“To dye or not to dye?” … that’s the query. Not less than that was the query I started asking myself a decade in the past as I grew weary of dyeing my grey-streaked hair. Again then, upon presenting my dilemma to my hairdresser I selected to observe his self-serving recommendation, “You may have loads of time to go gray!”
Giving up the hunt for a glamorous, youthful look was particularly troublesome for me as I had been the style queen; proudly owning style boutiques, doing picture consulting and writing a style column for ten years. I had felt pity for my sister-in-law years in the past, when she determined not to dye her hair. At the moment I vowed to by no means “let myself go,” and stay as youthful and glamorous as human powers would allow.
But, relatively out of the blue, extra years of dying my hair handed and I discovered myself resenting being held hostage each six weeks to gray roots, chemical substances soaking my scalp, darkish stains alongside my hairline, and fumes in my eyes and lungs. Increasingly more I begrudged the societal message clouting us: “Girls lose their worth, magnificence and price as they age and should do their utmost to cover the very fact.”
Proof of this message drives the multi-billion greenback magnificence/anti-aging business which goads us into defying nature and negating the sweetness, vitality, sexuality and price of growing old, grey-haired girls.
Now it’s commonplace to perpetually dye greying hair; surgically nip, tuck and carry growing old faces; Botox worrisome wrinkles away; lyposuction fats off thighs; enlarge small breasts; pluck “inappropriate” hairs (then draw eyebrows again on!); put on make-up with poisonous substances; and hold sporting present clothes that was in model once we had been teenagers.
Unwittingly, we’ve been drawn into an anti-aging warfare being battled upon our our bodies. Every of us has to draw the road between wanting to look good and changing into a slave to twisted societal calls for. The place do we are saying “Sufficient is sufficient?”
Letting our gray develop is the “street much less traveled.” The concept we should be lovely, youthful and lithesome to be acceptable and of value is deeply ingrained inside every of us. It may be an unnerving, stunning journey dumping our societies’ shallow values, and coming to settle for our our bodies as they’re: gray hair, no hair, chubby, wrinkles and all.
Three years in the past, once I determined to cease dying my hair, with the assist of my husband and younger boy, I confronted deep fears. Being mid-forties and grey-haired would I lose my man to a youthful, prettier lady? Would they see me “on the way in which out” in my skilled profession? And what was I to do on these days the mirror mirrored an previous, unsexy, grey-haired lady?
It is fascinating – I had to dig to the depths of my roots – so as to grow-out my roots. To develop gray I had to discover the braveness of my convictions and transfer in opposition to the mass perception. I had to transcend my fears to discover my very own magnificence and price inside. Now, having skilled gray hair for 3 years, I can say it’s extremely liberating and comfy to be who I’m, simply as I’m.
To rise above societal beliefs and discover our personal intrinsic value, magnificence, vitality and sexuality allow us to start with accepting, and caring for our our bodies and our valuable selves. Given the toxicity of many magnificence merchandise and coverings maybe the query of – “To dye or not to dye” – ought to learn… “To die or not to die,” that’s the query.