Embracing Grey Hair in My 30s

How young is too young to make the transition to grey hair?

I transitioned to grey hair at the sophisticated age of 33. The age of wisdom, as some would argue. It was as if I was coming full circle, returning to my authentic self, except that my authentic self had changed in the meantime, and I was no longer fully acquainted with that person staring back at me from the mirror.

Dyeing one’s hair — it seems like such a small frivolous act, but it’s a deeper reflection of what’s going on internally. At least for me, it has always been the case, and I can only speak from my experience.

Early on, I thought nothing of it. It was something women my mother’s age did right before major holidays and vacations. Women in their forties would line up at the hairdresser to get the same exact Princess Di short haircut, along with a perm and the universal plum hair color that was extremely popular for reasons I will never understand. It was like a rite of passage for them, I suppose, a validation of their maturity and status of excellent working mothers. Practical yet stylish. Identical, yet belonging.

I used to have dark luscious hair and a lot of it. It gleamed in the sunshine. I guess you can’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone. At the time, I had a major problem with taming new growth and flyaways, but it never occurred to me to dye my hair. It seemed vain and pointless, like applying foundation on pristine skin. Yes, I was kind of a hippie.

But there was one reason for which I did find hair coloring justified: grey hair. After all, that was what everyone was so afraid of, appearing old in front of their friends and peers.

I was lucky enough to grow up in the 90s in an underdeveloped country, where you could still see how a woman would naturally look like in her middle age without any makeup, hair dye, fake tan, or lip injections. Those women worked exhausting jobs, had babies, and never quite lost the baby weight. Their faces were riddled with wrinkles and brown from the summer sun. They didn’t exercise — the mere concept would have seemed hilarious, since all their free time was filled with chores and working their land — and despite that, they were always a little plump. Their clothes were often unflattering and yes, some of them had short and wiry grey hair. I can understand why anyone would want to avoid looking like they did, aged and tired. But at least they were real. Their exterior spoke about their lives.

Now, our exterior speaks about what we’re trying to hide in our lives. Hurt, impatience, fear, and an everlasting need to fit in.

This is how my former hippie self decided to buy her first box of hair dye: I had been going through a bad break up, the very first one of that magnitude. It was so bad that it caused me to lose a lot of weight, and my hair, apart from becoming brittle and dull, had grey strands scattered everywhere, thanks to my dad’s genes and some very stressful years at uni. I ran into an old friend and he made a remark about how white my hair was getting, and that pushed me over the edge.

A few days later, I was now thinner, my hair shorter and jet-black. I was a whole new person! The old me was dead and gone. So original.

A decade of dyeing my hair followed that single decision. Once you start this, there’s no going back, at least that’s the consensus, otherwise, you’re “letting yourself go”.

The neverending battle of hiding my roots was tiring and expensive. As a frugal person with a knack for DIY, I did them myself at home for a few years, which left my head an uneven mess and pushed me to seek help from professionals. My visits to the salon were long and tedious, but I felt like they were required of me. After all, the vast majority of women I knew dyed their hair. It wasn’t a trend anymore, it was — it is an everyday reality. So I felt somehow obliged to keep up my appearance, but those pesky white hairs would now show up in a matter of a couple of weeks.

And there was another thing, that for me personally never made sense. It was as if, no matter the shade I picked (and I tried many), it would never match my complexion. I would look in the mirror and something wouldn’t click, I felt like a doll wearing a wig, alienating and unnatural.

I believe there’s nothing like mother nature matching our pigments into one unique blend of character — the color of our eyes, the tone of our skin, the way we blush, our hair, and how they all change with the seasons.

At 33 years old, I ended a decade long battle with my natural hair. Don’t think too highly of me, I wasn’t being that brave. In fact, I was a newlywed on our honeymoon, too tired after all that hair ordeal I had to go through for the wedding and thought — you know what, I’ll just skip this month. He’ll still love me, how bad could it be?

Six weeks after my last trip to the salon and I was shocked by the amount of white hair I was noticing on my scalp. All these years, my body was changing underneath all the paint, and I failed to witness that change. I missed out on that journey, and it still makes me sad.

My husband fully supported me to embrace my natural color. He even boasts it was his idea, when in fact I was asking for permission. That’s how scary this seemed to me — I needed permission from him, from my family and friends, from society.

Transitioning to grey hair is no joke, if it were easy, everybody would do it. I was constantly worried about what the world might think of my demarcation line and for a while never ceased to offer explanations about the state of my hair to people who didn’t actually care. For two years I avoided my picture being taken and pretty much stopped posting selfies on social media.

I fell into the trap of bleaching and toning and abusing the remnants of my dyed hair to make it fit in with the new grey, and lost a lot of time in the process. I was impatient, filled with self-doubt and perpetually embarrassed. My transition was messy and I wish I’d owned it more, but one thing kept me going — I was curious about what I actually looked like, and that curiosity carried me to where I am today.

I am now one year dye-free, and my hair gleams in the sunshine again. It’s healthy and strong, it matches my face and delights me with its playful highlights and lowlights. Every once in a while I look in the mirror and feel like it’s aging me, and then I realize how ridiculous that sounds. Because I AM aging and transforming and it’s a beautiful process. That’s just society messing with my inner thoughts.

I suppose I’m lucky that it suits me and it looks somewhat eccentric for my too-young-for-going-grey age. As for people’s opinions, although I might have inspired some women to follow my example, they don’t affect me at all. In my country, it’s not in our culture for strangers to generously give compliments or hand out unsolicited advice, so I’m good.

My friends and family, they know me for who I am and love me unconditionally. I’ve yet to win the approval of my grey-haired grandmother, but hey, she needs to accept that there’s room for one more fabulous grey woman in our tribe.