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I’ve spent an awful lot of time this past week looking at women’s hair.
Yes, you might say I was a wee bit obsessed on the subject. But as I stated in my previous post, growing up as a young girl who was frequently told how ‘homely’ she was, my luxurious mane was my one claim to fame, the one thing people were most likely to comment on, and even envy.
In the past couple of months, I’ve lost somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of my previous hair volume. Some people would say this makes me about even with the rest of the world now, but to me, that’s like telling a genius who has drunk himself into a stupor every night for 10 years that he now has the same amount of functional brain cells as the rest of the population. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Image may be NSFW.
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As Bad Things go, this is a relatively minor one, and I’ve already apologized for my shallowness before. But this is a highly personal thing, and one that more women have to deal with than I’d ever realized. I don’t know yet if my sudden, rapid hair loss is as a result of a bad home coloring job (hence the forced decision to go gray) or if this is age-related. Certainly, I’ve noticed a lot of age-related changes in my life in the last couple of years: an inability to eat certain foods, a 20 pound weight gain that I’m having a hard time losing, a change in the texture of my skin. But as I’ve said elsewhere, while I resent these other changes, on some level, they were expected. This dramatic, nearly-overnight thinning of my hair wasn’t. And that pisses me off. I’ve had to make a LOT of compromises and accept a lot of bad things in the past couple of years. This didn’t even make it on the top fifty list of things I was worried about. The fact that it has blindsided me is probably why I can’t let it go.
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The conclusion that I’ve come to is that, yes, my hair loss is real and not imagined. My part is too wide and the hair on my entire crown is much thinner than it should be. As a result, I’ve nervously circled back around to the idea of trying minoxidil. Everything that I’ve read says it is the only proven treatment for hair loss and that for the best results it should be started early, as in some cases all it can do is preserve the hair volume that you already have. I’m like a stray cat who smells the can of tuna in the live-trap. I know it’s a trap but I’m desperately hungry and I’m still making up my mind whether or not to enter the cage. I’m one of those people who gets every rare and unusual side effect in the book when it comes to any sort of medication or supplement (for all I know this hair loss is a result of my taking melatonin over the last few months to help me sleep at night–if that’s true, the hair loss is probably permanent). If it can cause a weird side effect, I’ll be the one who gets it. So I’m worried about the possible side effects of minoxidil. Weight gain, developing ‘unwanted’ facial hair, dizziness, elevated heart rate. Yay.
But I’m so hungry.
In the course of dealing with this personal issue, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I did start Going Gray by Anne Kreamer. I haven’t finished it yet, but I find it interesting that my journey has paralleled the author’s in many ways, down to conducting some quasi-scientific observational studies. One thing that Kreamer noticed (that is outside my area of experience) is that when she visited Martha’s Vineyard, the number of women over fifty who had allowed themselves to gray naturally was a much higher percentage than that of her typical experience, as though fussing over their appearance was somehow shallow, ‘almost sinful’. The number of women who’d gone gray in L.A., however, was practically nil. In fact, she was actively cautioned about how going gray would affect her status. So there would seem to be some cultural/regional bias as well. That may be why I associate gray-haired women with yoga practitioners and women who raise alpacas for their wool. Image may be NSFW.
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I also have been reading articles on aging, standards of beauty, the youth/thin culture, and more. I saw a post today on Tumblr that in which the OP had written:
I automatically assume everyone finds me unattractive until they tell me otherwise.
Someone added this note: And then I assume they are making fun of me.
Wow. That hit me hard because, yes, that’s what I believe. And I thought I was the only one. I can only think of two times in my life in which I was pleased with the way I looked and confident in my animal attraction. But reading this, I realize that it’s not just me who feels this way. We’ve raised generation after generation of people to feel bad about themselves on a basic level. How sad is that?
Yesterday, I came across this wonderful post by Kristen Lamb titled “Refuse to be Homogenized.” This has obviously struck a nerve with a lot of people–the comments have been overwhelmingly positive and frustrated, too, as people share their experiences with not being able to find clothing when everything is labeled “matchstick” and “toothpick” and a former size 12 is now considered a size 16/18. You should check it out–it’s well worth the read.
The day before that, I came across another article on Photoshopping in women’s magazines, but this time, it wasn’t what you expected. This wasn’t about applying PS to Jennifer Lawrence to make her flawless body conform more to Hollywood’s standards. Oh no, this was about altering the photographs of extremely thin women to make them look healthier. To disguise the effects that being that thin had on their attractiveness. Yes, that’s how far we’ve circled around now. To get those matchstick thighs that don’t touch, you have to have your ribcage photoshopped out, and have muscle added to your shoulders, and remove the taut lines of skin from your neck.
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Speaking of Jennifer Lawrence, I’ve seen a lot of people sharing her statements about refusing to cave in to the Hollywood standard, as well as the Dove Real Beauty commercial where women are described to a sketch artist–first they describe themselves, then a stranger describes them. There has been a lot of positive support for these efforts on the part of celebrities and the media to call attention to this Culture of Shame that most people feel about themselves. However, I have seen negative responses to both. Some people (beautiful, young, and thin) slam the rest of us for letting ourselves go. Others slam both Jennifer Lawrence and the Dove commercial for unexpected reasons.
In the case of Jennifer Lawrence, I’ve seen her being accused of fat-shaming. In the case of the Dove commercial, people have pointed out the manipulation of events to get the results desired. I can sort of see this viewpoint, I can. But I liken this to when Nichelle Nichols first appeared on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Yes, most of the time she was wearing a miniskirt and go-go boots and her only line was “Hailing frequencies open, Captain.” But as Martin Luther King pointed out to her, for the first time ever, young girls everywhere got to see a black woman on television in some other role than being a maid. It was a baby step, but a giant leap at the same time. So I laud these attempts, even if perhaps they don’t get it entirely right. At least they are calling attention to the problem. At least they are pointing out how most of us have come to feel that we are unattractive unless we’re told otherwise, and we disbelieve it when we receive a compliment.
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Three times in the last week, I’ve received unsolicited compliments on my hair from people who haven’t seen me in a while. Ironically, all three times were on days when I was absolutely sure I was the most unattractive woman on the planet. So, Houston, we have a problem.
This has been something I’ve struggled with my entire life. But I’ve tried hating myself, and that hasn’t made anything better.