Ladies of a Certain Age ~ for those invisible powerful, dynamic, vital women

“Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it, my hair

I want long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty,
oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen,
knotted, polka dotted, twisted, beaded, braided,
powered, flowered and confettied, bangled, tangled, spangled and spaghettied.” Hair

This was a fun blog to write.  I started humming “Hair”, remembering old ad slogans, considering different comments about hair I had heard from friends, and seeing visions of friends’ hair.

Before I get into all this fun stuff, I have two announcements.  First, writing two blogs a month is just too much.  Starting now, I will be sending out one blog a month, generally “around the 15^th” of each month.  Second, I am no expert or judge about your hair.  What you do with your own hair is your business.  I am just commenting on a “few” observations.

First, in days-gone-by, probably nothing defined more a “lady of a certain age” than her gray hair.  Gray hair in our culture is synonymous with old age, which is bad bad!  Perhaps, I should have called this blog  bluehairs.com.  Yes, I remember seeing ladies of my general age with blue hair.  Someone told me they probably put “blueing” in their hair to even out the gray. (Perhaps, you don’t know or remember what “blueing” is.  Well, my dear, you can still buy it at King Soopers. I know because I have many cotton curtains (old house lover – remember?)   When they get a little dingy, I just put a little blueing in the rinse water and they become as white as snow. Then, I starch them. Starch? Maybe defining starch is a subject for another blog!)

Second, I think it is a sad commentary on our society that after Clairol introduced a home coloring system in 1956, by 1962 70 percent of American women were coloring their hair!  Ten years later in my graduate school advertising course at the University of Colorado’s Business School, we were dissecting ad slogans.  I am naïve . The Clairol ad slogans “Does She, or Doesn’t She,” and “Do Blonds Have More Fun?” I thought were just rhetorical questions.  I never got the sexual innuendoes until that class discussion.

Third, before I get into hair coloring, I want to talk about cut and perms (permanents) and loss of hair.  I remember my mother and her sister, my beloved Aunt Jean, talking about when you turn 40 you should no longer have long hair. “The long hair length draws attention to your sagging jowl and the crows feet around your eyes,” or something like that they would say.  Well, you know there is a little rebel in me!  I remembered this comment.  In my 50s, God, please forgive me, I grew my hair mid-back!  I thought it was fun.  I no longer had to dry my hair (the bob is my classic style) with a hair brush in hand turning it quickly to get “volume, body and curl! “  It was fun to twist my long hair every which way and tie it up.  Now, I have a pixie cut.  It suits me.  I have a little pixie face and don’t feel like “messing with hair.”

In our culture, the cut of the hair and hair styles often signify sexual preference and sexual behavior. God know what our culture has thought of me with all my various hair styles.

Perms?  Oh, my poor mother!  She was born with perfect hair –like her great-granddaughter Lucy, now age 6, and her second daughter – auburn color, with some curl, and that elusive quality, body!  But, that first daughter — the one with straight “dishwater blond hair” and who argued voraciously about getting a “ducktail” Imagine!  – at age 4, to boot!! – was often more than she could handle.  (Yes!  I am adding getting a ducktail on my bucket list!)  Well, I remember the “Tonette Permanent for Little Girls by Toni” Perhaps, you too got one. It didn’t stay in very long and my mother finally gave up on perming my hair. We settled on braids.

In the early 90s, I had “fat hair.”  My poor hair stylist – the perm “fell out” several times.  She really had to hone her craft to get those curls to stay in.

I’m so glad I quit perming my hair.  I might of turned into one of those ladies-of-a certain age who have short, permed, dyed hair, which remind me of  my poor lemon geranium plant I forgot to water.  The plant turned brown, shriveled and its little short leaves looked crispy.  Friends who have hair like this tell me they don’t know what to do with their hair.  When I don’t know what to do with my hair, I “Google” the problem.  It is amazing the information I have found on the Web under the subject, “Hair styles for older women.”

I had two teachers that wore wigs: one in the fifth grade and one in the tenth grade.  When Mrs. P. got mad at Thomas Jefferson High School, her wig would go flying.  My heart goes out to women who loose their hair.  What is the solution?  I have seen bald women who have had chemotherapy.  They don’t look bad to me. Actually, they seem to exude beauty.  I hope our society can accept bald men AND bald women someday.

Let me put it out there:  I do not color my hair.  I sure would in an instant if it looked ugly, or if I still had a job with the least bit of uncertainty, or if I did not feel good with gray hair.  In my 50s, I told myself if I turned “mousy yellow gray” like my paternal grandmother (a heavy smoker and drinker), I would color my hair.  I hoped I would turn snow white like my maternal grandmother.  (She put a gray rinse in her hair because she thought white hair was ugly and made you look old.)

I think in the next five to ten years I will have white hair; now, the little bit of brown hair I still have reflects off my white hair.  I guess you could say my hair is light ash blond, according to the Miss Clairol Hair Color chart I found online. Really? Miss Clairol? I would call it ash silver.  I know the words, “white,” “silver,” and “gray” are not in Miss Clairol’s vocabulary.

I am now officially retired, so I don’t have to worry about the real threat of prejudice against older women in the workplace. Two of my friends purposely color their hair because of this threat and because they know our society equates gray hair with old age, which equates to slowness and incompetence – you know.

Frankly, I don’t color my hair for two other reasons.  The first reason is financial.  I remember taking a pre-natal class at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Denver.  The instructor was talking about the price of formula and suggested we check it out at the supermarket so we could be prepared when baby arrived.  Well, at age 22, in aisle 8 of my local King Soopers, I made the decision to nurse my baby.  I told myself “why dry up free milk!?”  I had the same reaction when I found out how much it would cost to have my hair colored at a salon.  The second reason is time.  I am just not one of those women who love to go to the beauty shop.  I just could not see me having to go more often than I do now.  Also, I was leery about coloring my hair at home.  I tried when I was a senior in high school and it was a disaster. Finally, I know women who color their hair and those who spend big bucks getting it colored.  In both situations, their hair has no light or shine to it.  One of my friends calls this type of hair, “dead hair.”  I don’t want hair like that.

Some of my friends who color their hair want to stop.  But, how do you stop coloring your hair?  Do you let the roots grow out about a quarter of an inch and then get a really short hair cut?  I know women in their late 80s and 90s still coloring their hair.  I don’t know how my former mother-in-law did it.  She told me after”Pa” died, she quit coloring her hair brown and making homemade bread.  She had beautiful silver gray hair and lived to almost 100, enjoying life.  Her husband died when she was in her early 70s.

I was at an international conference this past summer.  The chairman of the board got up to give a speech.  She was a lady of a certain age.  Well, she had that “shriveled-crispy-brown-colored, lemon-geranium-type of hair” I mentioned above, along with the “dead hair” phenomenon, plus little brush strokes of electric blue and pink all over her head.  It was very difficult for me to concentrate on her speech because I kept thinking of a young librarian at my local library who had just those color strokes in her hair. I must be old.  I wanted to tell both of them how unprofessional they looked and that Halloween is in October. Copying the young – whether it is holes in the knees of blue jeans, wearing very tight leggings, or dying your hair the colors of the rainbow – just does not make a woman look younger to me.  What’s wrong with being a lady of a certain age, after all?

“Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair.
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen.
Give me down to there hair, shoulder lenght or longer
Here baby, there, momma, ev’rywhere, daddy, daddy.

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Hair, hair, hair. Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it, my hair.”Hair

Bet you can’t stop humming either.