The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
THE FIRST MONTHS ARE THE HARDEST
One night, sharing a bottle of wine with a friend and having a moan, I listed the reasons I felt down. She listened patiently to the usual gripes until the last, which I added as an afterthought. ‘And then there’s this going grey thing…’ In that moment I realised that letting my roots grow out was mildly depressing. It not only looked sad and dreary, it was symbolic of big changes that screamed one thing: death is inevitable.
‘Do you have to do it?’ she asked. My answer surprised me. ‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’
Why indeed?
My going grey story is a long one. My first horrible wiry lock appeared when I was 29 – which was 22 years ago. For years I lived by the code ‘dye until you die’, until I started to wonder if this was plausible.
There’s a woman in my hair salon who I’m transfixed by. She wears beautiful clothes, has polished nails and shining lightly tanned skin. Her astonishingly glossy brunette hair is so richly brown it has a shimmering aura of rose gold. Even children don’t have hair this lustrous.
I’d been struggling to work out how to be older, how to wear my age with a modicum of elegance. Here was the inspiration I needed to dig me out of my midlife identity crisis. ‘That’s how you do grown-up,’ I said, nodding her way.
The colourist agreed, ‘She is one of our most fab clients.’ Then came the but. ‘She has several blow dries a week and she’ll have weekly glossing masques for upping the colour and shine.’
As he listed her maintenance regime, I knew I was never going to be that woman. ‘And she’s in here every two weeks to have her roots done.’
The colourist and I did some calculations on the amount of time and money one would have to invest to look that glorious. Her hair alone was many days and in the region of £15,000 a year. I don’t have the money nor did I want to spend the time. In that moment, I knew I had to go grey.
But I put off the moment for years. ‘My last ever visit,’ I said every time I opened the door to the salon. ‘I’ll do it at 50,’ I said.
A colder and harder truth appeared in the form of the first lockdown last year. I already had six weeks of roots and that meant no hairdresser for another four months. I wasn’t going to start trying to dye my own hair. Corona had spoken and now it’s been over a year since my last visit to the colourist. Here’s what I’ve learnt…
I felt rubbish. The sight of a woman with a two-inch parting of crackly grey hair and a foot of fading brown ends is impossible to reinvent in any kind of positive way – not in the way that grown-out blonde looks kind of punky and cool.
It didn’t matter we were locked down and no one saw me. I saw me. (Though, if I’m honest, being stuck at home did help get me through those painful early months.)
When I told the renowned colourist Josh Wood how awful I felt he said, sagely, ‘Hair dye is a medicine.’
Yes, it’s an antidepressant. I bought brunette toners to keep my hair shiny, which
‘WHEN I TOLD MY BOYFRIEND I WAS GOING GREY, HE SAID: IS IT A MONEY THING? I’LL PAY’
worked on pepping up my brown ends but turned my roots bright blue. Which, in case you are interested, looks silly.
I bought a lovely fedora. It helped but had its limits.
The regrowth look physically turned my stomach. I’m not an excessively vain person, but the sight of inches of grey root and faded brown dye can’t be anything but a beauty car crash.
There is a hashtag #greyhairdontcare where some women proudly display their regrowth. It’s odd. I’m not squeamish, I’m not scared of snakes, needles, hairy legs or slugs, but these grow-out images disgusted me. Sorry, it’s irrational and unsisterly to admit it. Daily, I wondered
options between covering it all and doing absolutely nothing.’
As you have read this far, I am going to tell you a secret. I am a cheat. Once I am grey all over a colourist will put some darker chunks in, to heighten the drama between black and white – make it a bit less ‘meh’. This is a two- or three-times-a-year commitment. This, I can handle.
No one said this article was about going grey gracefully. So I have to admit, I cheated some more. My hormones are retreating, taking with them the plumping collagen from my face. This, I realised, was more ageing than the grey, which, truth be told, suited my 51-year-old skin better than the pricey fake brown.
By month eight, I was OK with the hair. It was more me. What was harder to live with is that age had made my face longer, flatter, thinner and my chin more pointy. Some days my skin and hair together were a cruel pairing and I could remedy this with a little make-up. Having a tan was a joy. Though short lived. A dab of black eyeliner brought out the devil horns of white hair and made my eyes bluer.
An icy blonde toner over the top or a violet-tinted shampoo helped the white ‘pop’. Strong lipsticks worked for me in a way they never had as a brunette.
Wearing rollers at home in the daytime like those glamorous Liverpool girls (or Coronation Street’s Hilda Ogden) helped the hair sweep up and away, which with a bit of ‘teasing’ helped open up my face.
Still, I had days when I just felt so haggard. On those days I might as well have been the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. That long face bothered me more than the grey ever could.
I hunted for the right person and found Tracy Mountford, who is well known for making ageing TV presenters look naturally done. I told her I was on a budget. She prescribed a minimal intervention that required two 3ml syringes of filler to put a bit of width, rather than volume, back in my face, and a dab of Botox to relax the muscle that was making my witchy chin. All the wrinkles remained, but the overall look was more vital. It took ten minutes and I don’t need to go back for another six months.
Now all I needed to do was smile more – this at least is free.
GOING GREY IS A CHOICE
Do not look at it as a life sentence.
Josh Wood says that for every woman who leaves high-flying positions in the City and, with great relief, gives up the hair dye, there’s another who has just got divorced and runs back to the colourist’s chair.
You are the boss of your hair and if it is making you feel sad, change it.