Thoughts on men, hair colour, beauty and energy
I count myself lucky that Paul loves me for who I am, for my spirit and essence, regardless of my hair colour. And that it was my spirit and energy that he recognised and wanted to connect to when we met, and still does every day. But isn’t this the way it should be? We have come so far away from understanding and embracing energetic connections, that we rely so heavily on expressions and appearances which change over time.
When I started to talk of letting go of the hair dye and finding my natural colour as it is now (fully expecting to be quite snowy white, and a little disappointed that it is nowhere near that yet), the responses from other women were quite interesting. Most women think I’m brave, some think I’m mad. A friend’s comment on Facebook was that men think women with grey hair are unattractive. And yet one of the most beautiful women I know has stunning gunmetal grey hair and a fair few male admirers.
Why should we be unattractive with grey hair? It seems to me that beauty has nothing to do with hair colour. Beautiful women radiate their beauty from the inside, and so don’t need the artifice of false hair colour to maintain that beauty. Perhaps beauty has more to do with form and structure (symmetry rather than size), energy and spirit. Perhaps beautiful people are always beautiful because their symmetry, spirit and energy don’t change even when their hair colour does.
…which leads me on to think of our obsession with youth; with being youthful, looking young and staving off the wrinkles with ever more potent methods of erasing them. I am convinced that we have become obsessed with the ‘look’ of youth because deep down, what we really want to preserve is the energy and the spirit of youth. As we get older we tend to carry our experiences heavily as burdens, rather than lightly as wisdom. This weight we carry – emotionally and physically – pulls our energy, our spirit and our skin in the wrong direction.
When we observe animals and nature, we can see that they don’t carry their experiences quite so heavily. They experience something then let it go. They have memories, but they aren’t reliving them constantly, dragging them up as reasons or excuses, worrying about them, adding to them – ye gods, no wonder we get wrinkly! Mostly nature passes through its experience allowing each stage to ebb and flow, resting in the ebb and flourishing in the flow.
We don’t do that; we human doings. We don’t ebb and flow. We push constantly; each bad experience adds to our burden and our drive to either push harder or disappear under the weight. No wonder our skin sags, so we Botox it to keep it static. No wonder our faces wrinkle as we frown through each day. No wonder that we wonder where our youth has gone, when we drive it away, dampen its spirit and give its energy malnutrition.
No wonder then that we cling to the ‘look’ of youth while destroying its essence. If only we could nurture the essence of youth in ourselves and others. Then ‘looking’ youthful wouldn’t matter – or to be more precise the rigmaroles we go to with hair dye, anti-wrinkle creams, Botox, face lifts etc wouldn’t matter. We would look youthful because our energy and spirit was fully vital. And a spirited vital woman is surely far more youthful and attractive than a Botoxed and dyed one?
Jay Griffiths elaborates this point in her book, Pip Pip, A Sideways Look At Time, when she writes ‘If man has seven ages, woman has only one. One young one. One fixed one. Time must be stayed for women…’ She goes on to reference a newspaper interview in which Helen Bransford, author of Welcome to Your Facelift, recalls how post-facelift nausea induced vomiting that threatened to rip out her stitches. She had to throw up with her face muscles clamped like a vice. [How the hell did she manage that, I want to ask; no actually the imagination is enough!]
Griffiths tells us that ‘the stitches, swelling and bruising, all hideously painful, last two weeks; a full recovery only comes after three to six months; and the effects will last 5-10 years.’ And you pay £5500 upwards for this privilege, where time is stayed for a while but not frozen. But here is the real rub, a frozen face is what you end up with. ‘Bransford was delighted with her facelift, but her ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures also describe a terrible loss. ‘Before’ is older, certainly, but it is also the face of a powerful, deeply intelligent woman. Her face. ‘After’ face is an empty face, tame as glucose. Anyone’s face.’
Anyone’s face! Those two words just reverberate around my brain. Why on earth would you pay to have your personality, your essence, your intelligence erased along with your wrinkles? Are wrinkles such a hideously huge price to pay for a showing your wise soul through your face?
One final para from Ms Griffiths because her words are so powerful and because we women, in our desperation to cling on to our youth, have forgotten just how powerful we are as we gain wisdom with our age. ‘HRT, the cosmetic industry and cosmetic surgery all work on women’s bodies to stay the course of time. By them, though, women are denied – and deny themselves – the positions of elders; denied wisdom, power and respect so their ‘new age’ has neither the girl-child gossamer of youth nor the grand seigniory of seniority; what they get for their money and pain is not youth but a pretence at youth, a patchy parchment promise which persuades just them.’
Since I’ve stopped colouring my hair, I’ve been observing women everywhere – those who do and those who don’t. I wonder if we really believe that our dyed hair looks natural? It doesn’t. Does it make us look younger? No, it doesn’t. Does it look great? On some women it certainly does. On others it just looks like dyed hair. However, I would never advocate that anyone should stop colouring their hair (though there are some very strong environmental reasons why we should). If it makes you happy, then do it. But let’s not kid ourselves that we can hold back time either with hair dye or anything else. There are a million factors which belie our age and grey hair is probably the least important of them.
And if we can’t hold back time, then surely what we really need in an elixir of youth is not anti-ageing, but pro-spirit, pro-energy, pro-attitude, pro-wisdom, and pro-acceptance. Dropping the stuff (attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, anxieties etc) that makes us sag and droop is going to be far more effective in the long run, than the lotions, potions, and (frankly) poisons that we keep plastering on in the vague hope that they will work miracles.
The real miracle is that beauty and youthfulness comes from the soul not out of a pretty box – and we don’t need a scalpel, a dye or potion to make the most of it. And you know what? In my experience, when a man sees the light in your soul, he doesn’t even notice the colour of your hair. And if your hair colour is more important to him than your spirit, then move on girlfriend…and fast!