OC Unfiltered >> Brave has a color: gray

Last Updated on Friday, February 24, 2012 12:55 pm Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, February 24, 2012 01:00 am

Two years ago, I decided to stop the farce of coloring my hair and let it do what it wants to do. It wants to be gray.

For 10 years, I’d done a terrible job at maintaining the color. In all honesty, because it was never my idea to color my hair, I wasn’t committed to maintaining it. My daughter, who was in fifth grade at the time, cajoled me into coloring my hair because she thought the gray made me look older than I was. Coloring your hair, like any other vice, is one of those things that you’re better off never starting.

One of my brothers constantly taunted me by calling me “Grandma.” Ironic, since he became a grandparent at 42. My mother was no help. Every time she saw me, she would remark, “Cynthia, you have more gray hair than I do.” I still don’t know what her point was.

In a good year, I might have gone to a salon and had my hair colored three times. In a typical year, I’d go twice, usually right before we would leave on our family cruise in August and again before we sailed at Christmas. Salon operators recommend colored hair be touched up every 6 to 8 weeks, depending upon how quickly the hair grows. At a minimum, I should have had my hair colored every 6.5 weeks. In reality, I had it done more like every 6.5 months.

During the decade I was “coloring” my hair, I promised myself that I would cut it and let it be the color it wanted to be just as soon as my son graduated from high school. I almost made it. Six weeks before he was awarded his diploma, I made an appointment at the salon and made a life-altering decision: to have 15 inches of hair cut off.

People often say they feel lighter when they have long hair cut off. I was lighter, all right, but it was because the color of my hair had gone from yellow to white.

Since that day almost two years ago, I have remained committed to keeping my hair its natural color. And I have never inspired so much chatter about hair color as I have in the last two years.

Just last month, while I was walking on the boardwalk, a speed walker churned past me and hollered over her shoulder, “I love your hair color.”

“It’s gray,” I yelled after her, concerned that her hasty pace had perhaps adversely affected her eyesight.

“I know,” she shouted back. “I wish I could do that with mine.”

Not exactly sure what she meant by that. Did she mean she wished her hair would turn gray, but it refused to cooperate?

That walker was just the most recent person to compliment my grandma-before-my-time look. At Sandi Pointe in Somers Point, where we have enjoyed many special occasion meals, a waitress always remarks favorably on my hair color.

Last year, while I was working a retail job, a customer praised me for my “bravery” in letting my hair be the color it is meant to be. I said I thought the definition of bravery was going off to war, or rescuing a drowning person, or raising a special needs child – things that are much more noteworthy than letting nature take its course.

The woman said she wished she could let her hair go gray, but her daughter, who was in her 30s, forced her to color her hair. She hated her unnatural hair color, she told me, but her daughter insisted. Seriously, if you cannot decide what color your hair should be by the time you are in your 50s or 60s, you probably shouldn’t be out shopping on your own.

A lot of blame for our hair obsession is directed at Hollywood, which our society has given the power to influence almost everything we do, from what we eat to what we wear to what we look like. Think about it: what females in Hollywood have gray hair?

I can think of two: Jamie Lee Curtis and Dame Judi Dench. Curtis, who is a contemporary of mine, unfortunately is associated with the yogurt that makes you poop. Dench, who is old enough to be my mother, is going blind. I will refrain from making a joke about people who find themselves in situations where they don’t know whether to crap or go blind.

Shirley MacLaine and Dench will both turn 77 this year, but MacLaine is as red-headed as Lucille Ball was when Ball died at that age in 1989. There’s a reason senior citizens don’t have red hair in real life. It looks exactly like what it is: Fake.

Some people never experience gray hair. My paternal grandmother died last July at age 100 with a full head of dark brown hair intact. She was married to a man whose hair went white at age 19. One of my sisters and one of my sisters-in-law are hairdressers. They both swear this grandmother never dyed her hair.

Grandma never knew what she was missing.

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