"You have a grey hair", boldly and brashly he declared. "WHAT?" I gasped. You must be joking? Where? I frantically combed my fingers through my hair, angling both eyes to the right of my head in fear of pin pointing that one and only silver thread. I have auburn hair: ginger nuts are not supposed to get grey hair. At least that's what they whispered to me in the delivery room 30 years ago - that midwife led me into a false sense of security. My hair is supposed to solely turn white when I'm 80. Of course there was the follow up retraction of "it must just have been the light", but the haunting news was enough to encourage the little grey mites to multiply. My youth had been robbed before my very eyes. 30 now seems like retirement and cuppas at the garden centre; not that there is anything to fault with a cuppa and scone for three quid, but it wasn't the way I envisioned my 30's.
I would proudly chirp to my friends that I had not yet discovered any silver threads in my mop and reassure them that their latest L'Oreal colour was a masterpiece. Now I was the lady wandering the hair dye aisles contemplating how to cover up my first sign of old age. There have been other signs of old age creeping in of late - hangover recovery time is now at least 72 hours while bedtime rarely surpasses 8:30pm - but nothing quite catches you like the first grey hair. Teachers at school overly facilitate sex education lessons when they should be preparing girls for the financial cost related to maintaining their natural hair colour. Please point me in the correct direction of an education board that needs to hear this pitch.
From one silver fox to any others out there, why are women willing to pay so much money to cover their natural hair colour? Shouldn't being natural count for more rather than projecting a false image of oneself? Of course this is grey hair related but on a similar note, false eyelashes and fake tan qualify. Maybe I was old before my silver fox days as I feel too strongly about women using fake beauty to be something they are not. It sounds like when the Hush Puppy phase enters, I will be skipping to Clarks.
Instead of engaging in a daily stare out war with my silver thread in the mirror, I could flip this aging process on its head and claim that my inner wisdom is now externally apparent. If George Clooney can pull it off, why can't I? My years of navigating the world are reflected in my hair. I should be jubilant that I am far enough over the hill to wear purple tights and not give a shit about it. Anyway, I'm off to buy multiple packets of polo mints, sit on a bench, and offer them to perfect strangers.