I'm not ready to embrace my grays

Another year around the sun, and another year of hair dye. I have no idea what being in my fifties is supposed to look like.

Today’s newsletter happens to coincide with my birthday. It’s not a milestone birthday, so the day just crept up without fanfare or even much thought on my part. I don’t have anything planned for the day either, but for some reason I felt like I needed to acknowledge it here. Maybe because it feels a little like having a birthday at the office?

Do you know what I’m talking about? That sheepish feeling of walking around the office on your birthday knowing that this day is different from all the other days that are not your birthday, but feeling reluctant to announce it to anyone. So you don’t say anything because interjecting any conversation at work with declarations of “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, where are my balloons and cake?” is just all kinds of awkward because you’re not seven years old.

Anyway.

I turn 54 today which means I am now moving into my mid-fifties.

Or am I?

I ask ChatGPT.

Huh, ok. So even though I don’t quite understand the logic of this math, according to some AI program I have one more year before I am in my “mid-fifties.”

Unsatisfied with this answer I turn to Google. Apparently, other people are wondering this too.

Basically no one knows what is considered old anymore. Cool. Despite all my various ailments these days, I’m actually fine with aging and have not thought seriously about interventions like botox or laser treatments and what have you.

Except there’s one thing:

Why do I still have a hard time embracing my gray hair?

Not graying gracefully

Over the past few years, I’ve seen social media posts from women who have ditched the hair dye and have chosen to embrace their grays. I’ve read articles of women praising other women for breaking conventional beauty standards by going gray and high-fiving each other for sticking it to the anti-aging establishment that silences and de-values us as we age.

And the women are beautiful. They’re smiling. Their hair is silver, shiny, and healthy. They’re owning their age and bucking social norms while rewriting the narrative of what it means to feel empowered as we get older. The movement even has hashtags, #silversisters and #ditchthedye on IG and TikTok, and there are support groups on Facebook to get you through that awkward in-between stage which, truth be told, I’m really curious about because the logistics of how to go gray really baffles me (do you spend a year with a a head full of ombre-colored hair or is the line of demarcation more distinct than that?).

All this to say, I must confess that I feel a bit ashamed that I go through this tedious ritual of slathering chemicals on my head every five weeks (which really should be three) to cover my grays. I did it yesterday, in fact, and breathed a sigh of relief because I felt more like myself again.

When the first few gray strays of my early thirties multiplied into dozens of strands in my mid-thirties, I ran straight to the local drug store and purchased a box of hair dye. I wasn’t picky or brand-loyal—Revlon, L’Oreal, Garnier—it didn’t matter. I grabbed whatever box of ash brown was on sale.

And now, I get an auto subscription delivery from Amazon for two boxes of L’Oreal every eight weeks. Not only do I continue to dump chemicals on my head, I’m also giving Jeff Bezos my hard-earned money and emitting more carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Oh, the vanity and convenience!

It all makes me question if I’ve really accepted aging because clearly I’m not one of those women who are living their authentic, gray-haired selves. On the contrary, I’ve been trying to cheat nature for twenty one years.

That’s how long I’ve been dying my hair to cover the grays—thirty seven if we’re counting just-for-fun hair coloring in my youth. Which means I’ve been dying my hair for well over half my life and don’t even know what my natural hair color was and probably never will because I’m 75% gray (or more??) at this point.

What are we supposed to look like in our fifties?

I often get told that I don’t look my age. I know it’s meant to be a compliment, but I never know how to respond.

“Thanks!” (I guess?)

When I get asked what my “secret” is, my canned response is “good lighting, good angles, and hair dye.”

What is a woman in her 50s supposed to look like anyway? We’re so youth-focused that we’re conditioned to think that looking our age is something to be camouflaged, something to be fixed. All of the beauty products marketed to us make promises of anti-aging miracles that erase lines that we’ve earned because aging isn’t desirable on a woman. The double standards between men and women are ingrained into societal norms.

And yet, this paradox of being rendered socially invisible while also being the object of negative scrutiny when our faces show the wear of age is a complex thing to navigate, socially and personally. And so, we consume all the anti-aging products in an attempt to delay the inevitable and end up with a bathroom vanity of hope and promises bottled up in countless jars of elixirs, serums, and creams (and I LOVE them all!).

While aging is undoubtedly a privilege, some of us are just stumbling along the way toward a gradual acceptance. We all have a line of vanity that we draw for ourselves somewhere. Mine just happens to be gray hair.

I may have no problem admitting that I now pass the Apple remote to my kid because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to pull up a YouTube video on our TV, but please don’t take my box of $10.99 L’Oreal magic away. I’m not ready.

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This week's drawing

Ok, I didn’t make this drawing recently, but it was so relevant to this week’s newsletter that I’m sharing it. IS THIS CHEATING??

To repent, here are two more hair drawings that I can’t remember if I shared or not before.

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Related reading

Aging is a privilege, but I don't have to like it

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Links I found interesting this week

• Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids. (NY Times)
  “…subcultures, even the vapid ones, used to tie their participants to people and places. Getting into a scene could be work; it required figuring out whom to talk to, or where to go, and maybe hanging awkwardly around a record store or nightclub or street corner until you got scooped up by whatever was happening.”
  Social media, algorithms, and the internet may have destroyed subcultures. The loss of “third places” has certainly exasperated this. Fascinating read as I never really thought about this until now.

• The May Issue of Jennifer Magazine
  Jen Cooper is one of those internet-to-real-life friends that I’ve known since our kids were toddlers. A few years ago, she started a magazine called Jennifer which I’ve always thought was such a clever name for a magazine for Gen X midlife women.

• Why Is Everything So Ugly? (n+1 mag)

  The mallification of our cities have resulted in the bland sameness of architecture, industrial design, branding, and just about everything else.