I have a big birthday coming up. Yup, in less than a month I’ll be forty for
real. Now, I refer to myself as a “forty
year old woman” all the time, or as pushing forty, but soon I will actually BE
forty. In a complete vacuum, I would be
fine with it. Just a number and all
that. I’m vaguely prepared for shit to
start breaking on my body, but I can still do stuff I want to do.
I have a bad knee from a fall two years ago, so I have
learned (for the first time in my life!!) how to do squats properly. Seriously, no one ever told me to think about
sticking my butt back instead of focusing on bending my knees. Why did no one ever tell me that? They would say “don’t let your knees go in
front of your toes,” but never explained that the way you do that is by
pretending you’re dropping a deuce and trying not to get it on your shoes. But now I have a bad knee, so now I
know. Still, I can still exercise just fine,
and nothing else has broken down yet. I
don’t need cheater glasses to read yet, although threading a needle is starting
to become an issue. Maybe I need some of
those old lady needle threader thingies.
Oh, and perimenopause is happening. So, that blows. Hot flashes, night sweats, and a raging bitch
who inhabits my body from time to time. But
whatev. Some black cohosh, a few extra
showers, and control of the thermostat.
I’m dealing.
But the social stuff is harder.
See, since my kids were born, I have been dying my hair
funny colors. Fire engine red, pink,
teal, most recently blue. Here is me
with my blue hair.
 |
| Not crazy blue, but definitely bluer than anyone else's hair at my kids' elementary school... |
It’s not really all that blue. It’s not like Thing 1 and Thing 2 blue. It’s just… you know… kind of blue.
Recently my brother told me my blue hair is ridiculous,
because I’m too old for it and I’m a mom.
But the thing is, I never dyed my hair funny colors before I had
kids. I didn’t need to. I was going to Burning Man and attending parties that started at 11pm and traveling the world. But then I moved to the
suburbs and had twins and bought a minivan.
My body, although the same weight as it was pre-kids, was a new
shape. A more… mommish shape. I was pushing a double stroller, and wearing
yoga pants as regular pants, and my fabulous heels were all a half size too small, and I might have had puke on me at any given
moment. I needed something to remind me
that I was still me. So I started
messing with my hair.
And I loved it. I
still love it. But now with forty
looming, I am starting to worry about what other people will think. Am I too old to have blue hair?
I embrace my mom persona at this point, and now that my kids
are in school, they are less all-encompassing, so I can pursue things that make
me feel like me again. I don’t need
crazy hair anymore to remind me who I am.
But I still want to keep it.
The biggest reason is that I like how people respond to
me. People are friendlier,
chattier. Toll takers, fast food
drive-thru window workers, random people in the service industry… I can see
them snap out of auto-pilot and make eye contact with me in a way that didn’t
happen before. Random strangers talk to
me on the street, primarily people who are NOT like me. Kids talk to me about my hair, asking why
it’s blue. Twenty-somethings who would
otherwise look through me as if I were invisible, compliment it and smile, sometimes leading into a longer conversation.
As weird as it seems, I have many more conversations with strangers as a function
of my blue hair, and I love that. I love
finding a connection where there would otherwise be two people on autopilot,
just playing roles and not seeing each other at all.
In fact, the very fact that blue hair is wrong for "a woman
my age" is the thing that’s magic about it.
Because it marks me as something other than generic. Not for my own self-image anymore, even
though that was the primary reason I started doing it. But now, because it makes other people stop
for a moment to figure me out. And in
that moment of stopping, there is the opportunity for genuine connection.
Genuine connection.
Genuine connection.
My blue hair might be silly.
It is silly. It’s blue hair on a middle-aged mom. It’s ridiculous. And I’m totally keeping it.
Because also? I just like it.
