Dye shy

I am two days away from my next haircut. It is my first haircut in four months and the longest I have gone in 20 years without dyeing my hair to disguise the greying roots.  I think I am now ready to give up the dye.

I was in my early 20s when I noticed my first grey hair. It stood out against my then glossy brown locks like a nun at an X Factor audition. 20 years on, the greying ‘nuns’ on my head outnumber the scantily clad wannabes by about 200 to 1, with the wannabees hidden away at the back of my head, as invisible as many X Factor contestants very quickly become. I have further masked traces of the original dark brown hair by dyeing it all blonde.

It would never have occurred to me that I would go blonde. Having such dark brown hair, the roots would start showing through as I was leaving the hair salon. In 2006 my hair turned blonde after being exposed to an Australian summer.  I was on one of my “career breaks”, which is how I like to think of my frequent bouts of dropping out, I’m not so sure I have a career to take a break from, but calling it that makes it sound like a carefully chosen path, rather than just a need to be free. After a couple of months my hair had lightened so much in the sun that the roots hardly showed. Since then I have dyed it with increasing frequency, the grey battling against the peroxide for its rightful place on my ageing scalp.

I missed my last hair appointment due to illness. I now veer between desperately wanting to get the greying roots covered up and objecting to feeling that I have to. Why do I give in so easily to peer pressure to pretend to be young? It doesn’t change who I am,  it doesn't change my actual age and I doubt it will prolong my life. We have long got used to the idea that men’s looks can be enhanced with age, can’t we be as generous to women? Jamie Lee Curtis looks fantastic, as do Helen Mirren, Glenn Close and Emmy Lou Harris, to name just a few. It isn’t about the colour of your hair, it is about self-confidence.

Several female relatives and friends have suggested that if I have all the colour cut out of my hair and let it be grey, I will ‘look like a lesbian’ because lesbians, as we all know, all look exactly the same and none of them would ever dye their hair.  When I was much younger and had longer, curlier dark brown hair I was frequently chatted up by women.  A friend said she thought that it was because I was quite confident and never referred to myself in terms of a man, I wasn't someone's wife or girlfriend, I was just me.  People thinking I was gay then didn't bother me and it doesn't bother me now, but I do have an issue with society pressuring people to 'look young' particularly if it tied with having to 'look straight'.  Women have struggled for centuries for equality, why are we putting this much pressure on ourselves? We have voting rights, equal pay, access to education, we can choose life partners, we can choose to be alone without the stigma formerly attached to 'old maids'.  Women, in the western world at least, are are no longer sold and traded like goods and chattels, so why in 2015 are we still buying into some Barbie doll influenced stereotype of how women should look? Let’s not kid ourselves that it is only men holding women back, we do a pretty good job ourselves.

I don’t know why others mind so much about me not dyeing my hair. Two years ago, whilst unemployed, I seriously considered removing all my hair and seeing how it grew back.  A male friend suggested I was having a mid-life crisis.  He is seven years younger than me and regularly shaves his head - is having a mid-life crisis?  My mother leads the pack of detractors. She is 78 and still dyes her hair, because “I don’t want to look old”. My cousin warned me that genetically our hair does not grey well, but how would we know? All the women in our family dye until they die. I am really curious to see what colour and condition my own hair will be in. I also think that we need to be more confident in how we really are, by which I mean I need to be more confident and not locked into a never-ending cycle of disguise due to the pressure of both my own overly judgemental stance and the opinions of others. Even whilst I write this, I still feel very nervous about taking this step, but keep telling myself and others that if it 'doesn't work', i.e. if it is really ageing, I will go straight back on the bottle. I want to go grey, but I’m not completely giving up the peroxide safety parachute.