Hair. Our glorious mane. Our crowning glory. The maintenance and styling of our hair is a huge industry. Hair products, shops/salons, infomercials, you name it. We are obsessed. And not just women. I’ve known men who spend a great deal of time and energy (and money) on their hair. We love our hair. We need our hair. Some of us can barely function if it doesn’t “work” in the morning. Going to work when having a bad hair day can ruin a career. It certainly can ruin a date.
Almost every day I read something about hair or see a report on TV. People losing their hair discover new restorative treatments, people with premature gray hair learn coloring tips, people with unruly frizzy hair have new products to straighten those strands, people with flat lifeless hair find perms and other “body” additive treatments. You name it. And yet I’ve also noticed an increase in reports on letting hair go back to its natural state rather than bleaching or dying or perming or straightening it based on some reports that the chemicals may be harmful to the scalp, let alone the hair. In particular, there seems to be a movement to let the hair go gray when it wants to. Just last night I watched a report and the newscaster featured a series of photos depicting her own hair going from beautiful black to stunning white/silver over the years.
When I was little I was a towhead. It stayed that way for about ten years when we noticed the color slowly darkening. Then at about age thirteen it was mousy brown/blond. At that point I started combing it with hydrogen peroxide then I sat outside in the sun and it lightened up. I did that for a few years before hitting the color aisle of my local drug store. From that point, at around sixteen, I kept my hair blond until my fifties. I usually kept it light blond but once or twice went platinum. Though I loved that look it was a serious maintenance problem with the mousy brown roots. It also required “stripping” the hair before applying a platinum color/toner.
Hence, my hair was very damaged and thin by my fifties. It was stretchy when wet and when I went to hair dressers they begged me to stop and to let it grow out and told me I should go through a series of conditioning treatments. Shower drains were frightening during that period. Much of the damage was also done when I added perms to my hair color routine. Because I have very straight hair without body I usually have always had either a body perm or a full-blown curly perm. It’s amazing I still have hair.
Finally, I went for a haircut one day and was told that my hair was in the worst condition she had ever seen. I was horrified. She recommended cutting it super short and letting all the chemicals grow out. We did a very short cut (sort of cute) and I let it grow without any chemical treatments for about two years. The amazing part of this is that at I didn’t have a single gray hair. Just the mousy brown I had escaped when I was sixteen. I was happy to not have gray hair but disappointed that the mousy brown was still there. I had hoped to have some change through the years, even gray. In fact, I secretly hoped it would be that beautiful silver/white some are blessed with.
I took a long look at my family and realized most of them colored their hair but not my mom. My mother to this day, at eighty-six, has very little gray hair. In fact, it doesn’t look gray at all though she definitely does have some gray hair. The rest of her hair, brown, blends perfectly with the odd color of gray hairs she has. Her hair looks lightly streaked. So I determined, based on that familial tie, that I wouldn’t have a lot of gray. But after about a year I realized that a benefit of coloring the hair is that the chemicals change the hair shaft and in my case my hair behaved better with the addition of color. The natural look I ended up with without coloring or perms was sort of frizzy even though I have straight hair. With color my hair would flatten out and look smooth.
So since my hair was in great condition, the best it had been in years, I started in with color again. I decided I wouldn’t perm it anymore and experimented with tones and shades and settled on a golden blond and it stayed that way until a few months ago. I decided to let the color grow out again so I had my hair cut very short once more and I’m in about stage three of the grow-out period.
Like my mom, I have almost no gray hair, at sixty-six, but I do have a wide streak developing on the right side of my head that is gray. It’s too soon to tell if it’s going to be pretty or weird. A couple more haircuts and I’ll know. However, the texture of that gray streak is very odd. It doesn’t belong on my head. It’s coarse, curly, and will not cooperate when I try to style it. For that reason alone I may have to begin coloring it again. Some gray hair is breathtaking. I love the white tresses some fortunate people end up with. Some silver streaks are also beautiful. Silver all around is very pretty. Some gray is flat and sort of mousy. I’m positive that’s where I’m headed. The little gray patch developing above my ear looks speckled.
Now I’m not so sure I’ll be able to let my hair go natural. I don’t think my gray is going to be that beautiful silver swash of color. I think it’s going to be mousy brown with a stubborn mousy gray streak that will want to live its own life. I may have to be a blond forever. But I’m going to wait and see.
“I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen, knotted, polka-dotted, twisted, beaded, braided, powdered, flowered, and confettied, bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!”
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock MusicalLyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
