Does She or Doesn't She?

Haircolor so natural, only her hairdresser knows for sure.  That's the old Clairol slogan that has been around since the 1950s.  Well, these days, it can be natural or un-natural, take your pick.  I work really hard to make mine look natural, but you know, no matter what I do, after about a month those nasty gray roots just keep showing up!  So here I am, 55 years old, and I've been coloring my hair now for about 20 years.  That's about 9 times a year that I color my hair to cover up the gray.  It takes an hour or so each time.  That is about 180 hours I've spent over the last 20 years to keep my natural God-given gray hair from showing through.  That almost 8 days out of my life that I've spent with that nasty stinky color on my head.  Why?  Because we've been programmed over the years that women have to look young and pretty no matter what their age.  Men look distinguished as they gray; women look old.  Well, at what point do you  stop the madness?  I worry that if I go gray, I will look so much older.  But is that a bad thing?  I kind of have mixed feelings about it.  I'm really tired of having to deal with constant coloring and roots showing, but if I go gray, will everying think I'm an old woman?  I don't feel like an old woman.  I don't act like an old woman (at least I don't think I do).  But if people think I'm old, will they quit asking me to do things that an old woman wouldn't do?  And everybody has their own thoughts on whether to color or not.  My hubby says, "go for it, embrace your age!"  Does he really want to live with an old woman?  I have a friend who is a few years younger than me who has been gray ever since I've known her.  She says go gray. [Her hair is a beautiful white gray that is very striking.]  Mine is just gray.  Plain old gray.  I have another friend that I work with who is kind of in the same mindset as me.  She lets hers go gray for a while and then the next time I see her, it's colored again.  Yet another friend says always color!  Never go gray!  I asked my grandson the other day if I should let my hair go gray.  He said, "NO."  I said, "Well A is completely gray and hers looks good."  He said, "Hers is different.  You will look 80."  Gee thanks!  I did actually let mine go gray one time. 

It didn't last too long and I became a redhead again.

So here I am, sick and tired of coloring but hating to make myself look old.  I think I'm going to try going gray one more time if I can stand letting the color grow out.  I think it will be ok to just be me . . .