I often read about women deciding to stop coloring their hair and letting it grow out naturally: there are even Facebook pages dedicated to it.  They have decided to take the plunge.  And, I know so many women who look fantastic in their gray/white hair. They say they feel liberated, that they feel free.  Hooray!  They are standing up to the evil hair dye companies and I say yippee for them.  But, it seems like we applaud the women who go gray as if by doing so they are more authentic, more real, more attuned to their inner self.  Well, that is a bunch of hooey!  It is hair color for goodness sakes.   A murderer could have gray hair.  A thief could have gray hair.  How does that make them better, and more importantly, how does that make me, a hair color enthusiast, less in touch with myself?

I get that it might be a nice change, not to have to sit in the chair at the salon for an hour waiting to process.  Congratulations! And, it might be freeing to feel like everyone now sees you as you were meant to be seen.  But come on! Letting your gray shine through doesn’t make you Mother Teresa. It doesn’t mean you are a better woman than the one sitting next to you who is all colored up. Having your gray show doesn’t make you more in touch with your inner self, it doesn’t mean that you are mentally dealing with your age in a positive way better than those of us who color our locks. It means that you just stopped getting your hair dyed. It’s like not getting your nails done. Big deal!

I have been feeling like a little bit of a phony because I bought into all that, “Look at me. I am so secure with myself that I don’t cover my gray hair anymore.”  You are not embracing your age any more than I am, with my gray covered. For all I know, the same women who are striking a blow for the women’s movement by going gray may be at the plastic surgeon’s office getting their faces filled to erase the lines.

This is all I am saying: I color my hair and I don’t think that makes me less authentic than the next woman.  It doesn’t make me less empowered.   It makes me a woman with brown hair. Will I be turned down for the next March on Washington because of my highlights? I hope not. What I want us to all see is that every woman is part of the story. “I take pride in who I am and I color my hair.” There, I said it. It feels good to get that off my chest and out in the open.  Now that is freeing.

When I decide to stop coloring my hair, I will. But until that time I don’t want to feel like I am ashamed of my age. I am just meeting it at the shampoo bowl!