My New Year’s resolution was to be more mindful. I’m managing that, just. My other one was to write more often. It’s 22 January and this is the first time I’ve managed it. Not managing that one, clearly. Got to become more disciplined on that one. Maybe just a little bit more mindful . . .
I posted on Facebook a comment about my hair. I’m currently sporting a chin length bob, the longest it’s been since Moo was born. And it is annoying the pants off of me. However, everyone keeps saying how nice it is and how it has knocked 10 years off me. One friend even went so far as to say that I looked 12. I’m sitting here pondering why that is such a good thing? Obviously, I took these comments as the compliments they were meant to be but why is looking so much younger than I am such a good thing?
Why is it that everyone wants to look 10 years younger or younger at all for that matter? Why is it not okay to look our age? Who decided that? Why is it that every time I try to grow out my greys, everyone I know recoils in horror at the thought and does not hold back from trying to discourage me? It’s almost as if they think it’s contagious. If one person grows out their grey, then another might do it, then another and who knows where it will all end. It’s not a disease, it’s grey hair.
It’s a bit like shampoo. Shampoo has only be around for 100 or so years. It was only in the sixties that people were recommended to wash their hair more than every two weeks. Advice that was driven by the burgeoning beauty industry who were making billions of dollars while they encouraged us more and more. The fact that you can wash your hair with a load of other, natural alternatives as opposed to a bottle of detergent is never mentioned, of course.
I’ve had 42 incredible, amazing years of life. Jam packed with love, laughter, tears, sadness, trauma, adventure, hard work, heartbreak, risks, excitement, all that life has to throw at you. Why can’t I look my age and be proud of it without all and sundry telling me that’s wrong? Why do people fear getting older so much when it is such a gift? I just don’t get it. If it’s driven by a fear of approaching death, well, no one wants to die but, equally, there are so many who have not had the chance to live as long as I have. Surely, in trying to look younger, dress younger, be younger, are we not denying the years that we have been blessed with? I’m sure my lovely friends, Pippa and Duncan, would have loved the chance to be 42 and be proud of it. Alas, they were killed in a horse riding and car accident respectively before they could.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to look haggard and tired, like an old witch. I love make up, glamming up, as much as the next girl. However, to me, that’s about looking the best version of the 42 year old me that I can. God knows, I don’t want to look older than I am. Who the heck wants to do that?! I’m not that much of a freak. I’ll happily look 50 when I am actually 50. As for dying my hair, I get bored. I get bored of brown, of red, of purple. I have the attention span of a gnat so I dye my hair to shake things up. In doing that, I do end up dying my greys which then proves difficult to grow out again. I don’t like roots. Not because they show that I have grey hair, I don’t care about that, but because being me, they make my hair look unfinished, incomplete. I can’t stand not finishing something that I’ve started. I like having all in one colour hair, I like having brown hair with grey streaks; I do not like having half and half. It looks weird.
Am I the only one who doesn’t care about getting older and looking it? The only reason age bothers me is because my long sight is deteriorating rapidly and I ache in places I never used to but that’s what happens as you age. So what? I’m still relatively healthy. I just want to look like the 42 year old mutant, mother, wife that I am. What is so wrong with that?
I’ve got a good mind to chop my hair off and grow out my greys . . . but then I’d have to deal with all the negative feedback (my mother would go ape) and that really does put me off. I sit here thinking all of this and, yet, find myself reluctantly playing along to avoid all the aggro. Coward. No one’s perfect. Ugh.
Mutant, Mother, Wife 