One long, white as-snow strand of hair. Smack in the middle of my freshly trimmed bangs. I was newly seventeen and hadn’t even gotten the nerve to retake my driver’s test, hadn’t tasted my first sip of alcohol, and yet the newly sprouted hair on my head made me feel ancient. 

Was it stress? Was I really just getting old? Maybe it’s genetic? 

The temptation to pluck it was overwhelming. I’d hardly entered a phase in my life where I felt ready to acknowledge, let alone admit, that I was no longer a child or even a teenager. No one around me had expressed remotely similar concerns; their hair was shiny, healthy, and singularly toned. Every strand. My first instinct, after pushing down the urge to pull it out and pretend it never existed, was to hide it. My youth was my anchor, and I was clinging to it desperately. 

Who would've thought something lighter than a feather and thinner than a piece of paper could derail my self-confidence? 

After school that day, I returned home and asked my mother about it. Was she too soon a victim to fate’s cruel and wintery design too? Sure, just about every mother, alongside my own, had been dying the grays away for years at this point. What I didn’t realize was that, more often than not, the older women around me had been dying their hair for decades. Going to the hair salon seemed to be a staple part of being an adult woman; taking care of yourself started with maintaining your physical appearance and, more specifically, retaining your youthfulness. 

After a brief yet enlightening conversation with my mother, I  learned that the impulse to rid my head entirely of that little white hair was completely natural. My mother had been in the habit of plucking her grays for years before she first took the plunge and started fully dying her roots. But she was well into her twenties by the time that happened. 

Genetics be damned, my grays told another story. Fearful of a before and after presidency type of takeover, I thought hiding those stress-induced silvers was the only way to move on. 

Soon, they were popping up more and more, and like the fact that I was leaving for college soon, this wasn’t something I could ignore as easily anymore. Not only was I leaving my teenage years behind, but I was losing something I felt characterized my youth. It truly seemed like everyone around me was so well-versed in ignoring and disguising any inkling of aging. I had no choice but to despise my hair. 

Now, years later, for some reason unbeknownst to even myself, I grew to love them. As few and sparse as they were, I felt inclined to arrange them in a more visible way but never felt secure enough to truly own them. Turning to pop culture, icy blondes dominated the screens. But after a run-in on Netflix with a show I hadn’t thought of in years, I was reintroduced to Stacy London. 

London, known best for her role as co-host of the TLC show What Not to Wear, had been a fashion influencer years before the term influencer was socially relevant. Her style was admired and mimicked at the peak of celebritydom in the early 2000s. One thing she had that others couldn’t and hadn’t dared to replicate was her iconic gray streak. Her confidence in her sense of style, as well as in her physical appearance,  gave me the encouragement I needed to embrace my grays. She has always spoken openly about her streak, being a part of her that she would never want to hide. She's been quoted as feeling her look resembles that of a superhero, or supervillain, all the more inspiration for those dealing with premature graying to own the power that comes with total acceptance of your appearance. 

As the years passed, more powerful women with heavy grays stepped into the spotlight. Michelle Visage of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Claire Saffitz of Bon Appétit are both famous for their individual successes and for complementing their individual styles with their natural gray hair. 

After the discovery of these popular silver-stranded queens, I felt no shame in flaunting my grays. Even when the older women in my life found humor in pointing them out and wondering aloud, “What could have caused such a young person to turn gray so early?”

As a now twenty-one-year-old with a fair amount of white streaks, everywhere I turn, I see another woman on social media learning to love their grays. Following the journeys of women only a few years older than myself, rocking full heads of silver locks excites me now. It no longer represents something I feel ashamed of. 

Aging is practically one of the most inevitable parts of life, and hiding your hair’s naturally developed shades doesn’t have to be. Regularly treating yourself to a trip to the hair salon does not have to enable the dismissal of your aging process. Maintaining your self-confidence and taking care of every inch of yourself, from the tips of your roots to the ends of your grays, is the only way to mature gracefully.