How Embracing Gray Hair Has Changed My Life

Welcome to Ethels Tell All, where the writers behind The Ethel newsletter share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging. Come back Wednesday each week for the latest piece, exclusively on AARP Members Edition.

“Hey there, Little Orphan Annie. How’s it going, Brillo Pad? Did you put your finger in a light socket?”

Growing up, I was teased constantly about my hair. The kids would laugh, thinking their taunts were so clever. I’d roll my eyes. I’d heard it all, a million times over.

As we know, kids can be brutally honest. And my hair did fit their various descriptions. It was coarse, curly and completely unmanageable. Wide enough to warrant a ZIP code all its own. Keeping it under control was a full-time job.

When I was a child, my mom was the hair foreman. She would vigorously brush my hair before glopping every strand with Shontex, a gooey hair product similar to the pomade Danny used to slick back his hair in Grease.

When I went away to Girl Scouts camp for the first time, my best friend helped with my ponytail because my mom wasn’t around. Fortunately, neither was the Shontex.

During high school, in order to produce straight and silky strands, my sister and I would iron each other’s hair, much to the shock of our grandfather. Of course, ironing bangs was an impossible task. And on a rainy day, well, an iron was no force against the frizz.

In another attempt to tame the curls, I slept with giant rollers, struggling through the night to keep my ears from getting pinched. Or I would sit under a space helmet masquerading as a hair dryer, which burned my ears to a crispy red.

Those were all temporary solutions. The coarse curls refused to be controlled.

To add to my misery, the color of my hair was a mousy brown. Even the chlorine-green tint I acquired during summer was better than my natural shade. I doused it with peroxide and sat out in the sun, hoping for highlights.

Ethels Tell All

Writers behind The Ethel newsletter aimed at women 55+ share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging.

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Back then, I thought beautiful meant long, blonde, straight hair. Even if a boy wanted to caress my locks, his fingers would be held captive in my forest of frizz.

And so the decades passed.

I eventually let it go curly, began a futile search for the perfect hair product, and applied “grownup” hair dye to turn it an ash blonde.

Every six months or so, my good friend would tell me that I needed to color my two-inch roots. She would also remind me to pluck the two-inch hair sprouting out of my chin. That’s what good friends are for, right?

I did pluck that chin hair, but decided not to color the ones on my head. Instead, I chose to let it grow and see how it looked.

To my delight, one day the mirror revealed a very white head of hair, reminiscent of my grandfather’s. And as so often happens, during this whitening process, a serendipitous moment changed my life.