I always knew I was fated to go gray early—but turns out I needed a push from the universe to ditch the dye.
It Took a Global Pandemic for Me to Finally Embrace Going Gray in My 30s
My husband had to do it for me. I’d spent the last two-and-a-half years waiting patiently for it, and when push came to shove, I didn’t even have the guts to shear it myself. I’m talking about my hair, and cutting off the last few inches of reddish-brown from the gray mane I’d been painstakingly growing out since my 34th birthday. It was mid-quarantine, and I couldn’t look at the shaggy, badly dyed copper-color ends any longer. At the beginning of the year, I’d planned a cathartic trip to Suite Caroline Salon in SoHo where I’d get a stylish haircut to flaunt going totally silver. Alas, as the days turned to months and we all stayed inside, I looked at the long strands, reaching almost to my waist, and realized that in order to save myself from looking full-on granny, a good three to four inches would have to go.
Like so many of us, 2020 was supposed to be a big year for me: I had just been offered my dream job, and was also planning a large summer wedding. I felt like I was finally a grown-up, and had the hair to prove it. I couldn’t wait to get that sexy cut, the one that would emphasize the white streaks now framing my face. Yet as lockdown dragged on, the dream job fell victim to a hiring freeze, the wedding was canceled, and my hair crossed the fine line from seductive professor to sea hag.
It took real effort not to spend this last year devastated by all the things I—and the whole country—have lost. It was even harder for me to accept how little control I had over the situation. I don’t think the totality of it hit me until that summer morning when I borrowed my mother-in-law’s special fabric scissors and, trembling a bit, handed them to my husband. While I shut my eyes tight, my husband, who has no hair of his own, and doesn’t even buy shampoo, put mine into a ponytail and snipped off all the dye he could find.
As I watched the clumps fall to the floor, I was flooded with a sense of relief I hadn’t felt in the whole of 2020. Those three to four inches were one of the few things I had any power over. When he was done, my hair hung just beneath my clavicle, a bit lopsided on the right and longer in the front, but it was all my own. No longer was my crowning glory a product of chemicals, hennas, sprays, powders, or even hair pens. At 36, I was 100% silver fox.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Lacy Warner
