Light Summer? Kristen Stewart and Emily Blunt,” truth-is-beauty.com/blog/true-soft-or-light-summer-kristen-stewart-and-emily-blunt.
[3] Cardigan Empire, “Best & Worst Colors for Summer, Seasonal Color Analysis.” Cardiganempire.com/2017/02/best-worst-colors-for-summer-seasonal-color-analysis.html.
Two caveats:
- Don’t trust every “celebrity color type” you see online. Kate Middleton is a soft summer, not a true summer. And I’m not sure about Maggie Gyllenhal’s season, but true summer isn’t it.
- Ignore the part about skin/hair/eye color. It’s over-generalized. For example, my eyes are hazel (brown, not blue-grey-green) and my hair gleams red in the sun, but I’m still a true summer. Anyone with any skin/hair/eye color can be any color season; it just depends on which colors harmonize with your skin.
[4] “On The Virtues Of Going Gray: A Q&A With Author Anne Kreamer,” huffpost.com/entry/on-the-virtues-of-going-g_n_69113.
[5] Lancelot Speed’s illustration for James Thomas Knowles’ The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights (1912). From wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_the_Lake.
[6] Carefully, so as not to slip and drown in the bathwater. Which would make my thoughts on aging irrelevant.
[7] “7 Gorgeous Gray Hair Makeovers,” oprah.com/style/7-gorgeous-gray-hair-makeovers/all.
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