Love this post! I have so much to say on this topic! First, I wholeheartedly agree with your point about location impacting beauty standards. I was raised in IA, moved to Southern California for 10 years and now have lived in MN for 10 years. Talk about different beauty standards - SoCal is all about blondes with fake everything. I’m 44 now and stopped getting my hair done about a year ago. (I do my own cuts and don’t dye it at all.) Literally, I’ve never been happier with my hair. I hated the experience of going to the salon and I never left there fully satisfied with what I had done anyway. Recently, I heard Professor Tressie McMillian Cottom talk about how blonde is actually about white supremacy and that made so much sense to me. Now we have Press Secretary Barbie out here posting selfies wearing a t-shirt that says “make America blonde again.” So they are just saying that sh!t out loud at this point.
I am 100% not surprised by what you’ve shared here— but yet is so validating to hear! And— it makes sense that blondeness along with thinness go hand in hand with white supremacy and the patriarchy. I was always told my curly hair was “messy and unprofessional” which is a whole other horrific story, and one that made me really wake up to how horrible POC are treated in my early 20’s after growing up in a predominantly white and Christian area.
“Grey hair does not make you “old” (and there’s nothing wrong with being old) otherwise we wouldn’t get grey hair in our 20s/30s/40s.” — totally on board with “let the greys be”! I got my first couple of them when I was 17 and we’ve been coexisting happily and gaining more community since!😁
Absolutely love! Completely resonated with me why you don’t dye your hair. I have curly hair and only dyed my hair for my wedding many years ago because it went with the look I wanted. I don’t bother with it. I like my natural hair color because it suits me and I don’t care about my greys.
This was an amazing read, thank you SO much for sharing your opinion and wisdom on your beauty decisions. I really appreciate it! (Loved reading about your recs at the end too!)
Thank you for creating a post that talks about not dying your hair! I don’t think people talk about this enough. I’ve always had a few grays here and there that I would pluck out. But once I turned 40 (for real, it seemed like immediately after my birthday), they’re all over my head now! So I said eff it, why fight it? Embracing my grays definitely feels more empowering compared to wanting to cover them, esp since I didn’t regularly get my hair dyed before that. Why start now?
I agree!! I would love to see more people visibly talking about the sexism and ageism around dyeing our hair. So happy to have a fellow salt + pepper friend! <3
Love your grays! I stopped dying my hair in 2020 with the pandemic shutdowns, and it's so nice to not have to not be spending so much time doing something I wasn't really enjoying.
I've been putting off reading Manacled for years because of the length, but I think I need to finally dive into the world of Dramione.
I so appreciate you being so open!!! I can't imagine the pressure as a female, beauty, content creator but I am so grateful you don't let it effect you. I used to love my hair colour (dark, chestnut brown) and then ~38 I started dyeing it. For 9 years, I dyed and dyed, ever 6 weeks, then 5, then 4 - and it looked flat, like shoe polish, so dark and lifeless. I would do my roots at home myself and then 2x/year treat myself to "in salon" to correct the mess I was making. I HATED sitting in that chair for so many hours! My last colour was Feb 28, 2020...COVID hit, I went cold turkey and 5 years later, at the age of 52, I am natural grey. I don't LOVE it, certainly not the way I loved my hair when I was younger, but I didn't LOVE it dyed either...and I love the way that I'm choosing to embrace my age. I don't look 30 - I have wrinkles and dark spots...and grey hair :) I love my skin care regime and I had IPL 4 years ago and likely will again (pasty white and very little sunscreen in my life!) - beyond that, I am who I am !
Soon I will figure out how to master my curly hair - luckily, with perimenopause, I only wash it once/week so I style/straigthen it once and it's so easy for another 6 days. I am not there with my curls!
Wow— I love this!! I think it was so brave of you to give it up after so many years of dyeing it. How incredible to regain all of that time and money back into your life— I will happily use those funds for future skincare treatments!! <3
The pressure of Dallas is REAL. I’ve been dyeing my hair for a while now, and I still feel most at home as a blonde, but I recently went a slightly darker shade of blonde that feels much more low maintenance. Splitting my time between locations absolutely affects how I feel about myself in each place; Chicago is my sweet spot. I prefer to focus on skincare (+SPF!) and save the Botox money for martinis and fries.
I'm a natural light brown, and have never wanted to go blond, BUT I did start going grey at my hairline in my mid-20's - ugh NO WAY, so begin to spot-dye to this day (I'm 59). For me I think I'm not ready to go grey because I'm still haven't figured who I am, and thus be comfortable with it. If I'm lazy (read: covid), about 2-3 inches all around my hairline is super-silver, with the rest of my hair back there still brown. If it was salt/pepper instead I think I'd be OK with that.
Thank you for embracing your natural hair and being visible online. Each time I see how beautiful and youthful you look I think I could try and embrace my salt and pepper hair at 34 years old. I so appreciate your style and beauty content. Keep it coming! 😊
Love this so much, I don’t dye my hair either and it’s kind of disheartening how frequently people bring it up- older women for sure but also young children will comment on it! I think the more we normalize it the easier it will get to be yourself and have grey hair and I don’t understand the opposition to it. honestly I would never tell someone what to do with their hair!
Thank you I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that!
It’s truly so sad and scary to me that children don’t see women of all ages with grey hair!! Yet, I’ve had male friends who went grey in their 20’s and it’s totally normal— they’re a “silver fox.” Amen to this— I think more and more millennials and gen z will normalize it!
1. Team Gray Hair - ALL. THE. WAY! Love how you wrote about it and 1000% agree. Also praise husbands who support us!
2. #DRAMIONE - I've been waking up EARLY to finished Manacled. That's saying something! Almost done!
3. New PITT tonight 9pm!
And most importantly - THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I'm so glad we got connected and love chatting books!!! Thank you for supporting the Pod and Pepper Books!!!
Great post, I am 35 and embracing my greys as well. My mom has a very stripped down beauty routine and never dyed her hair, so I'm guess I'm lucky in that regard that I don't have family pressure to dye my hair. Now at work, I get a lot of the same comments as you from my older female coworkers about "could never stop" "would feel so old" etc. I view those comments in the same vein as body/diet comments... it's saying more about them than about me. I also feel sad for them that they are caught up in the cycle but everyone is on their own journey. I would have to have amazing skin and long wavy grey/white hair! so my focus is really on skincare and sunscreen so I can achieve my coastal grandma dreams lol. Planning to add in some more treatments now that I'm done having kids and solidly in my mid-30s. Love your substack as always!!
I totally agree with your sentiments about the comments— they don’t bother me at all. My goal is also having incredibly fabulous skin with grey curly hair— cheers to being glowing coastal grandmas!! <3 Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
Love this post! I have so much to say on this topic! First, I wholeheartedly agree with your point about location impacting beauty standards. I was raised in IA, moved to Southern California for 10 years and now have lived in MN for 10 years. Talk about different beauty standards - SoCal is all about blondes with fake everything. I’m 44 now and stopped getting my hair done about a year ago. (I do my own cuts and don’t dye it at all.) Literally, I’ve never been happier with my hair. I hated the experience of going to the salon and I never left there fully satisfied with what I had done anyway. Recently, I heard Professor Tressie McMillian Cottom talk about how blonde is actually about white supremacy and that made so much sense to me. Now we have Press Secretary Barbie out here posting selfies wearing a t-shirt that says “make America blonde again.” So they are just saying that sh!t out loud at this point.
I am 100% not surprised by what you’ve shared here— but yet is so validating to hear! And— it makes sense that blondeness along with thinness go hand in hand with white supremacy and the patriarchy. I was always told my curly hair was “messy and unprofessional” which is a whole other horrific story, and one that made me really wake up to how horrible POC are treated in my early 20’s after growing up in a predominantly white and Christian area.
“Grey hair does not make you “old” (and there’s nothing wrong with being old) otherwise we wouldn’t get grey hair in our 20s/30s/40s.” — totally on board with “let the greys be”! I got my first couple of them when I was 17 and we’ve been coexisting happily and gaining more community since!😁
I also got my first two at age 18 and had them for a solid 8 years before I got more. I love that so many of us are changing the narrative.
Absolutely love! Completely resonated with me why you don’t dye your hair. I have curly hair and only dyed my hair for my wedding many years ago because it went with the look I wanted. I don’t bother with it. I like my natural hair color because it suits me and I don’t care about my greys.
I love this entire attitude!! ❤️❤️
This was an amazing read, thank you SO much for sharing your opinion and wisdom on your beauty decisions. I really appreciate it! (Loved reading about your recs at the end too!)
Thank you so much for reading!! I am glad it resonated ❤️❤️
Thank you for creating a post that talks about not dying your hair! I don’t think people talk about this enough. I’ve always had a few grays here and there that I would pluck out. But once I turned 40 (for real, it seemed like immediately after my birthday), they’re all over my head now! So I said eff it, why fight it? Embracing my grays definitely feels more empowering compared to wanting to cover them, esp since I didn’t regularly get my hair dyed before that. Why start now?
I agree!! I would love to see more people visibly talking about the sexism and ageism around dyeing our hair. So happy to have a fellow salt + pepper friend! <3
Love your grays! I stopped dying my hair in 2020 with the pandemic shutdowns, and it's so nice to not have to not be spending so much time doing something I wasn't really enjoying.
I've been putting off reading Manacled for years because of the length, but I think I need to finally dive into the world of Dramione.
It’s a 925 page book that feels like 300!! I devoured it, and needed to know what happened yet felt like I could have read more.
I so appreciate you being so open!!! I can't imagine the pressure as a female, beauty, content creator but I am so grateful you don't let it effect you. I used to love my hair colour (dark, chestnut brown) and then ~38 I started dyeing it. For 9 years, I dyed and dyed, ever 6 weeks, then 5, then 4 - and it looked flat, like shoe polish, so dark and lifeless. I would do my roots at home myself and then 2x/year treat myself to "in salon" to correct the mess I was making. I HATED sitting in that chair for so many hours! My last colour was Feb 28, 2020...COVID hit, I went cold turkey and 5 years later, at the age of 52, I am natural grey. I don't LOVE it, certainly not the way I loved my hair when I was younger, but I didn't LOVE it dyed either...and I love the way that I'm choosing to embrace my age. I don't look 30 - I have wrinkles and dark spots...and grey hair :) I love my skin care regime and I had IPL 4 years ago and likely will again (pasty white and very little sunscreen in my life!) - beyond that, I am who I am !
Soon I will figure out how to master my curly hair - luckily, with perimenopause, I only wash it once/week so I style/straigthen it once and it's so easy for another 6 days. I am not there with my curls!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING!
Wow— I love this!! I think it was so brave of you to give it up after so many years of dyeing it. How incredible to regain all of that time and money back into your life— I will happily use those funds for future skincare treatments!! <3
The pressure of Dallas is REAL. I’ve been dyeing my hair for a while now, and I still feel most at home as a blonde, but I recently went a slightly darker shade of blonde that feels much more low maintenance. Splitting my time between locations absolutely affects how I feel about myself in each place; Chicago is my sweet spot. I prefer to focus on skincare (+SPF!) and save the Botox money for martinis and fries.
Yes to all of this— very relatable!! Also- I love Chicago! It reminds me a lot of Boston <3
I'm a natural light brown, and have never wanted to go blond, BUT I did start going grey at my hairline in my mid-20's - ugh NO WAY, so begin to spot-dye to this day (I'm 59). For me I think I'm not ready to go grey because I'm still haven't figured who I am, and thus be comfortable with it. If I'm lazy (read: covid), about 2-3 inches all around my hairline is super-silver, with the rest of my hair back there still brown. If it was salt/pepper instead I think I'd be OK with that.
I feel like I forgot to mention a very important piece of why I also went grey— I am the laziest!! lol I relate to that.
Thank you for embracing your natural hair and being visible online. Each time I see how beautiful and youthful you look I think I could try and embrace my salt and pepper hair at 34 years old. I so appreciate your style and beauty content. Keep it coming! 😊
Thanks for the kind words and for reading!! <3
Love this so much, I don’t dye my hair either and it’s kind of disheartening how frequently people bring it up- older women for sure but also young children will comment on it! I think the more we normalize it the easier it will get to be yourself and have grey hair and I don’t understand the opposition to it. honestly I would never tell someone what to do with their hair!
Thank you I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that!
It’s truly so sad and scary to me that children don’t see women of all ages with grey hair!! Yet, I’ve had male friends who went grey in their 20’s and it’s totally normal— they’re a “silver fox.” Amen to this— I think more and more millennials and gen z will normalize it!
1. Team Gray Hair - ALL. THE. WAY! Love how you wrote about it and 1000% agree. Also praise husbands who support us!
2. #DRAMIONE - I've been waking up EARLY to finished Manacled. That's saying something! Almost done!
3. New PITT tonight 9pm!
And most importantly - THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I'm so glad we got connected and love chatting books!!! Thank you for supporting the Pod and Pepper Books!!!
We were clearly destined to be friends!
destiny for sure!
Great post, I am 35 and embracing my greys as well. My mom has a very stripped down beauty routine and never dyed her hair, so I'm guess I'm lucky in that regard that I don't have family pressure to dye my hair. Now at work, I get a lot of the same comments as you from my older female coworkers about "could never stop" "would feel so old" etc. I view those comments in the same vein as body/diet comments... it's saying more about them than about me. I also feel sad for them that they are caught up in the cycle but everyone is on their own journey. I would have to have amazing skin and long wavy grey/white hair! so my focus is really on skincare and sunscreen so I can achieve my coastal grandma dreams lol. Planning to add in some more treatments now that I'm done having kids and solidly in my mid-30s. Love your substack as always!!
I totally agree with your sentiments about the comments— they don’t bother me at all. My goal is also having incredibly fabulous skin with grey curly hair— cheers to being glowing coastal grandmas!! <3 Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!