Doing it Gracefully

Or in my case, GREYSfully.

So here’s the thing. I have grey hair. I started going grey when I was just seventeen, although you couldn’t really tell because I started colouring my hair when I was fifteen, and two years later I was a big ol’ goth with this on my hair.

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Ahh, Nice’n Easy Natural Blue Black. The box didn’t look like that in my day.

I still remember the day I found my first grey- I was getting ready for school and when I parted my hair, there in the 1/4″ of roots I saw it. At the time I thought it was hilarious and ran downstairs to show the only other person who was awake at the time, my dad.

“Look, look! I have grey hair!”
“Um, you have black hair.”
“Dad. The roots. THE ROOTS!”

Of course, my natural colour was a light ash brown, so against the black my roots always looked a little grey, in fact my friend Megan Bot used to can me Ol’ Grey Roots.

Of course, what was funny to me at seventeen was less amusing in my twenties, when the grey hairs started multiplying OUT OF CONTROL. I still kept coloring my hair to cover it up until I was 24. I was pregnant with Symphony and had the brilliant idea to grow my hair out my natural colour. I figured if I looked hideous and huge anyway I might as well have terrible hair as well. Oh, what a brilliant plan! This only lasted for a few months before I ended up bleaching the crap out of it, dying it bright red, and adding black streaks. In the last weeks of my pregnancy I got sick of the whole situation and decided to shave my head (I used to do this every time I had a bad hair day), but then I lost interest halfway though. I then put half a box of blue-black dye on my roots (Feria, not Nice’n Easy), which bled into the red ends, turning it various shades of purple. Combined with my irregularly shaved head, the results were… let’s say avant garde.

(Note: I know a lot of people say you shouldn’t colour your hair when you are pregnant because you’ll absorb chemicals through your scalp and have a deformed baby. Before colouring my hair I talked to my doctor and she said it was fine. What you definitely shouldn’t do while pregnant is PERM your hair, because it won’t work, like the curls won’t take and you’ll just have straight hair still. Actually, you just shouldn’t perm your hair ever.)

In the time since Symphony was born I’ve definitely noticed a dramatic increase in the quantity of my greys- I guess kids do that to you (unless you are my sister, who has two kids and no greys at all- at least, I think she still has no greys- she colours her hair too). In the last few years I found myself having to colour my roots every three weeks. I had to do it at home with drugstore colour because going to the salon that often would be both inconvenient and ludicrously expensive, but I started developing a sensitivity to the dye, so then I started going to the salon but yeah, it was inconvenient and expensive. I switched brands of drugstore colour and it was okay, but I still had to do a root touch up every three weeks since the difference between my dyed, dark brown hair and natural light brown and grey roots was so obvious.

Last year I decided enough was enough and it was time to lighten up my hair. I didn’t want to bleach and strip out my whole head and end up with mush hair, so instead I got an ever-increasing series of highlights until my hair was close enough to my natural colour. The last time I got it done the stylist suggested that instead of getting more highlights we just do an all over dye that matched my natural colour. It looked great and I was really happy with it… until three weeks later when my roots showed their grey heads again. Because of course, the thing with all over colour is no matter how close it is to my original hair, it’ll never match up with the greys.

The last time I had my hair coloured was at the end of January (I did put a temporary colour over it before going on vacation but it is loooooong gone- the sun and sea took care of it) and my roots are CRAZY long, probably he longest they’ve been since that failed growing out experiment in 2001. Let’s have a look, because really, what better way to start your day with a close up of someone’s scalp?

Old Grey Roots

Soooo all those light hairs that look blonde? They aren’t blonde. They’re white, and grey. You can sort of see where the line between coloured and non-coloured hair is (hint: it’s where the white & grey stop) but idk, from further away (the way most people would see me) I don’t think it’s too obvious.

Old Grey Roots

(Please excuse my sleepy, no-makeup face. Oh, and the fact that I’m wearing the shirt Taylor was wearing yesterday, haha.)
I mean yeah, it’s a little obvious, but not as badly as when my hair was dark. I know I posted a few weeks ago that I was thinking of going dark again, and I think that if I was to do another all-over colour I would. But I’m just sick of the endless upkeep! Doing root touch ups every three weeks is ridiculous. I’m starting to think seriously again about just growing it out. Maybe getting some more highlights to make it less boring and help blend the lighter roots with the still-darker ends, but no more all over colour for me, and maybe when it’s all grown out I can be as fine as this silver vixen.

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I figure at the rate my hair is greying I should be there by 2012! No, just kidding.

Sort of.

3 Replies to “Doing it Gracefully”

  1. Personally I kind of like grey hair and I think it looks kind of cute if the grey hair is a little visible! Besides, I wouldn’t even notice them unless I’d stare at your scalp (as I did in this post, but hey, you offered! :D). I think it looks nice with the light brown.

    My brother’s hair at the top of his head are getting more and more grey, he’s 28 now, I think he looks very nice!

    1. Thanks! I’m definitely hating my greys less these days.

      Sometimes I think I must be the craziest person on the internet. HERE’S A CLOSE UP OF MY SCALP. HEY EVERYONE, I”M POSTING A BILLION PICTURES OF MYSELF WITH NO MAKE UP. Hahah, I guess I just keep it real.

  2. I think I have grey hair. IDK. But I’m bored of the black and now my hair is very dark brown with some highlights that actually look like streaks of grey. HAHAHAHA, is funny, no?

    Is your hair going silver in patches, or scattered all over? Cause with patches you could just get some paler highlights and blend it in.

    Also, I remember visiting Granddad Pawlik in TO and he had that full head of gorgeous thick silver hair and it looked freakin’ Amazing. Of course by the time I met him he was all brain damaged and child like and it was really sad and upsetting and weird to spend hours with him every day. But his hair looked great. He apparently went silver in his 20’s.

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