Embrace

Happy Friday!

I could not be more excited that Monday is a holiday.  This incessant need to wake up every single morning, is doing my head in a bit.  It’s been such a problem that I’m even leaving my alarm on for Monday morning, just so that I can have the joy of switching it off and going back to sleep!

But there are more important things at hand this fine day. Or well, things of second importance – the holiday has to take priority here people.

Last week I attended the Dove event in Hout Bay.  There was a lot of things that were spoken about but obviously being hair focused, the main topic was hair.  How it makes you feel etc.  I think a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with their hair, but despite desperately wanting curly hair when I was little, I have never actively hated my hair. Which is obviously easy to say considering that it’s naturally blonde and straight – the pinnacle of what too many people idolise as “perfect hair”.

In fact, before deciding to go grey, I could easily count on two hands, the amount of times that I had found myself in the salon chair (which is sad because – head massages!). But this is not the case with so many other people I know.  For example, Seth’s family go to the hairdresser every week – something I could NEVER fathom before. I guess it’s quite hard to acknowledge this as a straight haired white woman, but I know there’s a lot of pain and suffering that goes into many women’s lives as they try and get their hair to conform to what they want it to be.  Or maybe more specifically – to what the World steers them into wanting it to be.

A lot of the talk was about embracing your natural self and not listening to what everyone tells you that you should be.  Another example: There was a blonde who was told to wear glasses and change to a brunette in order to be taken seriously as a successful business owner.  There was a TV presenter that regularly had to put chemicals in her hair in order to make it straight and sleek.  Both decided to go against this push to be something they’re not, by doing the opposite – blonde-ing it up or chopping all their hair off.

Long story short, this whole idea has been playing on my mind a lot recently.  The concept of embracing who you are and not being ashamed by it.  It’s something that I have actively been struggling with for most of my life, especially now as an adult that happens to be a grey haired 29 year old with 3 kids and a successful business.  How do you even juggle all those stigmas or try and conform to all those boxes?  All these things seem to be a walking contradiction don’t they?

Grey haired: No not old, just “in touch with the current trends” (Guys, this is obvs not the case because the grey hair thing was so last year, but yet here I am still doing it, I don’t know when to stop).

Mom of 3: Mom jeans, on the older side of life, moms taxi, overtired, fuddy duddy, outdated, school mom, soccer mom. bleh.

Business owner: Power suits, high heels, tight buns (both kinds), grey.

So what do you do? Do you change yourself to conform to each facet of your life as you move in to each space every day?  Or do you stop caring and just get people to take you like you are?

We live in a time where “first impression” are often the only impressions that people get.  Somehow I’ve thought that we’ve moved past the times of just rashly judging a book by its cover, but then I see another hipster walking past with his oversized earphones I find myself wondering if he’s just come from an organic coffee bar or whether he has kale stuck in his teeth.  It’s natural to judge a book by its cover and it’s annoying that even though I hate being judged, I just fall into the trap of judging others without intentionally wanting to do so.

But where does that leave me?

It’s taken me a very long time, a lot of self reflection and most probably the wisdom that comes with age (of which I’m only just tapping the surface), but I think I’m finally at that place where I really just couldn’t care less.  I am what I am.  Take it or leave it – you don’t have to like me in order for me to be happy.  I’m not going to pretend to enjoy wearing heels and suits just so that you take little, young me seriously in the work place.  I’ve earned all the various facets of my life that make me who I am and my overall look has nothing to do with it.  So let’s move on from that shall we?

Do you have the inner struggle that goes with embracing yourself the way you are?

~*~

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