My Hair Upkeep is Giving Me Grays

Opus One or Highlights?

Covering grays one bottle of Château d'Yquem at a time. Let’s talk about the emotional and financial burden of managing gray hairs. Going gray has always been a very polarizing topic. Some women see it as a sign of defeat while others wear it as a badge of honor. For most of us, once you hit your mid-forties you are dealing with those silver sirens one way or another. Gone are the days of forgetting to schedule a salon appointment and letting your hair “do it’s thing.” You either deal with your grays or they deal with you.

Growing up I remember sitting at church on Sunday and surveying the crowd. My town was fairly conservative and the overall aesthetic was well-groomed, preppy. Many a family looked like they fell off the pages of Lands’ End. I remember always being draw to the beautifully put together woman with stunning platinum gray hair. It was always coiffed to perfection, something to aspire to.

My family was not presenting a polished church aesthetic, we were giving: catch-as-catch-can, hand-me-down chic. Especially in the early days. When I think of my mom’s relationship to gray hair I see it as a battle that was lost more than it was won. Those two to three inches of gray were in stark contrast to her single process red and were forever having to get wrestled back into submission.

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Mommy and her class. Grays may be concealed by hat!

Those inches of gray felt like a sign that we couldn’t get it all the way together and I remember always feeling better when they were covered. My mom was a full-time, first grade teacher with three daughters, of course she didn’t have time to deal with grays! Back then, I didn’t understand the time and cost involved in pretending your hair was a color that it was not. When my mom retired from teaching she had a standing appointment at the salon for hair and nails and those inches were finally kept at bay. I’m mildly ashamed to say - I loved that development.

The real bitch of dealing with grays once they’ve made their presence felt - they keep coming. They are starting to push back through the very day you drop a few hundred dollars on them. They are relentless. They don’t give up. They are the Tracy Flick of follicles.