20: Why You Should Love Your Grey Hair

[00:00:00] Rosie: What has happened to my hair? ? 

[00:00:03] Roula: Explain to, it's not the side that I want it to be. Oh gosh. It's like it's crazy gray and gray side 

[00:00:14] Rosie: that make me crazy.

[00:00:17] Roula: Welcome to the Rosie and show Marhaba. 

[00:00:26] Rosie: Good day. 

[00:00:28] Ruler 

[00:00:29] Roula: what? 

[00:00:31] Rosie: Gray hair. Yeah. I get gray hair in my eyebrows. So I have very dark eyebrows naturally, but I have fair hair on my head and I get gray in my eyebrows, which I think is hilarious. I haven't noticed any on my head, but my hair is blonde, but I think gray hair is really cool.

[00:00:55] I actually think it's awesome. However, I'm not at an age where I'm growing lots of grey hair. You have grey hair. What are your thoughts? Do you like having grey hair? 

[00:01:07] Roula: I love this question. Uh, I love it. I love it because before I decided to let my hair grow gray, few months, not very long time, like two or three months, uh, my husband was telling me, why don't you leave your hair gray?

[00:01:21] I think it's going to look beautiful. I'm like, what? I'm not that old yet. Like, why are you rushing it on me? I don't know. I felt like, leave me alone, don't tell me what to do with my hair. And that was like two to three months. And suddenly one day I saw some gray hair and I was like, you know what? I'm done with coloring my hair with this obligation of having my hair colored and no gray.

[00:01:57] It's like, why? I'm going to stop doing this. Yeah. And I stopped. But the process to, to that moment was, I never thought I want to have gray hair. Yeah. Though in my, I'm not sure how old I was, 45 or 44. Um, I started noticing when I look at social media or magazine, when I watch a movie, you know, after 40.

[00:02:25] Myself and maybe many other women, maybe men, too. We stop looking at young people and feel like we want to be young like that. We start noticing the older people. Yeah. And then try to see if we find inspiration. Well, I find always inspiration. So the actors who are older and looking more mature.

[00:02:49] themselves start to become the role model of the forties. Of course, each one stand differently in their life. And I think I, I like youth, but I don't want to be young again. 

[00:03:04] Rosie: Been there, done that, 

[00:03:05] Roula: Been there, done that. So looking forward to the future and noticing older women with gray hair, how beautiful they are, how Like, it's kind of serenity happens when they started leaving their hair grow gray.

[00:03:22] And believe me, something with our self confidence also got boosted with the gray hair. Yeah. You know, we already had an episode that I have Botox. Yes. Right. So it's not like, um, I'm against all these things. 

[00:03:39] Rosie: Right. And you wear makeup and you know, you care about your appearance. 

[00:03:42] Roula: Yes. Yes. Um, I have in gray hair, it has some, some personality change to the positive.

[00:03:50] Cool. Do you have a question of, or I can say something more, Rosie, you know, when I start talking, I just go on and on. 

[00:03:56] Rosie: Yeah. You don't shut up. Seriously. 

[00:03:58] Roula: I'm passionate. I'm passionate about the topic. 

[00:04:01] Rosie: I just love it so much. I actually think it's really sexy. 

[00:04:04] Gray hair is awesome. Last year, I was like, maybe I should dye my hair gray.

[00:04:11] Like, legitimate thought. I just think it's the coolest thing ever. And my friends were like, what is wrong with you? why would you do that? And I didn't do it, but that's how much I like it. I think it's awesome. But it 

[00:04:26] Roula: But that's the thing. Why do they think it's not, it's not good to have grey hair?

[00:04:32] Rosie: We've been raised to think it's, it's ugly and that aging is a bad thing. Why is aging a bad thing? 

[00:04:40] Roula: Not for men though. I remember that when, when I was younger and I hear the ladies, my mom, her friends, they were all the flirty kinds, all of them, her neighbors, When they see a man with gray hair, they're like, Oh, it suits him, the salt and pepper, it looks awesome on him.

[00:04:58] And when they see one woman with gray hair, it's like, can't she look after herself, leaving her hair grow gray? Wow. Wow. But I thought this just in Lebanon and the Middle East, living here in Europe, everyone think the same. 

[00:05:17] Rosie: So what was the reaction from people around you when you decided to embrace your gray hair?

[00:05:22] Roula: Without exception, except for my mom in the beginning, everyone just loved it. 

[00:05:28] Rosie: Really? That's amazing. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? 

[00:05:33] Roula: And everyone started talking why they don't leave their hair grow gray. Hmm. Like giving me excuses why it suits me, but they, uh, And what people don't understand, it's a process.

[00:05:47] Right. It's a process to get your hair gray. First, I accepted that I cut my hair short. If I want to let it grow gray, I can't have the long hair. So it depends what's your priority. Is your priority long hair or short hair? You have to look after yourself when you have gray hair, because you don't want to look sick.

[00:06:07] We don't have sun, we are not suntanned in the Netherlands. My skin is getting grey, yellow, it's weird. Yuck! So if I don't look after myself, having grey hair, I will look dark and not healthy. 

[00:06:23] So that's the, the, the dark side to it is that when you are not suntanned or in a nice weather environment, 

[00:06:31] Rosie: you might look like a sick person.

[00:06:34] Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:06:35] That's interesting. What about the texture of gray hair? Because I remember, gosh, mom was probably going to kill me, but she's not alive anymore. So that's all right. She would get gray hair and she started embracing it more too. The older she got. But I would notice, like, when she was younger and she still had coloured hair, the grey hair was like a different texture, it was a bit more wiry.

[00:06:58] Is that the same for everybody?

[00:07:01] Roula: I had beautiful curls and, uh, since I have grey hair, I kind of lost them. Yeah. It doesn't curl nicely anymore. And the whole texture changed. It's dry. It looks different. Yeah. It's different. My hair quality did not change a lot, though. I've never had beautiful, thick, nice hair.

[00:07:22] My hair was always thin and hard work. This didn't change. When people have already beautiful hair and start growing gray, it will stay beautiful. So the hair quality changes, but not drastically. 

[00:07:37] Rosie: Right, right. I do wonder what causes it. There's got to be science behind this, right? What on earth causes grey hair?

[00:07:45] It's like magic. 

[00:07:47] Roula: Yeah, I mean, I read something about it a long time ago. Of course, I forgot what it is. Yes, there is science behind it. It's aging. Hair is aging. 

[00:07:58] Just like the skin.

[00:08:01] Maybe I'm going to embrace it, yeah. Yeah, I'm, but I'm curious if my thoughts around it will change as I get older. Because it's easy for me to say as someone in their early thirties, Ah, I love it! As I get older, maybe I'm going to have these moments of, Oh my God, I'm getting old, I don't like how I look anymore.

[00:08:20] Because it must be pretty confronting looking in the mirror. And, You're changing. You've got more wrinkles. Your face is a different shape. Your hair's changing color. There's probably all these hormonal things going on when you hit menopause. 

[00:08:36] You know what we can do with this conversation from my personal experience?

[00:08:41] Letting hair grow gray, it's also a personal development thing. It's, it does something to the personality. Not everyone should or want or must. 

[00:08:53] When you're developing and growing older and working on your personality and finding yourself in a different ways, it might be something you choose.

[00:09:03] Right. And if you don't, it's also fine. Yeah. Though, I mean, when I look at someone who is, my mom, my mom, for example, she always dyed her hair, made sure you don't see one gray hair all her life until she got sick in bed and her hair started getting gray. My sister used to get her hairdresser so she can dye her hair because she doesn't want to see gray hair

[00:09:32] and I tell her mom, when you're 70 and you don't have one gray hair, it's terrible. looks weird. But on the other hand, I talk to myself, come on, I mean, if I do buttocks in my forehead, I don't have a wrinkle. That's also not real. 

[00:09:48] Rosie: We can't be hypocrites, right? It's hard. I find it hard not to judge people, but I know aging isn't straightforward.

[00:09:56] But what's your message to listeners about gray hair? 

[00:09:59] Roula: My message to people is that It's a personal choice while you're developing your personality, because after 40 and after 50 was not the same anymore. 

[00:10:12] Rosie: It's like your second puberty or something.

[00:10:15] Yeah, you're going through puberty. 

[00:10:16] Roula: Yeah, true, true. Puberty with wisdom and life experience. How awesome is that? 

[00:10:25] Rosie: Yeah, right. I think we need to look at aging in a more positive light. I gotta say it does scare me. 

[00:10:29] Roula: And when they say it to someone, you know, when you say to someone that they have nice grey hair, just shut up.

[00:10:36] Don't explain why you don't, because that person who has grey hair doesn't really care why you dye your hair or not. 

[00:10:45] Rosie: Yeah, piss off. Right. Yeah. Right. I've got to say though. 

[00:10:48] Roula: Give a compliment and shut up. Yeah. 

[00:10:50] Rosie: Shut up. Keep your opinion to yourself. But actually I think I'd be one of these annoying people.

[00:10:55] Like I'd embrace the gray hair, but then try to convince other people they should do the same. And maybe that's not the right approach because it's a personal choice. 

[00:11:03] Roula: It is. So also listen, I'm lucky to have a nice gray hair. Not everyone has nice gray hair. True. So sometimes the process to get it into the gray phase is so painful.

[00:11:16] that they will hate themselves. No, we don't want that. We want to grow and embrace. We don't want to grow and hate. Ah, well, I love gray hair. Let's get out of here. Everybody let us know for our older listeners. Do you embrace gray hair? Or maybe there's some younger listeners too who actually have gone gray earlier than the typical age.

[00:11:37] I'm not listening because I took off my headset so that people see my gray hair. Rula is so rude. Rula sucks. She's ugly. Oh, welcome back. You look beautiful. Okay. Bye. us know what you think. 

[00:11:49] Rosie: If you got a kick out of our conversation today, can you pretty please hit the follow button and share it with another opinionated person? This is the easiest way for you to support the show. It also gives Rula and I the motivation to keep going. I have to 

[00:12:05] Roula: stop you there. Stop telling people what to do.

[00:12:09] If they like to follow the show and share it, it's totally up to them. Guys, please, can you help us follow and share the show? Thank you so much. See you next time.