Gray Hair: The Coolest Trend in 2020. (I am SO on trend.)

For Baby Boomers who grew up glued to the tube, there are plenty of ad campaigns we'll take to the grave. 

We grew up knowing that if you took a puff of a Salem, "it's springtime." That someone, somewhere would "walk a mile for a Camel." That if you wanted a lighter smoke, you could "switch from hots to Kools." (I once entertained the baby sitter - who had one of her high school pals hanging with her - by appearing at the den door in a flannel nightgown, shouting "switch from hots", then scurrying to my bedroom to quick change into a pair of summer seersucker PJ's and racing back to announce "to Kools." If you're out there, Gail O'Connor and/or Judy Lavin, I certainly hope you remember this bit of brilliance.)

We "brusha, brusha, brusha'd with the new Ipana." 

We "flew down the street, 'cuz look at their feet" - we wore PF canvas shoes. A.k.a., sneakers. 

And although our mother used Zarex to make a summer drink for us, we knew in our hearts that it was Kool-Aid that actually tasted great.

Then there were all the great old regional ads: "Hi, neighbor, Have a 'Gansett." Christmas meant Whiting's eggnog time. ("Cheer, cheer, cheer, the holidays are here.") 

Embedded deep within the recesses of our BB Baby Boomer brains there are no doubt thousands of taglines and jingles. 

Among the most indelible were the ads for hair coloring. 

I learned early on that, ''If I've Only One Life to Live, Let Me Live It as a Blonde,'' And make sure that's a Lady Clairol Blonde, a silky-shiny blonde. 

Well, as a natural born towhead, I didn't need no Lady Clairol to be a silky-shiny blonde. At least when I was a kid.  Behold my kindergarten picture proof statement. (Uneven bangs, courtesy of Vic the Blind Barber, in case you're wondering. And those aren't dark roots, just the lighting.)

Alas, by high school and college, I was a dark blonde, a dirty blonde (ugh: who came up with that term?). But that's how it went. When I was out in the sun, my hair lightened up, but mostly it was darkening up. One college summer, I decided to ad a blonde streak. I didn't want to pay for any Lady Clairol, so I just swabbed a hank of my hair with hydrogen peroxide. The orange only lasted a few weeks before toning down to an okay goldeny blonde. 

For years, that was it. But somewhere along the line - in my forties? early fifties? - I decided to start having highlights done, which gave my by then light-turning-to-medium brown hair a bit of oomph. Highlighting is, of course, a slippery slope, and somewhere further along that line, when the grays started popping up here and there, I went with the full dye job, with a two-color process that involved foils and the color genius of my hairdresser Rita. 

Here, I was following another advertising edict of my childhood: "Hate that gray? Wash it away."

People would compliment me on my hair color, and seemed surprised (at least some of them) when I confessed that I no longer had any idea what the true color of my hair was. But I do believe that my dye job looked pretty natural because it actually bore a very strong resemblance to what my hair once looked like in nature.

Over the last few years, I considered transitioning to whatever the new normal color. It could, I told myself, turn out okay. My mother had very pretty silver gray hair once she gave up on dying it. But was I ready to devote all that time to looking like Cruella DeVille while it grew out?

Rita assured me that she could help with the transition, but if I wasn't exactly hating that gray, I was still going to keep up with washing it away.

And then...

Six month ago this week, I had my last cut and color. I've had one cut since then, but no color. So I'm now officially letting it go gray. Sort of. (It's a COVID thing.)

Not 100% sure what to make of it, but I'm kind of liking it. I just wish my hair would grow faster so I could see what it's going to look like.

Meanwhile, a Twitter ad popped up on my feed for a dye that promises an "Icy Silver Gray Hair Transformation." It's the "coolest trend in 2020," don't you know. When I clicked on the link there were all sorts of pictures of young woman who were apparently saying "goodbye to boring hair color" by going gray. To me, their hair didn't look icy silver. It looked gunmetal, battleship gray. So not for me! I'm going to let myself go gray the old fashioned way, one strand of hair at a time.