Gray Hair: It’s Your Choice

Among the inevitabilities of aging is the appearance of gray in your hair. Should you fight it or let your gray hair shine? Seniors Guide writer Terri L. Jones tells us of her choice.

Like many women during the pandemic, I let my hair color grow out. Although I did my own dye jobs at home, and could have easily picked up a box of L’Oréal #8 1/2 blonde at the store, it seemed like a good time to embrace my natural color since I wouldn’t be seeing anyone except my husband for a while.

But what was my natural color these days anyway? In other words, how much gray was hiding under that champagne blonde dye? I admittedly approached the process with trepidation but a little bit of excitement too!

Why does hair turn gray?

First of all, hair doesn’t “turn” gray. Once a hair follicle produces a strand of hair of a certain color, the hair remains that color for as long as it remains in your scalp (typically two to seven years). But when that strand finally falls out, it’s the new hair that replaces it that may grow in gray or white.

The new hair may lack color because the melanocytes , or the cells that produce pigment in the hair follicle, decrease in number and slow down their production of melanin. While factors like illness, sun exposure, or genetics can cause this change, aging is the main reason your hair loses its color.

The root of the gray hair problem

While both men and women go gray due to aging, there’s a huge double standard about what their pigment-less coifs say about them. Men with gray or silver locks are often viewed as distinguished, powerful, and even sexy (think Sean Connery and George Clooney), but gray hair on women typically hasn’t been perceived positively. Society has made women feel as though their first gray hairs were the beginning of the end of their attractiveness and sex appeal, and many have run to the salon to try to prolong their vitality.

However, over the past several years, there seems to be a sea change when it comes to women and gray hair. Not only are celebrities like Jamie-Lee Curtis, Jane Fonda, and Sarah Jessica-Parker going natural but young women, who haven’t found a single gray hair on their heads yet, are choosing to color their hair a wide range of grays and silvers, including a pearlescent shade called oyster gray . Gray and silver hair is no longer just an uninvited and unwelcome sign of aging; it’s now a color choice for women of all ages.

Why go gray?

When I stopped coloring my hair, I eliminated a huge amount of stress from my life. No longer was I constantly checking my roots or how brassy my blonde had become and planning my next messy ordeal in the bathroom (our house still has a tiny bit of indelible hair dye on a floor tile).

There’s also the health benefit for your hair as well as potentially for your overall health (there’s a debate over whether semi-permanent and permanent hair dyes may actually cause cancer ).

But most importantly, going gray is about seeing your silvery crown as a badge of maturity and wisdom and accepting yourself for who you are at this stage in your life.

More reasons to embrace your gray hair

Making the transition

While hair doesn’t naturally turn gray mid-strand, gray hair that’s been colored may appear to. As your roots grow in, you’ll get the proverbial “skunk stripe,” particularly if your dyed hair is dark.

If you don’t have a pandemic or other opportunity to be out of the public eye for a while, here are some strategies to ease the difficult transition of growing in your gray:

1. Add highlights or lowlights to help blend your colored hair with the gray that’s growing in.
2. Dye all your hair gray and as old hair grows out and new hair grows in, these natural grays won’t be noticeable.
3. Start from scratch and strip your hair of all dyes to instantly reveal the grays (this does not work on lightened hair).

Salt and cinnamon

It’s been almost four years now since I stopped putting chemicals on my head, and at 63, my hair is a light mousy brown threaded with gray. Kind of a salt and cinnamon! My aunt, who at 88 has colored her hair platinum blonde her entire adult life, reminds me every time I see her how much better I would look if I’d just dye my hair blonde again. She’s even bought me hair color!

Personally, I’m fine with my new look. In fact, in certain lights, I think the strands of silver look like sparkly tinsel on a Christmas tree. However, the best compliment on my salt and cinnamon tresses was when a Gen Z woman who was sitting nearby at a bar one night came over and told me how much she loved my color. In other words, she’d probably be willing to pay for it.

Gray is no longer your grandmother’s color. It has the potential to become the new edgy, avant garde and fashionable color. But for me, it’s simply the color I was meant to have … and it’s growing on me!

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