There’s one particular strand of hair, right in my parting near the front on the right. She’s been growing for a while now… going on eight months. She started off small and kind of curly. Then she went a little bit kinky. Now, finally, she’s long enough to be somewhat tameable. She’s grey, and I’ve plucked her out before, but when she sprouted back up again, I decided it was time to let her stay.
When I officially became beauty editor of Fashion Quarterly, my friend and former magazine colleague Emma sent me a message: “Can you please consider writing an article on going grey and how you have made this decision by thinking of YOUR FUTURE SELF?” Her caps lock, not mine. “Honestly Lucy, your framing of that has truly changed how I think about the entire concept.” So here I am.
Last year I turned 40 and, for almost the whole of my 20s and 30s, I had long, blonde-balayage locks. Something came over me when I was around 37 and I chopped all my hair off into a chin-length bob, which meant most of my blonde got chopped off with it. I was equally as surprised as everyone else that when I started growing my hair out again, I was, in fact, a brunette. Even my mum was shocked at how dark my hair was. Turns out I actually quite liked the brunette.
What surprised me more was how many silver flecks were scattered amongst the brown. Tiny pieces of tinsel, my own natural highlights. I soon realised that the only way to cover the greys would be to dye them. And I couldn’t shake the thought that if I went down that route, like my mother before me, I might be taking on a life of plastic gloves and box dye. Regrowth cover-up. Standing in the bathroom with an old towel around my shoulders. Most likely when the greys began to outweigh the browns, having to grow the whole lot out from root to tip anyway.
As I spend my days writing about the latest beauty products and treatments, I am very aware of the small decisions we make in the name of looking “like ourselves”, and how easily those decisions can become unconscious obligations. There is nothing wrong with dyeing your hair, of course. I have loved being blonde, and I may well love being blonde again. But I also know myself well enough to recognise the difference between something I do because it brings me joy, and something I do because I’m afraid of what will happen if I stop.
It was this vision of my future self, perched on a stool inhaling the fumes of a box of L’Oréal Préférence, that made me decide to let nature take its course. I am aware that it’s easy for me to say this now, when the greys are still few and far between, but as the little grey hair from the beginning of this story has taught me, the longer you leave something alone, the more it starts to feel like it belongs.
After many years of covering her greys with brown, then blending them with blonde, my mum eventually decided to grow out her grey hair. Hers is that amazing icy-white tone, the kind that has made strangers stop her to comment on it. I can only hope I have inherited the same whiter shade of grey.
I truly believe grey hair is beautiful. Every time I see a woman who has perhaps gone grey “early” and embraced it, or an older woman who has been grey for decades, I feel inspired. Not because she has opted out of beauty, but because she seems to have opted into herself.
Is it a bit shallow to be thinking this much about my hair? Maybe. But hair is never really just hair. It is the version of ourselves we present to the world, and the version we slowly become when we are not trying quite so hard to interfere. And when I’m completely grey and no longer have to think about this at all, I have a feeling I’ll look back and be grateful that I thought about it now, and simply let it be.
