<p>Scouting trip report: Just back from my daily Target run. I scoured the store for men with bangs but, alas, I spotted nary a one! I did, however, see several women “of a certain age” in the hair color section! ;)</p>
<p>My MiL did not start to go gray until well into her late 60s. As someone who began to acquire white hairs in my mid-twenties, I assumed she colored her hair. It was a humorous exchange when she told me her one “widow’s folly” (shortly after my F-I-L died when she was 55) was to dye her hair an unflattering red. By way of encouragement, I suggested that she could easily have her hair stylist restore her usual color. She laughed saying that she would have never chosen her “mousy brown” original color, it was natural. My husband is following suit. Just approaching 60, he has only a few gray hairs.</p>
<p>I starting covering my gray in my late 30s and I know that at some point, I will want to let it go natural. I am mostly salt these days and I worry about how to manage the transition. It would have been easier to have never colored it from that point of view.</p>
<p>I just got back from my hairdresser tonight and she remarked how much body and texture my hair has since it went salt and pepper and she’s right. She’s been cutting it for a long, long time so knows. One of the things I love about my hair is that it was stick straight and thick and waist length in the Peggy Lipton teen days when you wanted straight and thick and long and now it’s got body to it from the gray. When I was coloring back in my thirties to cover gray it was still totally straight and it was difficult to get much of a decent haircut outside of a Dorothy Hammill type cut and I was pretty much limited, now I can do all kinds of things shortish to longish (I’m in the longish phase right now) and there is body and texture but really no frizz to my hair. Gray is not all bad.</p>
<p>I use to say I’d go “natural” when I entered an independent living facility. Now I think I could try when I retire, sometime in my 70’s. </p>
<p>I don’t get to my hairdresser as often as I like, so I color in-between. My hair has gotten curlier with age; has that happened to anyone else?</p>
<p>“rrah- when you get a few more that you can’t hide as well, but you’re still generally ok with what you see, take a photo. Then, when you’re ready to color, you can tell your stylist to take you back to the future”</p>
<p>Actually my plan is to keep a bit of hair after a cut and then tell the stylist to match it. I like the picture idea though. </p>
<p>bookworm–I do notice that my hair texture is changing–a bit wavier and curlier. When I let it air dry, it’s pretty evident something is different.</p>
<p>My hair has much more body though some of that could be that it doesn’t have the weight it did when it was longer. With the humidity we are “enjoying” now I hardly recognize myself.</p>
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<p>I was the girl in the back of the school bus secretly hating you and your perfect hair while mine dissolved into loose waves in the humidity. Now I realize that wavy was just as pretty, but tell that to my 15 year old self.</p>
<p>Man bangs here in Colorado…looks weird</p>
<p>Grey hair AND man bangs!
[Pictures</a> & Photos of Former Sheriff Tillman Napier - IMDb](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/media/rm4027758080/ch0294416]Pictures”>http://www.imdb.com/media/rm4027758080/ch0294416)</p>
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<p>Yes! I cut my hair short a few years ago before my hip replacement to make it low maintenance during rehab (I guess that would be my “old lady short” cut) and was shocked when I saw how curly it was! Keep it short and curly now and love it…still coloring it, though. I don’t plan to stop until I retire, whenever that is.</p>
<p>Total opposite here. I had thick curly very dark brown hair as a child/teen (when stick straight hair was in vogue, and we “ironed” it, or wore huge can curlers). Now it is very thin, almost totally white, and stick straight (when curl is in vogue of course). Worried about the thinning, but love the color.</p>
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<p>It’s actually not true that everyone over 50 with no gray hair is dying it.
I have a couple of friends who are older than I with no gray, who do not color. They are not the norm, of course. It’s genetic fortune, I guess.</p>
<p>I don’t care if people know I color my hair. But if you saw me and didn’t know my age, you would not guess that my hair color is not natural. My colorist is that good, and the fact that my hair doesn’t take color in a uniform manner makes it look just like it did when I was young.</p>
<p>I have a friend who I always assumed dyed her hair. She was growing it out recently and mentioned that she wanted to contribute to Locks of Love one more time before she started to gray. I was very surprised.</p>
<p>There are MANY excellent colorists out there, and anyone whose hair looks obviously dyed or all one tone is not going to a good one. They should also be able to help you match color to your skin tone, age etc. I’m not sure you can get that with $1.50 a month, frankly.</p>
<p>I think a lot depends on where you live and what you are doing at this stage in life, but I honestly can’t think of any women over 50 that I encounter professionally that don’t color or highlight their hair. Maybe one or two with gorgeous, short silver hair- but that is the rare exception.</p>
<p>Sally Jewell doesn’t color her hair & she is pretty typical of women in the northwest I think.
[About</a> Secretary Jewell](<a href=“http://www.doi.gov/whoweare/secretaryjewell.cfm]About”>http://www.doi.gov/whoweare/secretaryjewell.cfm)
I doubt Senator patty Murray does either.</p>
<p>I work in higher ed. Lots of women there don’t color their hair.</p>
<p>Yes, garland. I work in higher ed too and a lot of women don’t color their hair. Many of them look great too.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4 brings out another point. I think many women in politics do not dye their hair either. </p>
<p>There seem to be regional and occupational patters, that is very interesting.</p>
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<p>I don’t either, actually. I remember those ads from the seventies, “Does she or doesn’t she?” As if it was a big secret to be kept if you dyed. Most women I know who are my age and older (late 40s) do dye (or at least highlight) and don’t bother to hide it. Hair color is an accessory, like makeup. It doesn’t matter if it’s not “natural,” as long as it looks good and up-to-date. It’s not about hiding your age so much as accessorizing your look and bringing vibrancy to your face. Younger women are very cavalier about experimenting with hair color. I don’t see why older women can’t do the same.</p>
<p>I’m a “faculty wife”, live in a college town. The majority of my close friends here don’t dye their hair. When I moved here in the eighties (from southern California) I was surprised at how little attention people paid to fashion trends, hair styles, etc. Now I embrace that attitude, though I am always mindful when I pack for a trip. ;)</p>
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<p>Back in the first 2/3rds of the 20th century there seemed to be something sort of borderline scandalous about a woman coloring her hair. My grandmother (born in the 1880s) would never have dreamed of coloring her hair. She would have considered that such a thing would somehow put her in league with prostitutes or something. My mother (born in the mid 1920s) did color her hair in middle age, but it was sort of a semi-secret, at least it was in the early years. By time she stopped coloring and let it go gray in her old age, coloring was no longer a Big Deal.</p>