FEMINISM | CHOICE

"A friend told me she had wanted to stop dyeing her hair for years but hasn't been able to work up the courage and that because of other life changes (thoroughly associated with several long-term stresses) she doesn't think she can cope with changing anything else about herself right now. A couple of times when she told her hairdresser she didn't want to dye her hair any more, the hairdresser had a fit and badgered her into doing it again and she didn't have the strength to resist. This is not a weak person and we are close, yet the discovery that she is actually haunted and upset by her inability to make this decision was a complete surprise to me. It’s definitely a more loaded topic than one would expect at first."

"Perhaps to walk around with this kind of hair sends a signal. I don't feel it's political, but it is a choice."

"Sometimes I see hair color that I think would look good on me. So I’m not anti-gray, I’m pro-color. If it were easier and less disruptive to change your color more often I would do that. We change the color of our clothes. I don’t have that heavy, you know, “gray hair--sisterhood is powerful” thing. I didn’t want to be identified by my hair as if it was who I was. The truth is that if I thought I looked terrible in it, I’d probably color it. Not everybody gets the same gray."

"This whole green movement and being organic--even though they have organic dyes right now--I think we will go one step further and just say, "Wow, maybe we just shouldn't put anything on it, just let it go."

"I don’t think the women’s movement says we should have silver hair or not have silver hair. But it does give us the power to do what we feel we’d like to do, not what some fashion magazine thinks should be done. I just think that as women we need to be who we are, whatever that is, whether it’s gray hair or purple hair, that’s what we should do. One of the beautiful things about right now is that we can do that. There isn’t a fashion dictate any more."