POV: Dye, shaming.

Is gray hair is the new breast feeding?

Remember how I said I wasn’t going to be triggered?

I have waited. I have breathed. I have sought counsel. Now I’m going to take a deep breath and talk about it. Hopefully calmly and rationally. But let’s see!

Getting patriarchy-advancing hair extensions. Cut along dotted line, paste to cork board + throw darts. Please use safety precautions.

First wave

My son Jack is 21, and my first husband and I adopted him from Korea at 5 months. This adoption agency required that one parent stay home for a year. We decided that would be me; the PR firm where I worked would hold my job.

My son was and is a joy in so many ways, and I relished so many moments with him and his wild little heart. Surreptitiously removing his booties as I pushed him down the sidewalk in a snow storm, laughing at his own antics. Pointing at various cabinets from the high chair and saying “dees” over and over — (me: “you want this? this? this?” Him: “DEES!”). He was like miniature snowman of exuberance, round face, round little belly, a magnetic force pulling in everyone around him. But also, I felt so lonely as a mom. And exhausted! Physically and mentally wiped. And lonely!

On top of that, there was so. much. judgement. Strangers constantly telling me something. “Put a hat on that child.” (He was in a hooded snow suit with the hood up at the time.) “You’re using THAT bottle?” And on and on.

At some point, I heard about a local walking group for moms, and I was SO excited. The idea of talking to adults while we walked with strollers seemed magical. I put on my sweatsuit du jour and my Pumas, a little cover up, some tinted Burt’s Bees and a swipe of mascara. After just a few minor pleasantries, my first new “friend” looked me up and down. “Wow,” she said, “you’re wearing … makeup?”

I laughed nervously and mumbled something like, “I’ll do anything to make myself feel like I have my shit together.”

And she said, smiling into her stroller, “I’m just really, really focused on this little guy.” Ok, ouch.

Was I taking it too seriously? Reading too much into it? No, it happened over and over. “You still go out? Hmmm. I don’t want to miss a moment.” “You’re going back to work? I’m scared for what that does … developmentally… to them.” “You saw a movie!? The only thing I’ve seen in ages is Blues Clues! I’m just so overwhelmed with mom-ing!”

The New England town where we lived was wealthy and highly educated. On the sidelines of whatever game the kids played, these moms talked about their kids’ percentiles and achievements. Esoteric parenting books and diets that couldn’t be achieved by going to standard supermarkets. The forever horrors of sippy cups beyond age X and diapers beyond age Y.

These moms had decided to stay home. Had the adoption agency not required it, I wouldn’t have chosen to. Maybe I judged the women on the sidelines as much as they judged me. It took me time to truly perceive feminism as the right to our choices, rather than as aligned with a decision to work in a particular way.

Bad, bad blonde

I’ve written about what being blonde means to me. And I’ve been honest about its combination of appeals, including, yes, my own push/pull around aging.

But after all these years of finally, in so many ways, letting go, after my induction into the give-no-fucks era and beyond, I didn’t see what was coming for me: the gray hair movement.

Look, I support, for example, my friend

Christian Botefuhr

, who’s talked about going gray. Nikol Johnson Sanchez. Grece, whom I’ve admired since she very first came on the scene. This is a choice for these women and many more, and I celebrate them and their choices. It’s just not for me. For whatever reasons! Because it doesn’t appeal to me for me! Because (I’m sure) I’m conflicted about reconciling the visible, aging self with the way I feel inside, and because there is something I enjoy about the practice of tending to myself in this particular way, and others, even as it’s expensive and time consuming.

And the mere fact that it IS a choice, that is a privilege! A massive fucking privilege. Let’s not forget that. I am guilty of forgetting it from time to time, I’m sure.

But one thing these women I mention don’t do is act as if I am less-than for choosing not to go gray. This is true even though my choice is not a choice they’d make for themselves. For whatever reason. Just as theirs is not for me.

Choices

The piece that got me riled up (which I’m not going to call out specifically, because that’s not even what this is about, is it?) talked about the author’s decision to stop coloring her hair. (Great!)

After decades spent complaining to her husband about how much the upkeep entailed. (Yup!)

Of course I support that. I never once looked at an image of a woman with gray hair and thought “oh, she really should dye it.” Choose your choice! What got me was the implication in various passages, that gray hair is “better than” dying. And that dying one’s hair is part of an enablement of the patriarchy.

Jessica DeFino

in her Hey Ugly column, talked about the Silver Sisters movement with a reader who wanted to stick to her gray guns in the face of judgement. And I resoundingly agree! Stick to your guns. And we shouldn’t sit in judgement. And I’m excited for this movement that is normalizing gray as an option at any age. And also believe that perceiving the good in gray shouldn’t be limited to traditionally stunning, thin, well-lit silvery women on IG.

But what about someone like me who chooses NOT to go gray. Is that no longer ok?

A Well + Good post noted that “Embedded within the Silver Sister movement is an analysis of beauty standards and expectations placed on those who identify as women.” I see that. But the newsletter that got me going contained this implication that doing what I choose to do (which includes being blonde, sometimes wearing makeup, experimenting with face stuff, a breast reduction, and basically whatever the F I want) is actively … “bad.” As if my choice is part of maintaining the patriarchy and her not doing so is all about bravery.

Versus the Silver sister cited in Well + Good: @silverstrandsofglitter. “‘It’s about remembering that we each have a choice in how we want to age, no matter how that looks.’”

That triggered thing

I read the piece that got to me again. And again. Am I triggered? After all, this newsletter uses the first person. So it can be about her personal journey and feelings, right? Why am I making it about me and getting all hung up?

For one thing, I think there’s a naivety in saying “oh one person’s personal journey.” First of all, we’re publishing here. But also, many of us have reacted to, for example, watching Tibi style and hearing Amy say “I don’t want to look like a country club mom. No judgement if you do, it’s just not for me,” and similar. Because of course there’s judgement in it. (And I have noticed a change in this language BTW. Good.) And also, this writer explicitly says that she hopes to inspire others.

And then there are some of the words used to depict choices like mine. Words like “indoctrinated,” “brainwashed,” phrases like “choosing to partake in a hierarchy that keeps others below you” and “inherently racist and patriarchal.”

This is what I suppose gets to me, hitting me in a vulnerable place. Because, to exist as I do, I rely on my belief that I can be a kind, attentive human and even a feminist, while doing a privileged thing because I like it. And if someone countering that belief makes me so upset, I must be torn, or fearful, or have that privileged-guilt.

And this is her space, where she gets to speak exactly as she wishes. Something a friend here reminded me early on when I was, actually, reacting to some language I deemed ageist and said so and that particular comment was removed.

But then also this is my space (but I view it as our space, not to be corny, but I do) and I do feel compelled to share how it makes me feel. (This work on what feeling triggered is and how to deal with it — is work for me, and will be ongoing work.)

The thing I want to scream from the rooftops

But THIS is the thing I want to scream.

WE. NEED. EACH. OTHER.

Remember breastfeeding?

Our son Jack came here on soy milk. And I was relieved not to have to make a choice. (La Leche and others say an adoptive parent should be pumping in advance of adoption so they can nurse an adopted baby.) Breastfeeding gained some recognition as a feminist issue. Some would say not enough. And then we shamed one another for not breast feeding. But the most recent study I found determined what you might expect, that “[p]erceived pressure to breastfeed was associated with increased anxiety, stress and birth trauma symptoms … this may be due to difficulties living up to the ‘breast is best’ ideal.”

We need each other. I think judgement and infighting and snark and whatever else is a (risky) waste of time.

At the present moment, our right to bodily autonomy is under attack.

Do we really want to spend time slicing the cucumbers, thinly dividing our limited power in judgement of one another? I love it here, but there is a lot of this! She’s “less than” because she dyes her hair. Or doesn’t. Because she’s not a “serious” writer. Because she shops too much. Because she shops fast fashion (I am guilty of this!). Because she makes shopping too much too big of a deal. Because she doesn’t work outside the home. Or because she doesn’t stay home.

And it doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion on those issues; I am NOT saying that. Or that you can’t explain the why of your own personal choice. Or that, when real injustice is happening, we don’t get f*cking angry! I just think the language (yours and mine!) can be free of “bettering” ourselves while lessening others.

And ironically, I believe this judgment about whether or not someone can be a blonde feminist (or a whatever feminist) hampers our ability to protect access to the rights we MUST protect. It risks turning people off and making them decide they’re excluded from the movement. It falls into the stereotype people hold of self righteousness among progressives, which risks our being tuned out. Feminism should be viewed as mainstream and for all. Bodily autonomy must be.

It is certainly possible that my being artificially blonde is one small part of a collective hindering of our shared advancement when it comes to expectations about women and aging. It is also 100% certain that it contributes to my joy, the foundation from which I feel best able to say things I need to. I choose my choice. And I celebrate yours.

XO,

Rachel