EverydayBliss: Showing Your True Colors

The back of my head visiting my niece.

Listening to right now: The Ting Tings

Today's Bliss Formula: A lot of green on my iCal today -- which is the color of writing projects. And then tonight -- an outing! Dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, which happens to be in our neighborhood only 4 blocks away. Yum!

One of the big differences that I notice between Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers has to do with self-decoration. Yes, perhaps we tattoo (though I have not) and perhaps we are known to pierce a bit more (again, not me), I think we bother less with make-up and perfume than the Baby Boomers.

At least, that has been my observation. I know of no one my age who wears perfume on a daily basis, if at all. And if my friends wear make-up, it's that "invisible" approach -- no blatantly obvious red lips, fake lashes, penciled eyebrows. And rarely a painted nail -- except on their toes. And, to be clear here, the only lesbians I know are my partner and me. All our female friends are of the straight variety.

And yet, my generation does color their hair. Think about it, they were raised pretty much by the first generation of women ever to decide that their natural hair color was unacceptable and it was way cooler to put chemicals on your scalp.

Fifty is the new forty pretty much because of hair color.

So the fact that I don't color my hair -- unless it's been a dreary winter and I'm feeling a bit pale -- tends to annoy these women. They tell me. As if it's any of their business.

Men are another story. And perhaps this will be a shock to most women, but I get stopped on the street -- literally -- by men who want to tell me how much they love my hair. How much they love that I let it be.

Standing in a line at Starbucks, gentlemen in suits shyly tell me how pretty it is and how much they appreciate the natural approach in a woman.

And I probably don't need to point out that men with the same hair color are told they look distinguished.

Of course, I've been lucky. My white -- not dingy gray -- hair has come in in these weirdly perfect stripes.

And I have had more time to think about this than most women. I got my first white hair when I was fourteen. This has been happening to me for a long time. My age -- 39 -- is only beginning to catch up with my hair.

Which brings me to a larger point: our hair is not, for two days in a row, the same color, so when you color it, you are telling a story. I was born, for instance, with pitch black hair and then for the first few years of school, my hair was definitely auburn, and by college, it was back to being almost black -- but with those whites starting to pop up more and more regularly.

Our hair is really a lot like us -- ever changing and ever evolving and why would we want it any other way?

Though, lately, I have to admit, I have been tempted by the idea of pink!

I think, too, this is important: why are you coloring your hair? Is it for fun? For a little pick me up? Or do you do it because you can't stand the thought of aging?

Like anything, it's about being conscious -- even when it comes to something as "silly" as hair color.