7 Comments
May 23Liked by Leanne Kleinmann

We go early in my family. My college president was silver in her early 40s. She looked amazing and was an absolute force. I decided that I wanted to be like her, with shiny silver hair. Once it started coming in, I embraced it.

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May 23Liked by Leanne Kleinmann

I decided to ditch coloring 20 years ago when visiting a breast surgeon. She had the cutest, more beautiful gray hair. I thought to myself, if a surgeon, whom women depend upon for her skills and who needs to look like she is youthful enough to chop away without her knife going awry can go gray, so can I. I have never looked back.

My hair has become white—my stylist calls it silver—is actually the hair color I prefer of all my lifetime natural and unnatural hues.

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I think of hair as an accessory. You get to do with it whatever feels fun and beautiful to YOU. And if you try it and don’t love it, you can go back to coloring. One piece of advice: if you go gray, you have to really insist that your stylist doesn’t try to steer you into a dowdy cut just because of the gray. My most common comment in the chair is “I need it to be edgier.”

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💯

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author

Ooo, good advice! Thanks, as ever, for helping me find the right words.

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I started showing silver in my late twenties and my brothers and almost all my cousins did too. My ex-husband of 30 years loved my grey and, in our 30s as he started to lose his hair, issued a threat that if I colored my hair he'd get a toupee. It was a sort of detente, and I like to think we aged gracefully together.

Go for it, Leanne!

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Thanks, Fran!

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