I’m getting old!

I don’t know about you, but I remember very well the day when I found my first white hair. I screamed when I saw that horrible long stiff hair. How come I hadn’t noticed it before? I rapidly pulled it out and hoped it would be the first and last one.  It was the year I turned 30, which was hard enough. The appearance of white hair at the same time was a real trauma. 

Ok, I exaggerate a little bit. But feeling that you are getting old is a hard step to go over and accept. Your body has different ways to tell you that you’re not twenty anymore, and my first white hair was a major one for me. I am lucky because I am a fair-haired girl, so my white hair gets lost in the forest of blonde hair and gets unnoticed, for now. 

Most of my brunette friends started dying their hair relatively young, and seeing its root becoming white was a knock in their face as well. Now, they can’t stop dying their hair, spending loads of time and money on hiding their shameful secret. 

Why is it so hard to accept our white hair?

When I lived in Chile, I was impressed to see women my age and even younger sporting their white patches. For them, white hair is a sign of wisdom. Why hiding it? 

It made me think that the acceptance of our white hair is only a matter of the image we have of it. In the western world, a mature woman is not seen as glamourous, quite the opposite. Would it be because of the famous children stories we grew up with? 

Take Snow-White; for example, the evil queen is a witch always illustrated with stiff white hair. Same for Cinderella, her stepmother is still presented as a grey-haired shrew. We grow up with the mindset that a woman showing her white hair is equal to a mean and evil woman. 

Western society asks women to keep on staying young and hide any signs of old age like wrinkles, brown spots and of course, white hair. It stigmatises women who don’t. Does it ask the same for men? That’s another debate.

How COVID-19 helped women accepting their grey hair

But great news, times are changing. More and more women are now showing their natural selves, and they all look gorgeous. Lockdown also helped women liberate themselves from the societal norms as all hair salons were closed, and buying dyes was not the priority. Many took the plunge and stopped dying their hair. Like my Mum, a 69-year-old woman. I am so proud of her. 

It was a tough decision, especially after dying her hair for so many years. She thought of it before the pandemic, but the woman at her beauty salon talked her out of it with the argument “you’ll look so much older”. Easy to shame women this way. 

The truth is that the hair colouring market was worth over 22,000 million pounds in 2019 and is expected to keep on increasing according to Statista. As hairdressers charge on average £60 for hair colour, they don’t want to see their customers turn white.

I think the biggest challenge when you stop dying your hair is the fact that it doesn’t grow entirely white in one day. It takes quite a long time, and you have to wear a bi-coloured hairstyle for quite a while; what I call the “Agnès Varda” style. 

If you have never heard of her, Agnès Varda was a French film director, a great artist and an amazing woman. You could easily recognise her by her white and red hairstyle. I am so glad that the iconic Agnès Varda was there to show the path so that women like my Mum could be proud of that hairstyle and not be ashamed of it.

Seeing my Mum going white proudly, I am myself learning to assume my white hair as well as my age. Embracing our white hair is accepting our natural selves and loving ourselves just the way we are, a step forward to wisdom.

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Elise Van Meerssche

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