Many women - like me - discover the first gray hairs in their early 40s. At that time, I could not yet reconcile my actual attitude to life with these first messengers of old age. Until my late forties, therefore, I tried to maintain my blond hair through blond highlights and recoloring the roots. Monthly! This was expensive and, over time, ruined my hair. It became brittle, lifeless and lackluster.
So around my 50th birthday, I started to come to terms with my gray hair and what it meant to me. What was I afraid of? Does "gray" really make you old and ugly? Did I want to continue to bow to a prejudice without reflection? Why should gray hair look interesting and distinguished on men and bland and unsexy on women.
I found it was time to stand by my gray hair and also my age. I cut my hair shorter - about chin length - let the roots grow out and put only a few blond highlights in between to visually connect the silver-gray with the blond hair.
Still, the transition period wasn't easy. But I had decided and firmly resolved to persevere.
During this time, of course, there was a lot of well-meaning advice from friends who thought gray would age me visually by ten years. But when, after about a year and a half (16 cm of hair growth), I had finally gone completely gray, I received more and more compliments. In fact, my hair did not turn gray, but silver blond. The rest of my blonde hair blended beautifully with the new white strands. Some even asked which hairdresser had made me this great hair color.
But how did the men react to my change?
Because ultimately it is the men and not the women for whom we want to look attractive and sexy. To my surprise, I even got more compliments with my silver-gray mane than before.
Only once did I have a relapse from gray to blonde: because of a modeling job for a hair care company, I had to have my hair dyed blonde. The company promised me that the blond color would be completely gone after five washes. A lie! I had to wait again one and a half year, until also the last blond had grown out. That was terrible!
Blond! I was not that anymore. I looked boring, arbitrary, nice, but just not like ME anymore! Because also my soul had become "silver" in the meantime. Older, more mature, more self-confident!
Even the colors of my clothes looked better and more alive with my silver-gray hair. So I can only recommend to any woman on the cusp of gray hair:
Go for gray, go for silver!
It's worth it.....And the great thing is that every woman, starting from her original hair, will develop her very own, new hair color. Because gray is not just gray. From black-gray to brown-gray to silver-blond and white, everything is possible.
Here's some more info: why hair turns gray in the first place:
The production of the pigment melanin decreases with age. At the hair root there are cells called melanocytes. They produce melanin. The melanin is deposited in the horny layers of the hair and gives the hair its color. With increasing age, however, the melanocytes stop producing it. The missing melanin is replaced by air bubbles. The hair turns white. Since not all hair turns white at the same time and mixes with hair in its original color, all hair initially appears gray. So in itself there is no gray hair but only white hair.
