Do you remember the first time you colored your hair—not to experiment over the bathroom sink, but to have it done professionally? From the 1950s to the 1970s, the number of American women coloring their hair rose from 7 percent to more than 40 percent, so when I was young hair coloring was just a bit edgy, or for the elderly.
I had my brown hair with a few strands of dull gray “high lighted” with blonde probably in the mid to late 80s, because I recall the children were grown and gone. I was being picked up in Rockford at the bus by my parents and I was sort of concerned about what my mother would say. She said nothing. So finally I asked her what she thought of my new hair color, and she took a closer look. She said it looked just like my hair did when I was a child so she hadn’t noticed—that’s sort of the image she had of me. Dad didn’t notice either.
So I continued. Depending on whether I had a curly perm or straightened it, sometimes it looked blonde, sometimes highlighted. Then in the late 90s I switched to light brown, over all color, but occasionally had it high lighted, like this photo from 2002—which looks completely blonde but which was actually high lights a bit over done. A few times I tried to do it myself to save some money, but the mess and the poor results were not worth the savings. One time a professional got it way too dark and there was nothing I could do. It was sort of a dark, reddish brown. I just had to live with it.
When I turned 71, I decided to let it grow out and see what it looked like. My kids don’t like it at all—makes them feel older, and I noticed immediately that people treated me different, as though I were more frail and less intelligent. Oh well. It saves about $500 a year. See the Easter post (Friday family photo) for the results.
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