One thing that most likely shifts is what Hurdle teaches you to see when you look at your gray. Although she describes herself as “one of those rare 49-year-olds with, like, five gray hairs,” Hurdle is a total poms-poms out silver stan, and wishes she personally had more.
Gray is first of all not a sign of age, she insists (not that there’s anything wrong with natural aging). As Allure has previously reported, about half of the population will have gray hair by age 50, though most people will see a few strands around age 30. Hurdle has personally met several women who sprouted gray hairs at seven, and many in their teens. Her gray-embracing clients’ age range starts in the early 30s. It’s a generation, she says, that’s largely attuned both to the attraction of “natural” lifestyles and the diverse ways that beauty can be defined.
Sarah Lipsie, was a 19-year-old college sophomore when her gray first appeared. Her initial reaction, she says, was “oh, crap,” and she spent years hiding her roots. “It was definitely something that just my hairdresser knew about,” she says. Highlights and various cover-up products like hair mascara worked for awhile. But she had a prominent natural white streak, and by her late twenties she needed to do full brown color and blonde highlights every few weeks. She was especially self-conscious because of her career as a medical device saleswoman in affluent Orange County—a profession where stylish, youthful presentation matters. Lipsie initially went to Hurdle to get some relief through greyblending on her high maintenance touchups. Then, finally, at 41, encouraged by Hurdle, she took the plunge.
What’s changed? She’s the only Arctic fox among the mothers in her seven-year-old son’s class, but her hair is thicker, smoother, grows longer than it ever did before, and doesn’t require conditioner. Women come up to her in restaurants and airports—and at cardiology offices during the work day—“and you can see the wheels turning in their heads, like ‘I want do this; how can I do this?’” If Lipsie could talk to her 25 year old self, “I would tell her, don’t worry, your natural hair is going to be something beautiful that you can appreciate much sooner than you realize in life, not when you’re 65 or 70….and you’re going to get more compliments than you ever did before.”
