Tag Archives: Hair care

Fifteen Shades of Gray

29 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in The Beautiful Life, Transitions

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“I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair—it just won’t behave…”

Thus begins the notorious novel Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James. (If in fact that is her real name.) The central premise of this publishing phenomenon is not, as the opening sentence would suggest, the unruly state of the protagonist’s locks. And if you aren’t familiar with the book’s premise then tell me: “What’s it really like on Mars?”

No, the state of one’s hair is my concern—as chronicled in an earlier post and as I’m about to address here. My natural color is a deep, chestnut-brown, and it began betraying me, to the rhythm of what Margaret Atwood has called “the slow drip-drip of time,” in my early thirties. That’s when I boarded the dye train, with a ticket in hand that required a renewal every six weeks. Finally, after more than two decades of this relentless, expensive ride, I’d had enough. This year I’m embracing the gray.

Frustration at paying outrageous sums to a stylist, even one I liked enormously, served as my motivator. Little did I know that I was part of a trend, and that some women are actually paying good money to put in what I’ve been paying good money to take out.

I first noticed something was up years ago, when a stunning model with long, silver hair began showing up in my J. Jill catalog. “What’s this about?” I wondered. And then the epiphany struck: “Advertisers are finally paying attention to women of a certain age! That’s good!”

I’m not sure if Cindy Joseph gets the credit for starting the trend, but a trend it is, and christened as such by the New York Times, Huff/Post 50, MSNBC, and assorted beauty bloggers. I’m even seeing evidence in real life that the tide of dye has turned. I recently saw a lovely woman working at a home decor shop in Alexandria, Virginia, sporting a stylishly cut cap of silver hair.

Photo Courtesy of Jean L.

Jean L. graciously allowed me to interview her by email. The color you see in her photo is, she says, all natural. She is, she writes, “slightly older than what is considered a baby boomer.” She says she stopped dyeing her naturally dark-brown-with-auburn-highlights hair about 20 years ago. Here’s her story:

“I dyed my hair red for a number of years but the color would not stay. When I went to Aruba for ten days, the sun started bleaching out the color. Each day it got lighter; it was almost blonde when I flew home. I didn’t have time to color it and the next day everyone said they liked it blonde. I just stopped coloring it and it was white; I never had roots grow out.…I think the timing to let it go silver was the appropriate time for me.”

Jean’s photo belies the need for this question, but speaking for my own concerns, I had to ask her if she thinks her silver hair makes her look or feel older.

“I love my hair color. It actually gives me more confidence than when it was darker. I’m not afraid of it aging me as it actually looks better on me than my other, natural color. I think it is very stylish. A good cut and style helps.”

And the financial benefits to abandoning color?

“It’s absolutely been a savings. A cut and style is expensive enough.”

‘Nuff said. I’m already dreaming about what I’ll do with my new-found savings.

I did think I might be able to get away with keeping my hair long throughout this transition, but I was wrong. In the early weeks, it looked, well, charming—the way those little wisps of silver peeked out from my hairline. But as time went on, the little wisps disappeared and in their place was an odd sort of two-tone look, streaked with gray, that resembled the coiffure version of spectator pumps. I actually had three colors going: the new gray peeking through the real color of my hair, and, about a third of the way down, the dyed brown. It was not a good look for me. No, the best course of action was no doubt a short haircut. And the time was right, since summer can get brutally hot in Virginia.

As luck would have it, I had just read Style Weekly’s issue featuring the best of all things Richmond, which included their readers’ top pick in the hair-styling category: Imago, and the salon’s owner, curly hair expert Mary Jo Myers-Battiston. Not only did Imago receive Style Weekly’s blessing, Elle Magazine had named it one of the top 100 salons in the U.S. A place that specializes in curly hair? Ringing endorsements? This sounds like the place for me!

Renée, the receptionist, takes a picture of me mid-cut. Notice the 15 shades of gray (and brown).

I’ll write a future post about Imago—and the hope that its method gives to members of the curly-haired tribe—because I’m completely impressed. But for now, here’s the finished look, snapped before I left the salon:

The emphasis here is on the curl—and the fact that the gray no longer looks so out-of-place.

I can also smooth out the look with my flat iron. But regardless of how I style it, I’m cooler, the gray is blending in nicely with the rest of my hair, and I now have tons of extra time (and eventually money). The time I formerly spent styling my below-shoulder-length hair—I can use to finish Fifty Shades of Gray and a few other, slightly less sensational books. The money? If my financial planner has anything to say about it, I’ll save it.

Related Articles:

“Young Trendsetters Streak Their Hair with Gray”

“Gray Hair on Women Hits the Workplace”

“Granny Chic? Going Gray is a Hot New Hair Trend”

 

Marlo & Me—Act I

18 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Cultured Life, The Writing Life, Well-Dressed

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“COMPLICATED HAIR”

Had fashions in the late 1960s been otherwise, I would not have the strength of character that I possess today. I was born with complicated hair—thick, unmanageable, impossibly curly hair. And not the good kind of curly, either—the Andie McDowell/Julianna Margulies-kind of curly—just coarse and wiry and frizzy hair. This frizzled look would be en vogue today, when stylists spend considerable time crafting the look for runway models—a look that used to send me reeling in horror from the bathroom mirror. No, mine was the era of Carnaby Street, Twiggy, and the Summer of Love, and I had complicated hair. The fashion at the time was either cropped short, like the iconic pixie cut Vidal Sassoon created for Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, or long, sleek, and straight, like Jean Shrimpton or Julie Christie—all blondes, I might add. Relief came for a little dark-haired girl in the form of a beautiful brunette named Marlo Thomas, who, in the landmark television series That Girl, wore her straight glossy hair in a flip with bangs. The fact that Marlo was Italian and Lebanese, just like me, and had a father with whom I’d been photographed earlier in the decade, clinched the deal. She—that girl!—would be my role model. God knows, I needed one. I had complicated hair.

Credit: Marlo Thomas' Facebook page

“You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

That’s my godmother, “Aunt Fannie,” speaking. It’s 1968, and I’m in the seventh grade at St. Mary’s School in Elyria, Ohio. We’re having our class pictures taken in a few days, and my parents have driven me to her house to have my hair done.

Perhaps I should explain.

Aunt Fannie was a licensed beautician. (That’s what they called hair stylists in those days.) My godfather, Uncle Bill, was a gifted carpenter, and although he was not a professional contractor, he built their lovely ranch home in a rural part of Elyria from the ground up, and turned one of their basement rooms into a hair salon for my godmother. My father drove my mother there to have her hair done each week, and I was always in tow. With school-picture day looming, I begged and pleaded with my parents to let Aunt Fannie cut my hair so that I would have bangs and a flip, just like That Girl.

I finally wore them down. It wasn’t long before I was seated in the chair that swiveled around like a carnival ride. Aunt Fannie’s fingers wielded the silver scissors like some magician’s wand—snip! snip! snip! I had been turned away from the mirror the entire time, and couldn’t wait to see my idol’s impeccable hairdo in place of my tangled Medusa mane. When she spun me around, I was shocked.

I looked awful.

None of us had really taken my thick frizz into account when calibrating the outcome of my longed-for flip hairdo with bangs. The flip flopped, and I looked like a Labradoodle.

An Australian male Labradoodle at 9 month of age.I hesitate to say this, because you’ll think that I spent my entire childhood in tears, but I have to tell you that I cried. Not a full-throated cry—just a whimper, with a steady stream running down my cheeks.

“Isn’t–isn’t there anything you can do?” I asked my godmother, sniffling. Flat irons had not yet been invented. She thought a moment, then brightened.

“We can straighten it!”

My father, who had been watching television in the other room, walked by just in time to hear this. “Not if I have anything to say about it!” he thundered. “She has beautiful hair. You never should have cut it in the first place.”

“But George, look at her,” my mother said. “She can’t go around looking like this!”

“I can’t go around looking like this, Daddy.” I thought he should know where I stood on the matter.

The tension in the air was palpable. My parents exchanged words. Aunt Fannie busied herself by rearranging her hair clip drawer. I escaped upstairs to soothe my nerves with a tall glass of 7-Up. When I came back down, the charged atmosphere had eased. I’ll never know who convinced him—my mother or Aunt Fannie—but my father had backed down. Aunt Fannie was mixing the chemicals that would solve the crisis and turn me into “That Girl” for my school pictures.

“This stuff stinks!” I cried when she began stirring the mixture near me. And when she started combing the goop through my hair, my eyes began to water—and not from tears. “It burns!”

“You have to suffer to be beautiful,” she replied sagely.

I don’t remember how long I sat in that chair. It seemed like months. But I finally was directed to the shampoo bowl, and felt the cool relief of water soothe away the stinging, rotten-egg smell of the straightener. Aunt Fannie washed and conditioned my hair and combed it through. I was entranced! When I touched it, it felt smooth and sleek; I had never experienced such a sensation in relation to my own hair before. My head looked smaller, too. It wasn’t my hair anymore; it wasn’t me. It was better. New and improved, as the commercials used to say.

Aunt Fannie set my hair in rollers and sat me under the dryer, where I perused the latest movie magazines. When I was dry—cheeks red and hot from the heated air, rolled hair crisp to the touch—Aunt Fannie set me back in the swivel chair, where she began unpinning the rollers, vigorously brushing out my new hair.

It gleamed. It shined. I had never seen anything like it. She sprayed hairspray all over me—the air was thick with it. I sneezed and coughed. But I looked beautiful.

You have to suffer to be beautiful.

And you are! Look at that girl!

To be continued …