Screw the Gray Hair

It’s been a year since I wrote a story for my website about embracing my gray hair. Hey, I figured, if Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis can proudly display their gray hair, then I could too.

A series of illnesses and medications had left this bleach blonde babe as bald as I could get without actually shaving my head. For over a year, I had worn a blonde wig, removing it every night, becoming increasingly depressed as I watched the new growth of — gasp — gray hair. What the Hell did I expect as I had recently entered my 7th decade?

After 60 years of dyes and permanents, the hair that had fallen out was dry, brittle, dull, lifeless, and so thin you could see my scalp. But I noticed something odd about the new hair. It was thick, strong, shiny, a beautiful, silver-gray. I had never remembered having such shiny, healthy-looking hair.

Hm, I wondered. Maybe it has something to do with it being all-natural, as in no dyes and no permanent wave chemicals to pull the vibrancy out of it. So I decided to leave it the new, bright, beautiful silver-gray.

I tried this new all-natural look for almost a year. There was one little problem with it. My hair is as straight as the proverbial stick. To make it curl, I need a curling iron as hot as a campfire flame that can toast marshmallows. I curl it, brush it back, and the style is stunning. It lasts as long as it takes me to unplug the curling iron. Then pfffft. Flat and straight.

There is nothing wrong with straight hair…………on the right person. I’m not that person. My face looks like crap when framed in straight hair. I don’t know why. It just does. And glasses. Straight hair falling around my glasses makes it worse.

I had no choice. I had to get a perm. Which I did, and the result is this profile picture. Pretty damn good for an old lady, in my opinion. I loved my new curls.

A few weeks later, I found myself questioning why there was so much hair in my bathroom sink. Why was there so much hair on my shoulders? And why was my hair getting so thin on top? Nothing gets by this smart cookie. I surmised that the permanent chemicals had done their damage again. I was molting at a very fast clip (Maybe the pun is intended).

Anyway, now not only is my hair thin and shedding again but the vibrant silver/gray is gone, replaced by dull, thin, old lady gray.

To make matters worse, I have been staying with my sister in Chicago this year(for a variety of health and personal reasons — another story for another time). I left sunny Florida to spend a year in an environment so cold that I don’t go out of the house, so not only is my hair gray, my face matches it.

I looked in the mirror today at a dull, gray face, topped with duller, grayer hair, and decided the gray had to go. Tomorrow I am going to the store to pick up a couple of boxes of sunshine. Dye for my hair and bronzer for my face. Sure, the dye chemicals combined with the perm chemicals will probably cause my hair to thin out and shed more than it already has, but at least I will lose the corpse look.

I will be returning to sunny Florida in a few months where a blonde 73-year-old with any amount of hair is considered hot stuff.