Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Old Age and Grooming II; 1001:8

At a recent event, everyone was forced to contribute to the general fun and say “something about themselves.” I came up with: “Going Gray.” The 30ish man who read this out loud to a group of 20 some people of all ages and genders looked at me expectantly, waiting for further information. As he paused, a 50ish woman in the crowd came out with an elevated fist and an “Alright!” It was one of those moments when time stands still, you're caught between two worlds, and you realize you are a member of a smaller socio-cultural group than you used to be.

I told the guy, in an informative aside, “Letting my hair go gray.” He still looked bemused, so I let it drop. He’ll figure it out one of these days. He had a baseball cap on, so maybe he has his own hair issues.

A friend and I discussed Going Gray over sushi one night last week. Its imperative to have friends who are getting older with you, so you can check each other out for fashion faux pas’es. For example, most women’s jeans over the last few years are styled to rest below the Molson Muscle, and thereby mandate less form-fitting shirts, blouses, and T’s. When we were younger, there were actually similar jeans: “hip-huggers;” but these were bell-bottomed, which tended to even-out some figure irregularities. When we were younger, we also had fewer figure irregularities. But that was then and this is now.  Now, one must chuck memories and live in the real world: most older figures need more maintenance and kinder dressage. It takes some transition time to re-think this, though. A decade or so. Sometimes you’re apt to walk out of your house wearing that funky old skirt you used to love, with a snug day-glo knit top, in a time-warp-state-of-mind, forgetting that black is your best color and funky turns into eccentric after 50. To nip these kinds of moments in the bud, try to live close to friends who can catch you on the way out the door, and snap you out of it.

But the hardest issue to deal with--penance due to Sins Of Our Youth--is “Going Gray.” This is an issue if you have ever been weak enough to dye your hair.  My Name is Tricia and I Dye My Hair.  Now, how do I get out of it and come clean?

At 48, I dated a younger man, and decided to cover the few silver hairs that were shining through my heretofore-virgin-brown hair. The relationship died, but the dye job stayed. Once you dye, it’s hard to go back. The color stays in your hair, even if you decide to stop dyeing. If you cold-turkey quit all reparative contributory dyeing, and if the old stuff is not similar to your own hair, you wind up with the variegated look so popular on teens with pink-and-blue hair, but which is one of those fashion faux pas thingys I mentioned earlier on mature women.

I recently mentioned to  my 20-something daughter that I was, yet again, going to Go Gray. I plan to accomplish this as painlessly as possible by doing my own, foiled, lowlights out of a drugstore box (inside talk for "streak thick wet chemicals randomly through hair with the divisionary aid of aluminum foil in hopes of acheiving a naturally fake hair effect).  She asked, in her youth and innocence, “Why don’t you just let all the gray grow out?” I replied, “Haven’t you seen women my age going around with a demarcation line of one-half-upper silver hair, and one-half-lower brassy red hair?” She said, with instant recognition: “Oh, yeah.”

My daughter, on the other hand, is like a lot of younger women who dyed their hair just because it was there. She’s been having it dyed in shops for years, and is likely to keep doing it for a while. Once you dye, you create an image which you need to maintain. If you face your own hair, you lose a kind of mask which you’ve assumed. It’s a culturally recognized kind of look, the “dyed hair” look. Its an acquired comfort to those of us who do it.

Take my mom. She is 89, and I write about her all the time, and she won’t read what I write, but I tell her usually, anyway. Until 4 years ago, approximately, she dyed her hair. For many years before that, I encouraged her to Go Gray. However, her husband/ my father encouraged her strong Natural Vanity by making it clear he preferred it dyed.  He actually mouthed the words, in my presence, that "gray hair makes you look like an old woman."  I had to mull over these words, trying to define "old" in my parents world view.  It was a scary thought.  Not to mention that his comment made it seem like a BAD thing to look like an old woman. Ho Boy. Thanks, parents, for instilling that value in me. But its okay, as an adult I've fought off some of your other Instilled Values, and sifted through your Important Values.

And Mom's hair would have been none of my business, except when Mom dyed her silver hair, it turned orange. I thought it looked most unnatural, and hoped to defend her from looking like a vain person who wouldn’t face the idea that dye is not always a better alternative. I have no idea which colors she chose to dye with, but they all turned out the same: orange.

Now, I can understand this turning orange thing. Dyeing hair out of a box is, unfortunately, a quicker way to strip your hair of natural oil and shine than going to a salon and paying an unholy amount of monthly disposable income for a professional to dye it. And, if you are like Mom and me, our hair will always always turn red, no matter what color we put on it, or who puts it on.

Finally, a few years ago, Mom gave up on the whole tangled web of dyeing, and now her hair looks great. Although she doesn’t want to hear it, she looks like a beautiful old woman. She does not think she is an old woman, and the wrinkles of 89 years are, I think, something she still thinks she can get rid of. She has a pair of tooled leather high heels that my dad bought for her in their wild youth, which she keeps because “I might want to wear these sometime.” Her various foot issues will never let that happen, but she doesn’t see it that way. In her head, she’s still that hot young woman that my dad loved. He died a year ago, and I know it’s a little harder for her to feel hot now. But she still does a pretty good job of it.

I always feel like I am in a place between my beautiful mom and my beautiful daughter, whether its their values or their dye jobs. I love my silver hair, and realize its much more suited to my wrinkling and fading features than a harsh dark color. I don’t want to hang on to superficial vanity til I’m in my 80s. I want to set aside the “mask” of fun and playfulness that is better suited to a young woman. In a world where all kinds of creams and things are purported to help me fool myself, I am basically a hard-assed person. I know I am old. It’s the transitioning that has me stumped for the moment.

Over our sushi dinner, my friend commented on a friend of hers who ‘went gray.’

“She just let the dye grow out, until she had a few inches of pure silver showing above her dyed color. Then, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she just cut off all the dyed hair! It was really short. But she looks great. She still wears it that way.” We shared a moment of silence over that image, our eyes widening in consternation. Then she added, sotto voce: “It made her look really old.”

Well, there you have it. That “looking really old” part. Mom didn’t deal with it til a few years ago, my daughter has a long way to go to even think about dye as an anti-age factor. Here I am, in the middle, trying to look “not old” while paying for the vanity sins of my last decade of dyeing hair.  I have already decided to Go Gray, though, because it is a heck of a lot of time and money to keep fooling myself with dye jobs. 

I'll just have to spend more time on physical and mental agility.  

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