The consequence of my decision to quit was not immediately obvious.
It wasn’t like I’d slammed the door on a career or stopped smoking or anything significantly life-changing and admirable. Mine was a determined decision to join a different tribe of women.
The motivation was to seek to be more authentic, to be confident, without the need to present a younger version of me. My goal has taken more than a year to achieve, but I’ve done it.
Grey hair. No dye.
Several incentives propelled me along this path. The expense and time commitment to maintain a certain hair colour were obvious reasons, but they were not why I quit.
Several years ago, I changed hairdressers ... virtually a crime. But we’d moved, so I had an excuse. I was able to escape the eye-watering chemicals that I needed to steel myself to endure. Stinging, weeping eyes were the price to pay for the compliments and attention that a new colour and style brought.
My new hairdresser, to whom I have remained faithful now for many years, suggested streaks. Partial colour avoided the horror of dark roots and regrowth. This process had clearly been developed as an instrument of torture to determine just how much pain a woman was willing to endure for vanity.
With a headache-inducing, too-tight, holey swimming cap firmly in place, I was then pecked, as if by a couple of magpies, to remove evenly spaced tufts of hair. My head looked like a closely-examined Barbie doll’s scalp.