Did You Know That Going Gray is a Whole Thing Now?

After becoming mesmerized by the first clear sight of my sparkly silver roots under a skylight, I fell down the internet rabbit hole that is silver hair obsession.

I was holding my baby son and perusing the toys with him at Costco a few years ago when an old fart wandered by and yapped at us, “Ooooh! Looks like Gramma might get yooo sumpin’ special!” I turned to look over my shoulder before I realized he meant me, and just barely caught and stopped the “FUCK YOU!” as I pursed my lips into a tight smile instead. I huffed off and complained to my partner about it who laughed and laughed, blamed it on the baby robbing us of sleep, and then also said, “Well, you do have gray roots right now, too.” I internally promised myself and that baby that I would keep covering my gray until I was at least 50. I developed an instant hangup about gray hair, even though I found it to be visually pleasing on others.

Flash forward a few years, and here I am, not 50 yet, standing under a very bright skylight and peering at my silvery roots. It’s months into the pandemic, and I am digging these roots. I vaguely remembered that I had seen my first gray hair as a teenager, maybe age 16. But, I started box-dyeing my hair when I was 13, and that started decades of unending hair fuckery that never saw a break. And, for the last 15 years, I’ve seen one of the best colorists in the region — an older undercover punk rock man who made his mark making glam punk hair for national and even international hair shows throughout the 80s & 90s. He was already nearly retired, and would only see a few people a week. There was no way I was going to stop seeing him without a pandemic to separate us. (And, even so, there were some brown bag handoffs between us to keep my roots touched up.)

Letting your hair make the switch from dye job to “silver sparkles” is a really big deal on the internet. I mean, it is a WHOLE THING!

And so it was that I found myself curled up on a window seat and searching the web for ideas on how to best go gray. I already knew there was a trend to completely artificially make your hair…