Going Gray: The Power to Choose

young woman with gray hair, originally uploaded by ed's point of view.

The Health and Life Mixing Bowl celebrated its first birthday last month.  Thank you to all who read this blog regularly!  In celebration of this milestone, I will be featuring popular posts from the past year.  Enjoy!

Whether or not women should go gray is a hot issue these days. Time magazine has a great article that compares the gray hair wars with the "stay at home with the kids" vs. "go to work" debate. The article shows two pictures of Condaleeza Rice, one with gray hair, one with black hair.  I'll let you be the judge. Included are remarks from the hair dye king, Clairol, who states that their role is to help women create an authentic connection between how she feels internally versus how she looks externally. Hmmm....So they get to decide what your hair color says about how you feel?  The article's most controversial quote came from Rose Weitz, author of Rapunzel's Daughters: "What Woman's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives".  She quotes, "Even if, in the abstract, we think we look all right with gray hair, we nonetheless feel as if we are losing our 'real selves' if we no longer have our 'real hair color' - the color we had when we were young and looked our best." Feeling as if we are losing our 'real selves'? As if hair dye is real?  If anything is real it's the stigma attached to going gray.  It took me forever to find a picture of a healthy, attractive woman with gray hair.  Type in "gray hair women" in a photo search engine and you'll come up with tons of frail and sickly looking women sitting in wheelchairs and nursing homes.  Where are the vivacious gray-haired mamas?  I know you are out there!  After searching a bit I finally found the picture above.  This woman went gray when she was 13 and decided to leave her hair natural.  I think she is beautiful.

I am 42 years old with a few gray hairs on my temple and I proudly sport them like a badge of honor. I earned every one of these strands. They tell the story of where I have been and where I am going. I also have a few wrinkles coming in (as my nine year old daughter innocently likes to point out). As I see these signs of aging, I get a little uneasy, but I can't help but to be in awe of how God has blessed my 42 years.  I am incredibly grateful!  Aging is a natural process--something we shouldn't be ashamed of.  To see aging as something that isn't fashionable is beyond my comprehension.  If you ask me, a woman with gray hair who is healthy and takes great care of herself can be just as beautiful, vivacious and sexy as a 20 year old. So for all you beautiful gray-headed women, who have made the courageous choice to stand up for your authenticity, I say, YOU GO GIRL!!

1/09/08 update:  check out the blog Going Gray

Comments

[Mo]

How is that when men go gray they are considered 'distinguished' whereas when women go gray the aren't.
I'm of the opinion that women can be as beautiful as men are distinguished.
And neither have to be old.

[irshah]

Vitiligo caused from fautl of your normal defense mechanisms against infection. The body starts producing antibodies against pigment producing cells of its own skin.
Vitiligo is anomaly of internal immune system of human beings, and currently there are no precise ways to treat this process.
Although the complete annihilation of the vitiligo from your body is a complex matter, whereas original color of skin can be get again.
Thanks to for this info
http://www.antivitiligo.com

[Jessie B.]

Hi. :) I'm a 27-year-old woman from the Canadian prairies. My hair started graying when I was 11 1/2 or so, in grade 5 or 6. Here is a recent photo of myself that I don't mind sharing. :)

> http://tinyurl.com/yns7rf

I wish I'd had the courage at 12 to stay natural, as the beautiful woman in the photo you posted above did. It looks great!

My own story:

As a child, classmates had a fondness for teasing me about my stubborns grays, so to remedy this situation my mother and I began dying it dark to match the rest of my hair. It was not until the age of 19 that I finally decided that I was tired of dying my hair just to please others; if I was going to be accepted, I wanted to be accepted as I truly was. ;) You could say that I never touched the bottle again.

There is also history of early graying on both sides of my genetic lineage, and my birth father began graying at the age of 17 himself -- however, when younger siblings from my mother's second marriage began sprouting colourless hair as well, it became clear that I had not inherited this trait from my father's side. This revelation also indicated that we had misunderstood my maternal grandfather's transformation: he'd been a soldier for the Canadian army six years during WWII, and due to the hardship that those men faced, it was assumed that his transition from raven black to snow white was directly related.

Today we know better, and of yet others who donned this family trait. It's unique and I'm glad to have inherited it -- grandma jokes or not!

I've got some more to say, so I hope you don't mind this response being long. :) I've tried to keep an eye on new information related to premature graying as it surfaces, for my siblings, future children and health necessities. I'll outline some of that here, (hopefully it will be of use to one of your readers).

Premature graying (or canities, pronounced "kah-nish-eez"), can come about for various reasons, and in a young person may indicate a deficiency in vitamin B12. The deficiency may be present for several reasons -- among them a vegetarian diet without proper supplementation, or B12 malabsorption which can further indicate other health problems which should not be ignored, (see pernicious anemia, Crohn's disease, vitiligo, and forms of albinism). The disease Progeria (also known as Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome) would be quickly evident in infancy as it causes children to age at a rapid rate, and so can almost without exception be ruled against as the cause of white hair in an infant.

I happen to have pernicious anemia, and have found that there is much more information on the Internet than once was available. In addition, there are social networking groups for those living with the disease. These serve to help individuals cope with anything from the most difficult of symptoms, to simply having that sense that there is someone out there who really understands.

I mentioned the dermatological condition "vitiligo" before. Usually, patches of grayed hair will appear along the hairline if present, and this will be accompanied by patches of depigmented skin. Fox Media Network anchorman and reporter Lee Thomas is an excellent example of someone with this condition, as he recently revealed in several television interviews. In public and on air, Thomas wears make-up to match his original skin tone, but underneath he is slowly losing his pigmentation.

You can find one of those interviews here, (and it's an extremely entertaining one, I will add), on the website for Canadian media network CBC's popular news-talk television program "The Hour", hosted by George Stroumboulopoulous:

> http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1932

A second (and very famous) example of an individual with vitiligo is found in the case of Michael Jackson. Lee Thomas addresses this in the above referenced interview.

Gray hair in women is indeed a hot topic today, and I hope that society's opinion will continue to improve in this area. If ever we need an example of a young woman who triumphed over popular opinion with her silver locks, let's look to musician Emmylou Harris. She never let it stand in her way, and aren't we glad to have her with us. :)

Cheers!
~J. Brown

[theuglyearring]

and it's a wonderful, empowering feeling to embrace the gray!

great post btw!

[Terri Holley]

I love it! You are beautiful, Ginger! Thanks for sharing! Anyone else want to show off their gray?

[Ginger]

When my hair began to turn gray in my mid-30's I felt very pressured by society to cover the gray, and did so for nearly ten years. My original hair color was a very dark brown, but to look more "natural" (as if artificial hair color really ever does look natural!) I had to settle for a mousy brown color. Finally I had enough of this nonsense ten years ago, when I was 44, and simply allowed Mother Nature to color my hair.

[IMG]http://i8.tinypic.com/8f2gmxw.jpg[/IMG]

You can see my naturally silver gray hair, which I have cut in an inverted bob style that appeals to me. I love my hair color, and do not feel "old" for displaying my gray. I have had other women approach me at work and elsewhere to compliment me on my hair and to let me know that I've inspired them to quit coloring their hair. It's a good feeling.