Grey Hair: Why I Decided to Embrace it

by Melanie Sievernich

"You're going to look old." That was the standard response to my mission of embracing my natural brunette hair colour again with all its fine silver sparkling highlights and greying patches, after a decade of bleaching it platinum blonde.

Already in my mid twenties I knew that I wanted to have long silver hair one day. That one day, when I am old. But when is that? Is there an actual number, an appropriate age, when it is legitimate to embrace your grey hair?

I’m in my mid 40’s and I haven't got a clue if that is old enough to embrace it. But what I know is that I am fed up enough with dying it—month after month—that I no longer care at what age it is acceptable to go grey. Instead, I decided for myself that this one day has arrived and that feels awesome.

At first, even my hairdresser wanted to talk me out of it, but since I explained my reasons for it, I have her full support.

So here is why I decided to go grey:

One, I love grey hair. I find women with grey hair stunningly beautiful, elegant and graceful. My favourite side effect of it is that it gives a lot of light to the face.

Two, having made the shift to clean beauty products, I no longer want to torment my hair with harmful chemicals either, that do not just negatively influence my own health but also the wellbeing of Mother Earth, as everything that I use will eventually be rinsed off my body and find its way into our natural habitat where it will poison the environment.

Three, as the creator and photographer of the Queendom photo series, I am confronted with women and their beauty and body issues on a regular basis, which sent me on a personal quest of understanding beauty and embracing my own nature. I wonder what it is that makes us reject and shame ageing, and stick unloving labels onto it.

When are we old? Isn’t that just a matter of perspective? When I was in my teens, someone in their twenties appeared old to me. Today, to anyone over fifty, I appear young. What is wrong with being of a certain age anyway? Why are we so scared of it? Why is grey hair undesirable? What makes a wrinkle ugly? I don't know. I honestly don't know.

I enjoy getting older. Embracing my natural hair colour gives me peace. At first, I believed this to be the case, because my natural colour might be more in harmony with my skin tone than the fake blonde. But the more time passes, I realise that it has nothing to do with the hair colour itself but all to do with no longer trying to hide or change something. That something being me.

Melanie Sievernich is the creator of Queendom—The Return to Innocence, a photo series on a mission to free beauty of manufactured ideals and to give women their nature back.