Hands Down

I was supposed to write this blog post earlier but I was busy googling “thin, grey, short hair” images and this close to reaching out for help after experiencing overwhelming urges to recreate the photos I had found with the kitchen scissors.  Yes, I contemplated cutting bangs. No, this is not the first time this has happened. Luckily, some divine magic prevented me from doing it. Instead I brushed my hair, put on mascara and penciled in my eyebrows. CRISIS AVERTED.

But what is this weird obsession we have with our appearance dictating how we feel? I know all the stuff about the media and systems that were created and continue to be upheld that tell us we’re ugly, fat, old and need to diet, cut our hair, learn how to contour and of course BUY ALL THE THINGS that facilitate that. I’m talking about the root of it. Clearly these aren’t completely artificial thoughts planted in our brains by TV and Perez Hilton. This has got to be, on some level, human nature. Shitty ass capitalism just put a price tag on it (and hired an aggressive ad agency to hammer it home that we need it).


So, where does this come from? Also, while we’re asking questions, what is it with aging that has us all in a tizzy? My first grey hairs popped up in my late 20’s. Not enough to be noticeable to anyone but me, but they were there.  By my mid 30’s I was dying my hair. Around 38, I decided to stop. I let it grow in for a year. Then in a fit of insecurity (much like today), I marched to the drug store and bought a box of dark brown dye. Then about 3 months later, I went blonde. BLONDE. I rocked that for about a year and then, realizing I didn’t have the $200+ to spare to do my roots, I bought another drug store box of dark brown dye.

Now my grey hair (which has intensified and has become almost impossible to cover properly) is growing in. I’m standing on this precipice of backing away from the ledge and dying it again or taking a running leap into “showing my age”. Age isn’t what I imagined it would be. The media leads us to believe that it’s wrinkles, grey hair, saggy bodies and our partners leaving us. But it’s much more insidious than that. I get tired. My knees and hips hurt. I don’t have wrinkles, but my skin is definitely changing. My body has a different shape. My partner is way too smart to leave me.

I remember my mother describing age by saying; “I look down at my hands, and they don’t look like mine.”

Maybe that’s the perfect explanation for one’s mid-life crisis. Looking down at your hands one day and suddenly wondering who they belong to.

I took two pictures of myself today. One was when I felt insecure and like cutting my hair, the other was after I had brushed it, changed my shirt and touched a few things up. I know the beauty I see in the second photo isn’t because I put mascara on, it’s what putting it on did for me. I’m not sure what that means yet. I don’t see beauty in the first one. It’s not that I don’t think I’m beautiful. I know that I am. But it’s like it’s this different version that I don’t quite recognize yet. And it’s more than just being insecure (I’ve been insecure about my appearance since I saw the first photo of myself) it’s that what I’ve always recognized as me, is changing and every time I look in the mirror I look more and more different.

What will I look like next week?

Tune in again. I’ll talk about my dog.