We women are so funny about our hair. Most of us fight with it all our lives. If it’s curly, we want it to be straight. If it’s straight, we want it to be curly. We’re constantly spending time and money to fight/change its color, texture, length, etc.
As a teenager, I spent well over 30 minutes each morning curling, teasing, and spraying my hair. I had to get the ‘80s perm every six months, which took well over two hours at the beauty salon.
In the ‘90s, I continued with the perms, but slowly blew it dry with a diffuser – a bowl-shaped contraption that you attach to a hair dryer to “spread out” the air to keep the curl. That took 30 minutes, too. I also decided to experiment with different hair colors.
I finally gave up the perms/coloring in the late ‘90s but then went back to the curling iron routine every morning. When I entered my 30s and became a mom, that went out the window. Those were the ponytail days … or should I say, years.
When my boys became more independent, I entered the blowout era, where I would use a blow dryer every morning to make my hair super-straight with a big round brush. But as I approached my mid-40s, I read some articles about how damaging heat styling is for middle-aged women. I decided to wash my hair at night and style it when it was damp by looping it into scrunchies and headbands to make it curly when I woke up. This also took up a lot of time.
Thankfully the knowledge of air-dry styling gels and mousses caught up with me in my 50s – along with me starting to feel more accepting of not just my hair, but who I was as a person. I discovered that if I just used these products with a layered haircut, my hair would naturally have some nice waves as it air-dried.
By finally letting my hair do what it wanted to do, I spent less time on it. I learned to embrace the gray coming in, which I began to call my natural “highlights.” Now I no longer fight my hair, but let it do its thing.
As I pondered all this the other day, I realized it’s a good analogy for how we feel about our own personalities. How many of us fight to change our traits as we’re growing up? We try to be extroverted when we’re introverted. We follow the popular crowd to do the things they do, when deep inside we know we’d rather take a completely different path.
Once we do become adults, we often still don’t accept ourselves for who we are, and sometimes other people don’t help. I had a boss tell me 10 years ago that she didn’t care for my cheerful personality and how I asked how her evening, weekend, or day was. In fact, she told me to stop asking altogether.
I walked home for lunch that day wiping away tears, wondering if I needed to change who I was. Thankfully, that feeling lasted about 24 hours, and my boss and I didn’t stay in our roles for much longer.
If we’re not hurting others, but instead living good lives, helping and lifting people up in our jobs, volunteer work, and other ways … why should we change who we are? The world needs ALL types of people. I’m glad I finally realized that in this middle-age stage of life. When you embrace who you truly are, you save so much time, effort, and pain.
I once said to my dog Elli, “You’re just you, and what a wonderful YOU you are.” While this isn’t grammatically correct, it sums up this concept well for us humans.
I love seeing different hairstyles on people … and different personalities as well. I’m glad people are embracing their natural hair more often these days. I hope they’re embracing their true selves as well!
Amy Shankland is a writer and fundraising professional living in Noblesville with her husband John, two sons, two dogs, and a cat. You can reach her via email at amys@greenavenue.info.
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