Letting Down My (Gray) Hair September 9, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 1 Comment 138Share with your friendsYour NameYour EmailRecipient EmailEnter a MessageI read this article and found it very interesting, thought it might be something for you. The article is called Letting Down My (Gray) Hair and is located at https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/letting-down-my-gray-hair/.CaptchaSubmitThis article is the second in a three-part series on aging. [Image description: The photograph shows the author’s eyes, glasses, and nose. She is a white woman, and gray hair frames her face. The photograph is in black and white and was taken at a three-quarter angle.] For me, this picture is a major departure: it marks the first time that my gray hair frames my face in a photo. Much of my hair is still brown, but the right side is graying much more quickly than the rest. I usually wear my hair up or back, where the gray only shows like a streak on the top of my head. I am sure that I wear my hair that way because I can’t see the gray in the mirror and can live by the myth that others can’t see it either. Of course, because I’m 5’1” and therefore shorter than most people over the age of 12, almost everyone can see it just fine. In the light of this truth, I decided to let my hair down so that I could see the gray, too. And then I took a photo. In fact, I took several. Do I look a bit alarmed? I was. I’m not sure why the gray alarms me. Perhaps it’s evidence of my mortality. Or perhaps it signals my relative lack of social capital in a youth-oriented culture – a youth-oriented culture for which, somewhat ironically, my baby-boomer generation is largely responsible. Or maybe it’s far less complicated: In my head, I’m 20, and the gray just makes no sense whatsoever. On the day that I took the pictures of my gray hair, I took many others. Most of them show the other parts of my body I’m in shock over. A few show areas that I just hadn’t wanted to look at. I’m a pretty shy person, but as I age, I’m getting more audacious, so I’ve decided to share some of the photos. I’ll start with my belly: [Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows the author’s bare belly, the top of her blue jeans, and the bottom of her sports bra, with her shirt held up.] I have a particularly unhappy relationship with my belly. You might even call it a war of attrition, in which I attempt to flatten my belly past recognition, and my belly will have none of it. This conflict has gone on for decades. Somewhere along the line, I was told that my belly wasn’t supposed to stick out at all (God forbid I should take up any space!), and this ridiculous piece of indoctrination has taken its time crumbling. So my belly was, perhaps, the hardest thing to photograph. Once I did, though, I thought, “That belly looks comfy. I think I’ll keep it.” And then, I thought, “Wow, a baby came out of that belly!” And then, I thought, “Okay, move on to the next scariest thing.” Which was this part of my body: [Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows the bottom part of the author’s face with her nose, mouth, chin, and neck visible. Her mouth is in a half-smile. The area around her mouth is lined and she has lines around her throat. Her black shirt is partly visible on both shoulders.]Look at those lines around my throat. They look like a multi-strand necklace. Look at them all! They just go on and on. And the facial hair. That’s new. Where did that come from? Menopause? Whenever I look at this photograph, I feel as though I’m looking at my grandmother. How can I be looking at my grandmother? It boggles my mind. My grandmother, by the way, was an incredibly kind and loving woman. She was beautiful in my eyes. I never held her lines or her facial hair or anything else against her. They didn’t matter to me. Why do mine matter to me? Why do I hold them against myself? Why do I judge them at all? Why is this photo of my throat and chin so difficult for me to look at? [Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows the author’s lined neck and chin, taken from beneath, with her head raised upward. Part of her right ear is visible, and some of her hair is visible to the right and left.] Through the eyes of love, it wasn’t hard to see my grandmother’s face and neck. Not at all. But it’s hard to see mine. And speaking of my grandmother, I’ve got those wrinkles going on just above my breasts, too, the same as she did. (Yes. I just said wrinkles and breasts in the same sentence. Sit down and take a deep breath. You’ll be fine.) Here is a photo of said wrinkles (and a pretty impressive tan line): [Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows the author’s lined neck and chest above the line of her breasts, with some of her hair visible to the sides of her neck.] And while we’re on the subject of breasts, mine are losing the fight against gravity. It’s been going on for awhile, of course. When my kid was six, some of the neighborhood kids had a contest about which mom had the saggiest breasts. (It was one of the more hilarious moments of my kid’s childhood.) I didn’t win, but I was a contender. And that was almost 15 years ago. More Radical Reads: Why the Words Stick in My Throat: Talking about Aging I’ve wrestled with whether to show a picture of my breasts. It’s all right for men to show their breasts, but not women? No wonder so many women have distorted body images: we rarely get to see what most other women even look like. On that basis alone, I wanted to include the photo. And then I realized how beautiful your body starts looking when you stop getting pissed off over the way that nature works. So I decided to show that beauty. It’s not conventional perky beauty, but it’s mine. [Image description: This black-and-white photograph shows the author’s torso with her breasts and belly visible. Most of her left arm and a small portion of her right arm appear to the sides.] More Radical Reads: What? You Mean I Look Like That? Thoughts on Not So Gracefully Aging It’s just a body, folks. It ages. It gets lined. It gets wrinkled. It sags. It gets gray. It means that you don’t last forever, and that it all passes. It’s a sign that you’ve been blessed to live a long time – in a body that is beautiful because you get to experience life in it. And there is no greater beauty than that. — This article first appeared on The Body is Not An Apology’s tumblr blog on July 16, 2013. In order to continue producing high quality content and expanding the message of radical, unapologetic self-love, we need to build a sustainable organization. To meet these efforts, we’re thrilled to share the launch of our #NoBodiesInvisible subscription service. This service will provide our community with access to additional content and rewards for your monthly investment in furthering our radical self-love work. [Headline image: The photograph shows an older white woman with flowing gray hair, red lipstick, and dark eyes.] 138
Amber_Patterson November 27, 2015 at 1:58 pm Thanks so much for this. You’re so gorgeous! Too bad you can’t see you through our eyes, but that’s human nature, I suppose. I really needed a reminder that my changing body isn’t less-than just because it’s different than the last time I really noticed it. Thanks for your courage and willingness to share something so personal.