Going Gray is Subversive: An Interview with Louise Pendry
katie goes platinum
Louise is a 52-year old silver sister from Devon, UK. She is a vocal proponent of the grey hair movement and her interview here explains why so many of us feel confident about rocking our silver hair, which goes against everything our cultures tell us about aging and beauty.
I was sixteen. It was just a solitary grey hair poking up in my parting.
I was, quite frankly, appalled. Grey hair is what old people have, right? At least, that is what we are socialised to believe.
My mum had dyed her grey hair certainly as long as I’d been alive, and I was well-used to the ritual of home hair dye kits. My dad used to don the plastic gloves and do it for her in our kitchen.
I sometime go to the salon or dye my hair at home. At first, it wasn’t just to cover the grey, it was because, well, hair dye is kind of fun, it’s what most of my friends were doing too.
As I hurtled through my late thirties and early forties, I found myself needing to touch up my burgeoning grey roots at home every fortnight. It slowly dawned on me that it was insanity.
After chatting with my hairdresser, we decided to let the grey grow for a few weeks to see what it looked like, then she would tint my dark brown hair as light as she could go without bleach, cut it sorter (to a long bob length) and then we’d see what happened. So we did this.
I was, as I promised myself, transitioned in time for my 50th birthday in April 2016. So around sixteen months. I must admit the bob had to keep going shorter and shorter to reach that target!