By Kelley Bowden
Redlands News Collective
Deciding to stop coloring my hair turned out to be far more emotionally exhausting than choosing a husband, buying a house, or deciding whether to have children.
Apparently, gray hair was where I drew the line.
Looking back, it's ridiculous. It was only hair.
At the time, however, it felt like a full-blown identity crisis.
I've always had a head full of hair. Thick, long, and just wild enough that on humid days it resembles Medusa's—minus the actual snakes.
I firmly believe my mother's aggressive brushing techniques somehow encouraged my follicles to multiply. She brushed my hair with the enthusiasm of someone training for an Olympic event.
Miraculously, I survived.
By the time I was 25, every hairdresser I visited was engaged in an ongoing battle with the gray skunk stripe that insisted on appearing on only one side of my head.
Why only one side?
Apparently, even my gray hair had a personality.
In the beginning, salon visits every five weeks seemed perfectly reasonable. Then the cost slowly grew until it rivaled the national debt. What a ridiculous amount of money just to hide something that was determined to return every month.
Think of all the truly important things that money could have funded — like my acrylic nails that were far too long, painted in colors not found anywhere in nature, and covered with enough glitter to safely guide aircraft onto a runway.
Going to the salon wasn't an appointment. It was an endurance sport.
First came the 50 pieces of aluminum foil until my head resembled a Thanksgiving turkey ready for the oven. Then the beautician rolled over a gigantic heat lamp that looked as though it had been retired from a 1950s science experiment.
Balancing on three wobbly legs, it was positioned just inches from my head—close enough to cook me, but hopefully not close enough to ignite me.
I sat there feeling like a French fry waiting to be served at McDonald's.
What annoyed me most wasn't even the money. It was the time.
Three hours wrapped in a plastic cape while breathing enough chemical fumes to remove paint from a garage door.
Meanwhile, the conversations around me became their own form of entertainment.
Within minutes of sitting down, perfectly normal people began sharing details about their marriages.
Their finances.
Their children.
Their medical procedures.
Their family feuds.
Their suspicious neighbors.
And, more often than anyone should ever expect ... Their colonoscopies. Nothing was off limits.
Somewhere along the way I became convinced salon owners secretly pumped a mild narcotic through the air vents.
It is the only logical explanation.
People who wouldn't tell their own siblings these stories somehow told complete strangers while someone painted chemicals onto their heads.
This ritual continued for decades.
Meanwhile, society invented smartphones, electric cars, artificial intelligence, and medical procedures that extended human life.
Yet somehow ...
Nobody figured out how to color gray hair in less than three hours. Eventually, with the enthusiastic encouragement of my two granddaughters, I decided to do the unthinkable.
I was going gray.
At the time I was approaching 55 and had started noticing something fascinating: young women were intentionally paying to have gray hair.
Silver streaks! Smoky highlights? Designer gray?!
Women were spending hundreds of dollars trying to achieve the exact color I had spent 30 years desperately trying to eliminate.
Their gray looked healthy. Stylish. Elegant.
Intentional.
I wasn't sure mine looked like any of those things.
But after years of marriage, raising children, surviving corporate America, and building a successful career, I figured I'd earned enough confidence to wear my own natural hair.
Or had I?
The early months were rough. Every morning, I stared into the mirror asking myself the same question.
“What in the world am I doing?”
Ironically, growing out gray hair cost even more than coloring it. Every salon visit involved another strategy.
Another blend. Another transition. Another bill.
Every morning, I studied my reflection trying to decide whether I looked sophisticated and confident.
Or simply like a woman who had forgotten to schedule her next appointment.
Only my granddaughters never wavered.
“Keep going, Grammie!”
Easy for them to say. They weren't walking around with six inches of silver roots and a full-blown identity crisis.
Our society has always struggled with aging — especially when it comes to women.
I remember seeing cartoons years ago that portrayed older women with gray hair twisted into tight little buns, tiny glasses perched on the ends of their noses, and bodies exaggerated for maximum humiliation.
Standing beside them was an older man who somehow looked distinguished.
Wise. Charming.
The message was obvious.
Men aged. Women got old.
Somewhere along the way, many of us quietly believed it.
About 14 months into my gray hair adventure, I returned to the salon for my monthly contribution toward my hairdresser's child's future college education fund.
Month after month we had worked carefully toward my goal, inch by inch.
The gray was finally winning.
My hairdresser, Dora, talked nonstop. She could have announced the Kentucky Derby while highlighting hair.
Between snips she updated me on clients, marriages, divorces, grandchildren, neighborhood gossip, and one particularly alarming story involving poisonous mushrooms, beef stroganoff, a younger lover, and a husband who may or may not have narrowly escaped becoming tomorrow's obituary.
Normal salon conversation.
Then something caught my eye in the mirror. At first, I thought Dora was touching up a darker section.
Then my brain slowly connected the dots.
Wait ...
Wait ...
Those were my roots.
MY ROOTS.
Dora was painting dark brown dye directly onto the beautiful gray roots we had spent 14 months growing.
I let out a shriek that caused heads to swivel throughout the salon.
Time stopped.
In that moment, I ranked Dora's mistake somewhere between war crimes, stealing candy from a baby, and not returning your shopping cart to the cart corral.
Dora froze in place holding her dark brown bowl of dye.
“Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry!”
Then she added, “This is heartbreaking for me.”
Heartbreaking ...
For her?
FOR HER?
I had just watched 14 months of progress disappear under a paintbrush.
Some things in life are forgivable. This was not one of them.
Our long salon relationship ended shortly afterward.
Did I take it as a sign that I should give up? Absolutely not.
If anything, it made me even more determined.
I found a new stylist.
A new salon.
And started growing it out. Again.
By then I had survived the awkward stages, the self-doubt, and more than a few moments when I seriously considered abandoning the whole gray experiment.
Finally, several years later ...
Mission accomplished.
I had a full head of long, natural gray hair. To my surprise, I loved it.
The shades of silver, white, and darker strands blended in a way no salon formula could duplicate.
I even became an expert on purple shampoo — a product I never imagined would become part of my beauty routine.
Women now stop me and quietly confess they'd love to quit coloring their own hair.
I understand exactly how they feel. Today I'm completely comfortable with my decision.
Would I ever go back? Not a chance.
But I also respect every woman who chooses to color her hair.
Or not.
Wear it blonde. Brunette. Red. Silver. Purple, if that's your thing.
Just make sure it's your decision. Because in the end, going gray was never really about hair.
It was about deciding that I was finally comfortable aging on my own terms.
Now...
Before you start thinking I've completely embraced the natural aging process, I should probably confess one small detail.
The money I no longer spend coloring my hair hasn't been saved. It has simply been reassigned.
To Botox.
Apparently, I have no problem sticking needles into my face.
The good news is it takes a whole lot less time than sitting under that heat lamp.
A girl must draw the line somewhere.