While on my anti-fear of aging rampage, I think it’s useful to explore my internal anxieties over aging, not just those held by children in our technological age, as explored in my article “You’re 12. You Don’t Need Drunk Elephant” from earlier this fall.
Truth be told, I do hold my own fears of aging. More specifically, I fear going gray.
At the age of 16, I started to notice what my mother proclaimed to be “blonde” hairs around the crown of my head, towards the front of my face. These hairs were not blonde, but rather white. I was in my teens and already showed signs of aging. I was horrified.
This past summer, now 21, I began noticing more of these white hairs. They sprout from the top of my scalp and reach several inches long, and while I am making peace with the fact that I will not have my brown hair for the rest of my life, I do feel as though I am aging rapidly.
Due to several generations of women in my family having had alopecia, dyeing my hair isn’t a feasible option. Not only do I wish to avoid triggering any hair loss that isn’t caused by aging, I want to feel comfortable with my natural hair, no matter the color of pigment it may hold (or not hold).
Why am I not allowed to age, while men my age who are starting to go gray are labeled as budding “silver foxes?” This doesn’t seem fair.
While I acknowledge that I alone cannot change the stigma of western society around the natural graying of women’s hair, I decided to find self-fulfillment and work on my abilities to care less about the thoughts of others.
While mindlessly scrolling through my social media feeds in September, I came across several videos of young women adding tinsel in fashionable colors — pinks, golds, and blues — to their hair. After letting this source of inspiration stew in my mind for a month, I thought it was time to bite the bullet and purchase a pack of hair tinsel online to try it for myself.
After attempting and failing to tie the tinsel onto my own hair, I figured out a solution by tying a few golden pieces of the plastic to a hairclip. I lifted up a section of my hair and attached the hair clip under the layer to avoid the metal showing outright.
Several times each week, over the course of the month of October, I wore the tinsel around campus. Each time I looked in the mirror, my eyes were immediately drawn to the flecks of gold. After taking the clips out at the end of the day and looking at a freshly-showered version of me, I found myself not criticizing my grays as harshly as I had previously.
As the month continued, I found myself wanting to ditch the clips and embrace my natural looks. This, I believe, was in part because scratching my head only to dig the metal claws into my scalp began to irritate me. However, I also believe that something inside me started to change. I was becoming more tolerant — and even fond — of what I already had.
While I admit that tinsel isn’t necessarily a long-term solution, it is a way to kick-start yourself into loving whatever color hair grows out of your scalp… it worked for me.
My grays are a part of me, and I think they look quite nice. Should I ever decide to dye my hair, it will not be to match my otherwise brown strands — it will be some ungodly shade of violet or copper.
