Last week’s episode of The Simpsons, “The Blue and the Gray,” featured Marge getting her first gray hair.
I turned to the boy: “what are they talking about? Marge has been gray as a mule since she was seventeen.”
Luckily, the episode explained that the hair dye Marge uses affects her memory. In this episode, however, Marge decides to go gray.
I found my first gray hair when I was sixteen. Or, to be more precise, Miranda Hoy found my first gray hair while sitting behind me in Spanish class. I discovered it when she yanked it out without warning me first.
I didn’t really worry about it. And then I proceeded to not worry about the other grays that came along. They were few in number and easily camouflaged by the rest of my mane.
Until a few years ago, when they increased in number exponentially. At first, I told myself that they didn’t bother me, and I believed I had earned them. I mean, I had a teenage child and a PhD–surely I had reasons to go a bit gray.
Unfortunately, people started reacting to me the way people started reacting to Marge when she decided to let her real hair color show. That is, people started commented on my bravery–usually people who did not really know me or who had just met me.
That really bothered me for some reason. I’m used to my hair being the first thing that people notice, but I wasn’t ready for my gray to be the first thing that they noticed. I wasn’t ready to be “admired” for letting it show.
There was only one thing to do–dye the very front and top of my head. You see, there’s way too much hair for me to completely cover all the gray–it’s too long and thick. And I hate spending time or money in a hairdresser’s chair, so I do a little root coverage every now and again for the parts that are most visible.
Is there still some gray, then? Yes, but it’s still mostly hidden in the curls. And should you chance to play with my hair and to discover that I have lots of gray in the back, as my lover has, you can ponder what happens when vanity meets impatience.
