Enough of that! Letting myself go? Or, my journey to natural hair color

I don’t actually remember when I started dyeing my hair to the dark brown of my childhood. I’m pretty sure it was after my daughter was born since I was pretty vigilant about being 100% natural during pregnancy and childbirth. I did the whole ‘Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way’ (see http://www.bradleybirth.com/ if you’re interested in what this means). While we didn’t do home-birth (not nearly brave enough to go that far), this is the time I stopped drinking soda pop, started regularly cooking from scratch and began religiously reading ingredient labels. In any case, I’m nearly certain that I wasn’t saturating my head in chemicals prior to 1992.

So, at some point after we moved to Harrisburg, PA in 1992, I started to dye my hair. Of course, I started with the old box dyes from the grocery store or Target, since as young parents who spent most of our money on childcare and family expenses, the salon would have been too expensive. I remember times that my husband helped me, and we were trying to ensure that it didn’t stain more than just my hair. Of course, it stained towels, shirts and other clothing (a nice dark brown stain on the collar of my bathrobe was a constant reminder that I dyed my hair). There was also the one time in Swanzey, NH (where we moved in 1995) when I tried an ‘auburn’ box and it turned my hair a bright orange. For some reason that I’ve forgotten now, I did this right before church (or maybe it was Saturday night). I had to turn up at church with this hideous orange hair, because I didn’t have time to do anything with it (thank God there are no pictures! Cell phone cameras hadn’t come into routine use back then). Sitting through that service was so hard, just knowing that everyone was thinking ‘WTF?’ and wondering whether I had intentionally turned my hair orange. The family who usually sat behind us certainly noticed, as the dad said, ‘nice color’ after the service (ha, ha, very funny!). After the service, I rushed out and bought another box of dark brown and re-dyed it. At the time, it didn’t occur to me how terrible this would be for my hair, and I feel fortunate that I didn’t totally fry it or cause it to fall out.

Following the disasters or home dye, getting fed up with the mess, and finally able to afford to pay someone else to do it, I transitioned to salon dye. I was never a highlighter, just a ‘single process,’ ‘coat the whole head in dark brown dye’ type. I didn’t really give it too much thought, and set up a cycle of dye appointments every 6 to 8 weeks. I found a color I liked, and stuck with it for a long time. Even moving to the UK didn’t change my routine as I am a loyal Aveda customer, and they have salons there as well (even in my little village in Scotland, there was an Aveda salon). I continued the ‘process’ for many years, never really asking myself why I was doing this to my hair. I don’t remember that I was really opposed to gray hair, but I just covered whatever roots came through as they inevitably turned up. I guess I was a product of American society that said that women who aged are ‘bad,’ and that your hair needed to be something other than gray to show that you were still ‘young.’

Around the time of my daughter’s wedding in 2014, I started to notice that I was needing to get dye appointments more often in order to cover up the inevitable graying roots that would peek through. Instead of 6 to 8 weeks, it was more like every 3 or 4 weeks. This was also during a time when I was traveling a lot for work. At the height of my business travel, I was away 3 weeks out of 4, and started to realize that setting salon appointments was difficult. I certainly couldn’t do anything during the week since I never really knew when I’d be home, and getting a dye job in another country was more risk than I was wiling to take. Weekends were spent either traveling for pleasure, or maybe flying off to China (where I’d leave on a Saturday so that I could have one recovery day before the work week started), or with a mad dash to do laundry, clean the flat and repack for the next trip. In other words, the need to cover the roots was coming up more quickly, and the time available to get into the salon and have them covered was becoming more and more compressed. The expense, while not a factor was also an annoyance. I didn’t mind paying for haircuts, but the dye is an added expense that bothered me.

After reading an article about the growing trend of women going gray (many times using dye, but often just because they were sick of dyeing their hair), I started thinking about whether I should stop dyeing. I remembered how beautiful my mom looked when she stopped. I don’t actually recall when that was either, or how old she was at the time – I can’t recall her announcing that she was going to stop, but she definitely did. One thing I do remember is that her silvers came in like highlights. She had this beautiful salt and pepper hair, and people would often ask her who ‘did’ her hair like that – she’d just laugh and say ‘God.’ I was under no delusion that my hair would turn out that way. After all, she had jet black hair for as long as I could remember, and her going salt and pepper seemed natural to me (black to black, gray and silver, then finally to white). I thought that I’d wait until I turned 50, since that seemed like a thing to do – major milestone birthday, make a life change.

Just before the wedding, I had my hair dyed again so that it would be ‘perfect’ for the wedding in April, 2014. I went home to the UK after the wedding, and less than a month later found myself needing to have it touched up. I don’t know what set me off, but I was so frustrated with this constant battle and having to pay a significant amount of money for something that needed to be done on a regular basis. The wedding was in April, and by July, I had decided ‘enough is enough!’ I was ‘only’ 48, but I was so done with hair dye that I couldn’t wait even two more years (doing the math on how many visits to the salon for touching up the roots made it even more imperative that I just quit right away). I visited the local Aveda salon in Hitchin and consulted with a stylist. I had heard about doing highlights and potentially other methods to ‘transition’ to gray, and thought I’d check out my options. She was very nice and commented on how many of her clients in their late 40’s / early 50’s, were making the same move – so it turns out that I was a part of a trend. Gen X women were deciding in waves to stop this nonsense of trying to make our hair a different color than it is naturally. She also said that the best thing to do was to just stop ‘cold turkey,’ and let it grow out. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t some magic wand that could just get the dark brown out and let my natural color appear, but I was also happy with her honesty. Since that time, I’ve heard stylists trying to sell a whole load of different colors and dyes to ‘help’ – effectively saying that if you want to quit the dye, you need to. . . . dye some more.

I use July 2014 as my official stopping point, because by then I had stopped making the appointments. In retrospect, I wish I’d cut my hair really short to speed it up, but instead I just did as the stylist recommended and let it grow out on its own, while keeping my usual hair style at the time. I continued to have my normal haircuts every 6 to 8 weeks, and slowly, but surely the demarcation line between dyed hair and natural grew. Looking at the pictures from that time now, it was pretty stark. By September, you could really see that this was intentional, and not just that I was neglecting my hair appointments. I told my kids about it since I knew it was an unasked question (‘Mom, what’s up with your hair?’). They were supportive, but the reality was that even if they weren’t, I was still going to do it (which they probably knew, so no sense trying to talk me out of it). The pictures from Christmas 2014 show a much greater difference between new growth and the blorange (the orangey color that dark dye fades to when you stop doing it). The surprising thing to me was that it was coming in black with silver and gray – just like Mom. I’d say that this was the biggest shock to me. As a child I definitely had dark brown hair, and I had been dyeing it to keep that same color. Now, when I stopped dyeing and let it be natural, there wasn’t much brown at all in the color. In fact, it was coming in more and more like what my Mom’s hair looked like when she stopped dyeing.

The summer after I quit the dye, I decided to get my hair cut short for the summer. This wasn’t something radically new, since I’ve had my hair different lengths throughout the years. I think I just get bored and decide to change things up a bit by trying out different styles. So, in the summer of 2015, I went shorter. The stylist that did the big chop asked me if I’d ever dye my hair again. I don’t think she was being rude or trying to say it looked bad, I think she was just curious whether I’d gotten tired of this different ‘color.’ I told her that I wouldn’t do it again, but that if I changed jobs, I’d think about it since I knew how society looks at gray hair (like you’re ‘old’ and maybe it could lead to age discrimination). Since I was secure in my job, and had established myself in my career, I didn’t really see a need to conform to society’s expectations about what women’s hair should look like. In other words, I could care less whether people liked my new, natural color or assumed I was ‘old’ because my hair was now a salt and pepper color, instead of the unnaturally brown dyed look. It was also around this time that I started to notice more how unnatural dyed hair actually looks. I would see these elderly couples where the man had snow-white or gray hair, and the woman would have pitch-black or ‘old lady orange’ hair. It was so obvious that they were of similar age, and that there is no way that the women’s hair color was natural. When I looked at pictures of me in the last several years before I quit, I could also see that my hair looked a bit too dark to be real either.

Later, after keeping the short cut up for a while, I made a fateful decision. I was walking through Hitchin and feeling like I needed a trim. Getting an appointment at my usual Aveda salon in London would take time, involve a train trip into the city, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to wait that long. So, I did a ‘walk in’ at the salon, and asked for whomever was available at the time. A young, obviously newer stylist was available (should have been the red flag – she was the only one that wasn’t busy), so I went ahead. As she started to cut my hair, I thought (though wasn’t totally sure) that she was actually thinning my hair. Having a daughter with incredibly thick hair, I knew what this looked like. I was a bit surprised that she’d be doing this, but since I wasn’t completely sure, I just went along with it. Afterwards, once I got home, I ran my fingers through it and confirmed – this young woman had actually thinned my hair! Now, my hair is naturally quite thin – it absolutely doesn’t need to be artificially thinned. After a few days, I called the London salon and got an appointment with the most senior stylist (the manager of the salon). I explained what happened and he went over my hair, shaking his head. Finally, he issued his verdict – I’d need to go with a pixie cut. The woman had really messed up my hair, and the only way to recover was to go very short. This would allow it to grow out evenly and repair the damage she had done. It was then that I realized I should have done this when I first started out on the journey to natural color. Cutting it really short would have made the demarcation line between dye and natural must less obvious. Instead, I was doing it because I made the terrible decision to walk into a salon and take ‘anyone available.’

At some point, while perusing Facebook, I came across a group called, ‘Gray and Proud’ and decided to join it. It’s mostly made up of women (with a few men) that are looking for help and support in the process of going gray. I find it interesting to read about those who are just beginning their journey. There are over 24,000 members of this group globally, so ditching the dye is a growing trend, not just in the US or the UK (where I started the journey). There are other groups on Facebook and Instagram where women post photos of their beautiful natural hair (check out #grombre on Instagram), as well as the transition photos showing how they’re managing the growing out process. Many of those in G&P post about the terrible comments people make when they announced their decision, or family members who are downright rude and try to pressure them into continuing to soak their heads in chemicals. There are some who are stopping because they’ve developed an allergy to the chemicals and physically have to stop (even though it upsets them to no end to have to quit), but for many it’s a decision to be more authentic and show themselves to the world in their natural hair color. I guess I’m lucky, because I never had anyone at work, home or in my community come right out and say that I shouldn’t do this – I’ve had my share of comments that I think indicate the person believes I’m much older than I am, but otherwise it hasn’t been that bad. Even when changing jobs, I never considered coloring my hair (unlike what I told the stylist in London who asked me about going back). I had no trouble landing a job and decided three years ago to update my LinkedIn profile picture to one that is more current – well, it’s not really that current, but it’s one where IMHO my hair looks really good. It was freshly cut and was cooperating with me (lol).

I’m still playing with my hair – growing it out a bit, and then seeing pictures of shorter hair cuts that look really cute. I shake my head when I go to the salon and sit next to women (and every once in a while, men) that are still pursuing that illusive hair color they think they like, or was maybe what their hair was like 30, 40 or 50 years ago. I definitely don’t miss the smell of the dye, or sitting there for hours on end waiting for it to soak into my hair (and head). I tell people that the money I saved now goes for my monthly massage appointments, but really, I’m just happy not to be ‘tied to the dye,’ and constantly battling my hair on what color it ‘should’ be. . . And, I like the results – in some lights it looks very light gray, while in others it still looks quite dark. In sum, I’ll take it!