#btw the hair lady always wears a crapton of makeup

[lokilickedme]

There’s a fairly “big” Instagrammer whose entire thing is that she...stopped dying her hair.  That’s it, that’s her entire schtick, she seems to have made it her entire personality and identity, and thousands of women flock to her page to praise her for how “brave” and “real” she is.

Um

Have we really lowered the bar so far that we as women are so worshipfully enamored of a fellow woman who simply decided she wasn’t going to put color on her hair anymore, elevating her to hero status for something that unspectacular and unnecessary?  I followed this page because it popped up in my recs and I thought oh nice, a woman embracing her natural grey like me, I’m gonna see if she’s got any style tips.  Today I unfollowed it because she seems to have bought into her own Heroine hype and her New Years “inspirational” post reads like a self venerating list of all the ways she’s holier than thou because she’s “embraced who she is”, which, if you watch her videos, seems to be nothing more than “middle aged woman not dying her hair”.

Ew

I haven’t colored my hair in god knows how long.  It was still mostly red when we moved here a year ago, but it’s grown fast in the last thirteen months and is completely silver and white now.  And I’m cool with it.  I like it.  It freaks some people out because they can’t figure out how old I am and I get a lot of compliments on it from the rest.  I’m accepted into a wide range of age groups because the older ones have to consider the fact that I might be one of them and the younger ones think I just chose a funky hair color.  Am I brave?  Am I a hero?  Am I “real”?  Well yeah, I’m pretty real most of the time, but substitute “brave” with “not worried about it” and “hero” with “I’d rather be riding my bike in the mountains” and I’m the Instagram lady minus the vainglorious bullshit.

On another note, I also follow a lady with six kids who posts videos of her messy house and of herself crying at 2 am because two of the children are sick and she’s exhausted but still up taking care of them.  She *does* dye her hair, because it’s one of the few things in her life that keeps her feeling like something other than just someone’s mother.  Her identity and personality isn’t based entirely on a selling point.  And she insists she’s not a hero, she’s just a normal woman like all the rest of us.

I guess it boils down to this oversimplification: color your hair if you want, or don’t if you don’t want, but don’t put people on a pedestal just because they’re doing something you think is better than whatever you’re doing.  We’re all fucking heroes just for staying alive.

*rant over

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