Monday, September 26, 2011

On going grey...

I've made a conscious decision to let my hair go grey. Or maybe it's just laziness. I can't be bothered with the whole time-suck of getting it dyed and then, from now until the END OF TIME, getting my roots touched up. Until I am a wizened little octogenarian with improbably red hair that goes EXTREMELY well with my liver spots and is fooling NOBODY...

Anyhow...

You can tell somewhat where the creeping greyness is at in that process from this photo--although it's not quite as noticeable as in some OTHER photos where I much more closely resemble Cruella DeVil. Or Pepe LePew.

If you squint your eyes a lot, the streaks at the front of my hair ALMOST look like they're blonde. But no, they're actually grey/white. I have hopes of someday having the Bonnie Raitt/Joe Perry slash of white in my hair (and the associated coolness), but with my luck, I will end up looking like a very aged mouse instead.

Yes, I HAVE DYED MY HAIR IN THE PAST. But the first time, I was 14 and succumbing to peer pressure. The second time I was in my early twenties and it was the 80s, and, while I have no excuses really for a bleached-blond top and dark sides, I would say that there were no excuses for a LOT of very public fashion experiments in the 80s.

Fingerless lace gloves.
Wham, the band
Boy George
Gaultier's pointy bra thingy that Madonna wore in concert
Giant linebacker shoulderpads...

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. My little hair-dying experiment was mild compared to some of THAT.

And the third time I went through dying my hair, I was in my thirties and had had the same style for YEARS and I felt sorry for my stylist, who was dying of boredom after about the tenth visit where I had her do the same trim on my plain brown hair. So, at her suggestion, I had her dye blond streaks just in the FRONT of my hair.

I ended up looking kind of like Rogue from the X-Men, if Rogue was a thirty-something policy analyst. As policy analyst hairstyles go, it was pretty edgy, but STILL...you had to keep going in and touching up the roots. Plus there were none of the Rogue-associated powers that I would have put to good use, like sucking the life force out of whatever idiotic politician I was working with at the time who was convinced that "No Child Left Behind" as written was a GOOD THING.

Rats.

So I let that grow out.

So I've been thinking about this recently, mainly because Jon and I went to a wedding and he had me help him put some "Touch of Grey" haircolor in his beard.

Just to be clear, I don't usually spend time thinking about my hair.

AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

But every once in awhile, society comes in and reminds me that, according to the media, I am just advertising my decrepitude by not going the dye route.

Like that ad for the same "Touch of Grey" haircolor--where you leave JUST a BIT of grey in. All these hunky forty-something guys with just a little bit of grey in their hair--the "Doctor Strange" amount of grey at the temples, say--cavort around doing active things! They're on the beach, with their surfboards, displaying their improbably buff bodies, then they're hiking a fourteener and then they're cracking open some cold brews with their pals. And their women--a whole bunch of equally buff, active chicks who like to apparently WATCH these guys surf and climb fourteeners and then drink beer with them. Or at least FETCH the beer.

And NONE OF THE WOMEN HAVE A SPECK OF GREY IN THEIR HAIR.

Just saying. Not sure if the women with all those partying dudes are supposed to be TROPHY WIVES or just THE MEN'S DAUGHTERS...or if they're forty-something women who dye their hair ALL THE WAY, the way maybe I should be doing.

And I caught a HILARIOUS Simpsons episode the other night, where Marge stops dying her hair. After a series of comments that I have often received ("Thank you for your bravery!") and others that I think might have been the subtext of comments I've received ("I hope I look as good as you when I give up!"), the clincher is given by Ralph Wiggum, who says,

"Grandma had hair like that when she went to sleep in her forever box!"

I could NOT stop laughing at that! And, even though Marge caved in and went back to the blue dye, this is what I have to say:

Helen Mirren
Richard Gere
Emmylou Harris
David Byrne
Jamie Lee Curtis
GEORGE CLOONEY...

NEED I SAY MORE?

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