Color Me Beautiful

Yesterday was hair color day. Sad to say, but now that I'm on this road to 50, hair color day is coming much more often than I like. If I look at the monthly cycle, First week: Heaven, Second week: Is that gray already?, Third week: Holy crap!, How am I this gray after three-weeks, Fourth week: Back in the chair. I’m getting the distinct feeling that it will soon be a much tighter turnaround; can it be that I only last 21 days without silver highlights?

I don't even want to think about the dollars involved in keeping me a youthful chocolate brown, nor do I have any interest in embracing the "silver fox" hiding just beneath the surface. Don't get me wrong, some women, well at least the "mature" magazine models and maybe Dame Helen Mirren (when you have a title you can probably get away with anything) look sophisticated and even a little sexy, but this is not a look for me. I am also not attempting to transition slowly to blonde. I don't think they have more fun, and my attempts at even a Halloween wig were highly unsuccessful. If I remember correctly, and I do have photos in the basement to prove it, all the women in my family for many generations started as brunettes, and yet when they journeyed to 50 and beyond they were all colors of the rainbow, except brown. My grandmothers both went the "frosted" route; I'm guessing something similar to lowlights and highlights, and very big back in the day. First of all, the only frosting I want is on a cupcake or straight out of the bowl on a giant spoon and secondly, it never produced a color or pattern that existed in nature. My 96-year old Mama Nona (she preferred the Italian version of "Bubbe" when first becoming a grandma at 45), spent many years as a redhead and it wasn't a bad look for her, she does have crystal blue eyes. That is, until her husband (my step-grandpa) insisted that they could color at home and it would be cheaper. Cheap red is, well, cheap red, but she is always beautiful (don’t think she's reading the blog, but I'm covering just in case). In the last few years she has gone “au-natural” and she really is a silver fox. On a side note, I will tell you that she still drives herself to the beauty parlor (licensed renewed for the next decade I think), lives alone as in "not assisted”, and has a French manicure weekly (sometimes with varying colors on the tips). I’m off on a tangent for a change, back to hair color. My own beautiful mother (who is "following" my journey) is a gorgeous blonde, not done at home and suits her perfectly. I hardly remember the raven-haired days and her fair complexion was apparently destined for blondeness (no, we do not look like mother and daughter).

Most of my peers (fellow women creeping around 50) have stayed fairly true to their birth shade. There are a lot of highlights, and a tone or two up and down, but mostly we haven't totally succumbed to the gray. I do notice that the blondes get much blonder and some brunettes attempt an auburn hue (I get very cranky when I sense red is appearing; separated from a few stylists who didn't get that message loud and clear – also lovely on others, just not me.) I also think that there comes a time when no matter how inky black your pigtails were (and I was quite dark) you have to stay a few degrees lighter than Morticia and please, don't attempt the eggplant tones, purple is not a natural hair color. I did experiment with henna in the college years, not in a Goth way, just in a darker than nature, doesn’t look right way. It was also self-applied; ruined a few towels and bathroom rugs in the process, but I was not emotionally or financially ready for in-salon color.

Which brings me to the hidden truth of beauty parlor application (when did “beauty parlor” become politically incorrect and re-name themselves as “salons” or “spa” in my case). If the paparazzi want to get some embarrassing celebrity photos, they should stop going to the beach looking for cellulite shots, they should stake out the stylists chair and wait for the color to get applied. This is a woman’s lowest beauty moment, almost as if we have to suffer total humiliation in order to walk out the door feeling good about ourselves. The application process seems innocent enough, the brush slowly painting the magic potion on to your roots, not the best look, but not completely depressing either. And then the waiting begins. I am left with a stack of magazines and a beverage (I now focus on my iPad, really falling behind on recent issues of Cosmo and Us weekly). A casual glance in the mirror and I tumble into my worst self-image nightmare. In my case, my hairline has now turned a deep, dark color of asphalt, which extends a bit onto the forehead. The blondes are more of a tawny, curry-like color (they are not spared this experience). The un-applied areas have puffed up in fear of the liquid tar and I look like a dark-haired Albert Einstein (minus the brain power and the mustache). As a brunette, I am at least spared the added level of ugly; the silver foil. For any men out there who haven't stopped reading yet, if the lady in your life has multi-dimensional blonde locks (like an adorable blonde child after a day at the beach), it happens in a disturbing ritual of bunches of hair brushed with color and then tightly wrapped tinfoil packages which completely encircle the head, and it stays that way for what seems like an eternity. My hour in transition is far from stunning, but I do not look like I am trying to communicate with space aliens. Not surprisingly, we all do our best to avoid direct contact with the mirror, which is not easy in a room with wall to wall mirrors combined with thousands of wattage of "flattering” fluorescent lighting. The ladies who wear glasses are the luckiest; if they are removed for the process, they are staring into a blurrier picture of horror. The rest of us do our best to look away, concentrating intently on our reading materials and avoiding interaction with other patrons. All conversation is limited to the stylist who occasionally stops by to make sure we are cooking with appropriate speed and coverage.

Finally, the egg timer hits zero (or someone remembered that I was done) and I am escorted to the sink. All painful memories are washed down the drain and I am rewarded with an excellent scalp massage while lounging in an electric, massage chair. Thankfully, the shampoo girl does not completely soak whatever clothing I am wearing under the stylish polyester cape. I do have to endure the less than pleasing hairline scrub of leftover dye, pretty sure I am losing a few skin cells in the process.

My return to the chair slowly rebuilds my self-confidence and soon enough my mahogany brown locks are unveiled complete with a professionally blow-dried youthful bounce. I pay the “bounty” for my temporary beauty and tip generously for the opportunity. Back in the car, I adjust the rearview mirror to evaluate my renewed hairline, and promise myself to never again let it get to the "oh my g-d, I'm grey already" stage. I won't write about this every three weeks, but you can be sure I will be in that chair again too soon, fighting Mother Nature, one follicle at a time.