Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Gray IS the Party!

Juliana Margulies (from stylelist.com)
Gray is the Party!
Sandie Richards
June 13, 2011

Juliana Margulies is a beautiful and successful American Actor. At age 45, she is also starring in commercials-- you know the ones: She’s Fighting Wrinkles. She’s Banishing Gray Hair. The picture below accompanied a press release announcing her partnership with L’Oreal’s Revitalift; not only is she fighting the look of fine lines and wrinkles, notice she has also straightened her sumptuous curls.

She’s beautiful, but  her commercial sounds ugly. It starts, “I will always be too young to be gray,"  and ends “Nobody invited gray to this party."

But, Juliana, Gray is the party!

Everyone knows that coloring a few gray hairs is no problem; but coloring a whole head of gray hairs is nothing but a fight to stay ahead of gray roots and what my pal Carrie Snow calls the gray yarmulke. You know, the little circle of roots that spirals around at the back of your head? Once I figured out that I could either embrace my gray hair or spend precious time and money dying those roots every two weeks, I made a daring choice. I stopped coloring my hair. I got a super-short hair cut (it was very chic, by the way) to get rid of all the colored portions. The cut and the natural color got loads of compliments. Would you guess from my picture (below) that I’m five years older than Ms. Margulies?

Gray hair, fine lines and wrinkles-- if we live a long time, we will spend the largest percentage of our years with such physical features.  Whether we choose to cover the gray or let it all hang out, let's at least stop denigrating the signs of aging. Ms Margulies seems to be saying "Hide your age." I'm saying, embrace your age. If we embrace aging, we’ll feel better, free up a lot of time, and save some serious cash.

Author Sandie Richards

Four months ago, I turned 50. I’m at the start of my real aging process, with the gray hair, fine lines and wrinkles, and chin just now heading south. None of these seems to be holding me back. At fifty, I no longer seem to fettered with the numerous problems and insecurities of youth. As far as I can tell, I'm healthy, I'm happy. I have meaningful work and people I love who love me back. I welcome this new adventure.