Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Grey and the Pandemic
For most people, seeing the first grey hair is more often than not a long-remembered unwelcomed event. In my case I recall thinking that surely I was not yet old enough for it, yet there it was in all its glory, and as if it were lonely it soon invited a bunch of others to sprout at a dizzying speed. Thankfully for some of us someone had been wise enough to realize the commercial benefits of color in a bottle.
            But as the fellow said, in this time of pandemic we will soon see everyone’s true hair color, and we are. Even celebs on television who are working from home and who have had no access to their hairdressers cannot fully hide the fact that like the rest of us, they too are getting grey.
            After this is all over, will women, and men, see the benefits of going the natural route? Perhaps they should. One case in point is a doctor I know who has just turned 50 and whose long hair is almost all white. She looks fabulous and is proud of her natural look. To color or not to color is a personal choice, of course, but I say if you want to ignore the grey reality on the road of life, go for it.
However, you can’t avoid noticing that time is marching on when your child begins sprouting his own grey hair. In my case, this happened relatively early because his father’s side of the family has had a long-standing affair with grey. My son prefers it to seriously thinning hair, a trait of my side of the family. A nephew of mine who is in his 50s regularly shaves the hair on his head. Like many young men these days, the shaved head suits him very well, and he doesn’t have to worry about grey or fuss with a comb-over!
The out of sight, out of mind approach of color in a bottle can only last so long. One my sisters went natural – read snowy white – after decades of being a blonde. An unexpected benefit is that she looked younger.
Go figure!