by Noleen Wyatt-Jones

Created on: April 09, 2008   Last Updated: October 01, 2010

I always said that if I went gray I would not be bothered and would essentially grow old gracefully with a mass of beautiful gray hair. The reality is that the minute the first strands of gray hair appeared I was rushing off to the hairdressers in order to color it before anyone else could witness the horror. Once you make that choice there is no going back!

My basic problem is that I have gone unevenly gray, with patches at the front and sides and nothing at all at the back. If I chose not to dye it then I fear I would look rather strange. I had always envisaged that if I did go gray then it would complement my dark hair and look like deliberately chosen professional highlights.The reality for me is that my hair has not chosen to follow that dream and instead, having a mind of its own, it has put splodges of gray wherever it wanted to!

There is nothing wrong with gray hair apart from the fact that I don't want it on my head. It really is that I prefer my own dark hair coloring so am I am prepared to put up with the expense and time it takes to have it colored every six weeks or so. Who knows, there may be a point in the future when I decide that enough is enough and I can't be bothered to spend any more money in the hairdressers to get it colored, but at the moment I can't see that happening just yet.

There is an element of vanity to it and rightly or wrongly gray hair does feel old and as a person I feel anything but old. In the same way I wear make up to enhance my natural features, and clothes to suit my body shape then it would seem to be more than reasonable to apply the same logic to my hair. A whole industry would disappear if we all decided to stop using hair dye on our hair and we would not want to be responsible for that!

Having talked to many of my female friends who find themselves in a similar situation I find that we have all made the same decision, and that is to dye our hair. Even my mother, at the age of almost 89, still chooses to dye her hair. So there you have it I am firmly coming down on the side of dying my hair and I am very happy with that decision.

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