3 days Ago By Catherine Greer
This story is part of the March 30 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories . Long before COVID-19 inspired women around the world to ditch the dye, I chose to go grey at the relatively young age of 48.
I made the decision at Hyams Beach on the NSW South Coast, while holidaying with my husband and our two teenage sons. Yes, I do look older than women who haven’t ditched the dye. But I’m not invisible.
Credit: Merilyn Beretta Walking the sugar-white sand, I was irritated at my hair whipping around my face in the wind. I scraped it back into a ponytail and mentioned to my husband that I was worn out by so many things, but it all seemed to centre – ridiculously – around my hair. I complained about how often I had to colour it to hide my grey roots.
For 20 years, I’d been colouring every eight weeks, then six, now four. “When’s it going to end?” I moaned. “Will I have to hide my roots every two weeks?” “That’s 211 colours,” my husband said, doing a rather unhelpful, half-joking calculation.
“Close to 650 hours in a salon. You’ve spent 80 workdays colouring your hair.” I silently willed him not to do the maths on the cost.
Then one teenage son kicked a soccer ball in our direction. “Is that your real colour?” he said, pointing at my roots. “Silver? It’s kinda pretty.
” Loading I’m not sure how long I’d have taken to stop colouring my hair without that offhand compliment from my son. I liked being blonde and fitting in with the younger school mums. But slowly, I started to feel like I was impersonating my younger self.
My face was growing older, but my hair was trying to be 30. I didn’t know what I looked like any more. I’m not sure why I made the decision so early.
All I knew is that I wanted to find myself: reveal those roots, somehow get to the bottom of myself externally to find the truth of myself internally. Paradoxically, I sought authenticity from the outside in. At first, no one noticed my grey roots because we all have them, all the time.
It’s a tacit agreement; I won’t comment on yours if you don’t comment on mine. But soon my friends asked what I was planning with my hair. When I told them I’d decided to go grey, no big deal, just tired of colouring, their eyes would fill with concern.
“Don’t do it, Catherine!” they pleaded. “You’re going to make yourself look so much older.”.
