Before “Growing Gray” was published in Ms. Magazine, it was an entry in my private notebook journal exploring my thoughts on having accepted my premature grays and deciding, at 17, not to dye it.
Through my writing, I began to summon the photographs of myself as a little bald-headed baby, a two-year-old with barely enough hair to clip a tiny barrette around; familial conversations around “good hair,” and finally getting mine long enough to pass for good – and the jheri curl to help it grow back when childhood anxieties took hold.
December 1968; 28 months old. Just a smidge of hair to twist at the top. Caption on the back, in my Mom’s handwriting, reads: “Janice doing her own thing. Busy all the time. 1969” 
Christmas 1979; 12 years old with my hair probably at its longest. 
At age 15 with the jheri curl. Hated it!
‘Hair love’ hasn’t always been easy for me. As black women cheered Matthew Cherry’s Oscar win for his animated short about a dad helping his daughter tame her natural ‘do, and the CROWN Act – which protects against discrimination for natural hair textures/styles – I was reminded of how embracing my natural grays helped me take control of cultural and social narratives around my hair. Following a public reading of piece last December, friends and audience members encouraged me to pitch it for publication – and Ms. Magazine is the perfect home for this meditation on hair, beauty and empowerment.
In this era of “You do you,” and “Be all you can be – naturally,” the pressures to conform to an idea of what it means to be young, relevant and attractive is still based on the generations of patriarchal and xenophobic baggage. By bucking trends, I became trendsetter. “Going gray” was among Pinterest’s trending terms in 2019 — and with recent research linking hair dyes to elevated breast cancer risk, 2020 will redefine what it means for women choosing to be gray.
Presented on this online journal are some of the images that came to mind while recounting my journey from plaits to platinum. You can read the complete story at MsMagazine.com.
70s icons Judy Pace, Mary Todd, Mary Wilson, Frida Payne, and me in the middle — the only gray gal in the bunch.
Top photo credit: Irene Yoon