Silver Belle: The Journey to Loving My Gray

When I was nearly fourteen, the summer between eighth and ninth grades, my sister, Lindsey*, came home for a visit.  It was 1967. She had just graduated college and was about to start her first teaching position in the fall.  Late one afternoon, she surreptitiously pulled a box of Clairol (Does she or doesn't she?) pale blonde hair dye out of her suitcase. She had wanted to frost her hair with it, she told me. Frosted hair was big, big, BIG in the late sixties.  But Lindsey was too chicken to do it.  "Let's put this on your hair." she said.  I was nervous, to say the least! Our mother, Betsy*, was prone to fits of fury over such things as indulgences to vanity. I had learned to keep such proclivities a big secret from her (see 'The Makeup Box' below) to avoid setting her off on a rampage. But if my sister put it on my hair, I wouldn't get the full brunt of my mother's wrath; we'd share it. You know how kids think:  "It was her idea, not mine!" But I wanted to be blonde so badly, I was willing to risk the inevitable explosion of Betsy.

So in our old, outdated 50s bathroom, Lindsey set to work, reading the instructions, pulling on the plastic gloves, mixing the color and slathering it on my head.  I'm not sure what possessed either one of us to go through with this.  Neither of us had a clue what was about to happen. Coloring hair was not anything in our experience and we had not the first idea what happened to hair during the coloring process.  Remember, it was blonde hair color?  Well, my sister and I are both deep brunettes. In our naiveté, we thought I'd get magically transformed into a beachy blonde.  Yes, you guessed it... 

After the twenty minutes or so waiting period dictated by the instructions, my sister stuck my head under the faucet and proceeded to wash out the hair color, rinse, rinse, rinse.  With my head in the sink, I watched the dye swirling down the drain and thought, 'That's a funny color for a blonde dye'--told you I was clueless. Soon the water ran clear and she draped a towel over my head.  I stood up, squeezing my hair with the towel and then we unveiled in front of the medicine cabinet mirror.  Oh... OH!  No blonde. My hair was red! RED!! Oh, no. Mom was gonna kill us. Kill us both dead! 

Miraculously, Mom did not kill either of us.  After her initial thunderstruck state, she actually smiled.  In fact, she rather liked it!  I remember staring at her in wonder. Should we check for pods?** It had turned out a nice auburn shade, not bright red. For reasons we'll never know, she really took quite a fancy to it.  Thus began my hair coloring path through life.   

I kept my hair a subtle auburn-y brown until I was in my late twenties. I'd begun to tire of it and decided to try to achieve my natural brunette color. Wasn't really sure I could remember what it was! But Medium Ash Brown became my preferred shade and Clairol Nice 'n Easy was my preferred brand.  Occasionally, I'd stray to L'Oreal for fun, but the Clairol color lasted longer. 

Around the age of 27, the first gray hair appeared out of nowhere and grew right out of the top of my head, all by its little lonesome. Normally, since I colored my hair so closely to my natural color, I'd never noticed till I let my hair go for a while when my first baby was born. The first impulse was to jerk it out, but remembered hearing that if you pulled a gray hair out, two would grow in its place. Could that really happen? Forget that!  I ran out to Walmart, grabbed my Medium Ash Brown, ran home and made sure that lone gray hair got the first dose of color. That puppy never saw the light of day again. For a while, anyway. Two more decades went by...

In my mid-forties, color maintenance became a chore.  That hermit gray hair suddenly had sisters, brothers and cousins crowding into the part of my 'do. By late forties, my roots were thickly speckled with gray.  The hair color faded out of the gray very quickly, usually in just a couple of weeks.  Didn't want to be bothered with root touch-ups. Coloring hair became something I dreaded.  The gray just would not hold the color. Something in my gut told me I should just stop. Finally, after much internal debate, I did.  My hair was short anyway; I knew it would only take about three cuts to get all the colored hair gone. From the time I decided to stop coloring to when my hair was all natural took only about 3 months.  

While the color grew out and got trimmed away and those gray roots insidiously crept down the sides of my head, I'd stare at my hair every morning as I got ready for work. All that gray washed out my coloring and made me look so much older, I thought. It wasn't pretty silver or white hair; it was an ugly salt and pepper. Iron-colored. DRAB.  Yechhh! As a matter of fact, it was just like Mom's. Though I didn't hate her hair, I certainly hated mine.

"To heck with this!" I told myself, and picked up a couple boxes of Clairol the next time I was at the store.  And hair coloring commenced once again.  It lasted all of six months.  It was the biggest pain in my neck. I hated coloring my hair and yet, I hated the gray. 'Why didn't you just go have it done at the salon?' some of you may be asking.  The short answer is because I'm a cheapskate. I refuse to pay someone 5 times what it costs to do it at home!  I told myself, "Embrace it! Embrace it!" Once again, I stopped coloring my hair, let the natural hair grow in, and every day, in the mirror, I looked at my sad face topped with that sad, dull hair.

One morning, while rummaging around under the bathroom sink, looking at all the various hair products stockpiled there, I came across a tube of something a hairdresser had used it on me once and subsequently sold to me a couple of years earlier. (Yes, I tend to hold on to things longer than I should.) Truthfully, I'd purchased it based solely on the scent. But I'd never used it. The label claimed:

Rich creme formula defines texture and seals in moisture on medium to coarse hair. Apply to dry hair to create definition. Add brilliant shine with help from certified organic aloe and other plant humectants. 

Defines texture

Seals in moisture

Adds shine

"Oh, why not?" I asked myself and put a dime-sized amount in the palm of my hand and vigorously rubbed the product through my freshly blow-dried hair.  The texture was kind of strange: sticky and vaguely waxy.  I brushed my hair into place.  Oh! Myyyyy.  


My dull, drab, dry-looking hair had instantly transformed into a thick, shiny cap atop my head, rich with glistening wave and texture...and with sparks of bright silver winking and blinking in the light. Gone was the dull. Gone was the drab. It was magic! Off to work I went, with a satisfied smile on my face. That was the beginning of when I began to love my gray hair. Not even when I was young, with a head full of long, thick, wavy, shiny hair did I get compliments on it like I got after using my 'magic potion'.  By the way, that 'magic potion' is Aveda Brilliant Universal Styling Creme.  A tube of it lasts me a year and I will never, ever be without it.  I even wrote to the company and begged them to never discontinue it!

One of the oddest (and best) comments I get from time to time is, "Is that your natural hair color?"  "Yes," I say, smiling.  They say something along the lines of "Wow, it looks like you frosted it on purpose. It's gorgeous!"

Frosted!  I recall my sister's young desire for exotic frosted hair in 1967. Imagine that!
   
Till next time,

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge."  Ivana Trump

**an archaic reference to 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', a 1956 film, starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter

*Names changed to protect the innocent.