Touch of Gray

Time for my monthly update, I think. March 2009 here. I’m still gung ho on letting my gray freak flag fly. So far, the only person who seems unhorrified and kind of into by my foolhardy venture is my hairdresser, odd considering if you go to sites like Going Gray Looking Great, women tend to report considerable pressure from their beauticians (it is their livelihood). The woman who cuts my hair doesn’t do color so maybe she had no financial stake in my decision to stop dyeing.

She told me that another client, a woman who is 36 (said in a way that implied she didn't realize that was my age) has gone mostly gray and is keeping it that way. Teenagers call her "grandma" on the street, though. Damn teenagers. No one is ever safe from the wrath of youth even after you grow up.

A friend suggested that maybe these kids' grandmas are 36. Ha, and I thought they were just being assholes. I'm fairly certain that my grandma was 37 when I was born and my mom had me at a respectable age, so who knows?

Speaking of, my grandma, who I'm not terribly close to (and some childhood friend I’ve never met) will be here at the end of the month going to Broadway shows, riding tour buses and whatever else it is that non-New Yorkers in their early 70s enjoy doing. I'll have to ask her how gray she was at 36. I never gleaned any meaningful insights from my father before he kicked the bucket so I really need to pick the brains of the elderly (though technically my dad wasn’t even retirement/senior citizen discount age) in my life.

So, this photo makes it look like I’m totally brunette, which is very untrue. I think you’ll have to wait until May to see serious scary results. I promised my haircutter that I wouldn’t touch my hair before coming in for my next haircut (probably in June if I use a every three months rule) and that I’d call or email her if I started getting to the urge to dye. The compromise I might go for, and that she also suggested, would be using a semi-permanent dark ash blonde dye to soften the gray. I would say blonde highlights might be in my future but if your hair is 60%+ lighter than your core color, that’s not really highlighting, is it?