[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, I'm Megan, and I'm Sarah, we're two women in our 40s who live in different states and have a lot of different interests between us.
[SPEAKER_00]: On this show, we talk about all the midlife lady leisure pursuits we're enjoying at this stage of life, like travel, hobbies, food, wellness, style, and more.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am very excited today, Megan, to chat about the current state of our hair, our midlife lady hair situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: The good and the bad and the messy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a feeling we're both going to have a lot to say about this, Sarah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, today's episode is brought to you by our exclusive season sponsor and a longtime partner of ours, Vionic Shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to tell you a little story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just lived an entire conference lifestyle
[SPEAKER_00]: in charcoal shimmer, which is this really fun kind of like a muted shimmery gray.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, I went to a tourism conference with my day job, and that was two long days on my feet, and I wore my uptown sneakers almost the entire time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't broken in or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had just gotten them and packed them and wore them the whole time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were great.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were dressy enough to wear with dresses and trousers, but they also worked all day long from panels to dinner out with clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then over the weekend, I went to the Chicago tea festival.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took two trains to get there, tons of walking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think 12 or 13,000 steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I wore my uptown sneakers all day with a dress.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were super cute,
[SPEAKER_00]: No surprise there, I know all vionic shoes are so comfortable, supportive and stable, but these ones really did me right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can use the promo code midlifeatvionicshoes.com for 15% off, that is one time use only if you're interested in the uptown sneakers or one of vionics other styles, and check out the special page we've set up where you can see some of our favorite vionic styles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look for that in the show notes for this episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, thank you so much to Vionic for sponsoring this episode, and let's dive in Megan, we're talking about our hair today.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to start with the current situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, our listeners aren't looking at us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have not been selfie posting in a while on the while on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just give us your basic cut color, whether you're dying, your hair or not, we're going to get into more details.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is just like, tell the people what they're looking at, set the stage for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, my hair is relatively long.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the longest it's been, because I've had it trimmed a few times over the last six months or so, but pretty long.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, bra strap long, layered, like, some layers around my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bangs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty new.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got those cut in I think it was January when I got those cut We'll talk more about cutting bang.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we will
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the old color is nearly grown out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of my goals for this year was to really, well, actually, I've been trying to get here for about the last year, but it's, it's, it's been some bumps, some ups and downs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to get to the point where my hair is more or less than natural color.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I add highlights or something, it's just a few, and then growing them out, let it don't have to maintain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't really want to be maintaining.
[SPEAKER_00]: color.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gotten pretty gray at the temples.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't really decided whether I'm going to include that now in the no new color thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you and I can talk about gray more, keeping it from looking goofy when it's only growing in in a couple of places.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard as you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, but for now, for now I'm happy with the color enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk more about that as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's mostly very strawberry, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you throughout your life, you're sort of red-headed, adjacent strawberry blonde.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've had very blonde phases.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of this is with the help of color, but also it's just like you just live in this kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: Strawberry land.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and people have, for years, debated whether I am a blonde or a red head, which I've always found kind of funny because I never really considered myself a red head.
[SPEAKER_00]: More strawberry blonde if anything, but there's been times it's been very blonde because I've always taken it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: probably two full shades.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when it's really like when I've taken it up all the way to like say a medium blonde, it looks blonde.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it's more in that medium to dark blonde, it tends to look a little more strawberry depending on if I have highlights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm really more in the light brown category and it looks straight up red.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like almost like a strawberry Auburn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's been something that's been kind of challenging to get used to because I'm like, is that really my real color or is that just...
[SPEAKER_00]: the darkness that it's that's like the the number let's say if you're looking at a die box there's like numbers and then within each number there's golden or ash or sometimes like even reddish so I don't know enough about color to tell you what the different definitions would be but one is like the darkness or lightness level yeah so if I match the darkness level with a with a color and that doesn't matter if I do it myself or if I
[SPEAKER_00]: it will look red.
[SPEAKER_00]: More red than I think it looks at my root.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the weird part.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it just wants to go brassy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that has been a challenge to, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: be okay with i guess like it's it's like is this is it pretty yet i actually think it's very pretty if i look at it really close up in the mirror if i like pull my hair out and look at the roots i'm like that is a very pretty color yeah i think i'm very color here but if i stand 10 feet back from the mirror i'm like i don't know i don't know it doesn't feel like me it feels very dark and i'm doing a lot of zoom calls right now because of my job and often it says zoom call where i'm in the room with a whole bunch of other people so
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like 15 feet from the camera and I feel like all I can see is all this dark hair in this tiny little white face
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we had a funny conversation about this because as we'll get into, I have a silvery white hair all around my face and I don't like the look of that and it's just funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're saying the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're both complaining but about the opposite thing and I think it's just so this is so classic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't get more into our frustrations later.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's up with your hair right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so my hair is quite long.
[SPEAKER_01]: The longest parts are all the way midway down my back, so it's very long, and I just got a cut that I'll talk about, but we didn't take any length off.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did a couple of shorter layers around the face, but that's, and then just a trim.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's quite long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I stopped dying my hair about three and a half years ago, I think, I think that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've no dye in my hair and I am gray so my gray pattern is very white around my face and temples and but not along the part so I've a lot of brown medium brown my natural colors kind of a medium brown on the ash end of the spectrum so I don't really have a lot of natural like blonde or red highlights it's just a it's just a brown.
[SPEAKER_01]: and brown.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is kind of like not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have three kids with basically brown hair, but they all have such different tones, and I've paid more attention to like there's so many different kinds of brown hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mine is as brown and it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like caramel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and yeah, I would I would take her brown hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mine is I think it would be in the ashy family, but anyway, then there's lots of white and silver and we'll we will get into this But that's what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's long and A combination of gray and brown is is what I'll say and no no artificial color no bangs and I will say more as we as we move along Yeah, all right
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious what you used to think about.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ever did think about what ladies in mid-life were doing with their hair, when you were young.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then how does that match up with your reality or not?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, I mean, keep in mind that I came of age in the 80s and or I guess you would say I grew up in the 80s and came of age in the early 90s, so I'm sure that informs this to some degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just go watch an old news report or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always think it's important when you're trying to remember how people really looked don't look at movies because those looks are typically stylized to some degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go watch an old news report.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not just the reporter, but the people on the street, yes, yes, the people that they interviewed at the hockey gamer would have been like, well, how did those people dress and do their hair?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is so much more realistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I would say I thought mid-life ladies had short.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably gray but not always because my mom was middle aged and she didn't have gray hair until she was probably in her early fifties, sensible, wash and wear, probably some kind of like natural curl I for perm, like I feel like that was definitely a look because you wouldn't have probably just had straight short hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 80s and early 90s, you probably would have done something to it to make it wavy or something So that's what I would have visualized now.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that match up with reality?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think middle-aged women these days Have sensible wash and wear hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we wear our hair much the way young people do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I think you're right Or we're trying in fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like my hair has become less sensible
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's wash and wear the older I've gotten because in my 20s and 30s I had the little kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was, you know, doing the short haircuts and the choppy looks and all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I have like long, wavy hair that I'm blowing out and it's just super different.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, not at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, how about you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Much of the same here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have this memory and also when we're seeing midlife, there's a huge range like sure when I'm a kid and the the cohorts of my mom would have been like in their early to mid 40s.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one sort of midlife and then we're also talking about that and much
[SPEAKER_01]: much older, but I do have a memory of one like mom of somebody I knew.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't not even knew well, who had long hair and would wear it sometimes in like a ponytail with a scrunchie.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just thought, oh, I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought everybody cut their hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know you could be 45 and have long hair first of all and whereas I would say now that's not true at all I know all kinds of women 40s 50s and beyond with longer hair and the the throwing things up in a pony tail or a messy bun Again, I was a dancer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always had long hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I often threw my hair up when it annoyed me always a rubber band here or a clip here
[SPEAKER_01]: I also didn't think older women did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, they all had hair that whatever their hairstyle was, they did it in the morning and it stayed that way all day.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, that's not the way things are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still throw my hair up in a ponytail all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're like a clock clip or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, similar to you, maybe we weren't paying attention to some of the nuance and that there were lots of women doing lots of different things or maybe we're correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just living in a time where maybe the tools are better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to get into some of the actual changes to our hair shortly here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that is a piece of it as well that it does get harder to have healthy long hair as you get older and we'll get into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: that is part of it for sure and I think that one thing I wasn't as prepared for was thinning and loss of volume.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't think it would.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think it would happen to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, me, but the other thing that I think has happened is that over time,
[SPEAKER_00]: The distance between what is acceptable for a woman over 40, let's say, to where or how to do her hair or make up, and younger women has narrowed to where it almost is no gap now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's really not, like, if you went back to the 60s or 50s, even the 70s, look at old women and middle-aged women who looked like old women.
[SPEAKER_00]: in those decades and look how differently they dress and do their hair from younger women in those decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you go back every 10 years you go back it's like an incremental 20% gap between the way a woman in her 40s and beyond would have looked.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you go back 100 years it was like there were very clear sort of standards around the way middle-aged and older women
[SPEAKER_00]: having their hair up and bond, you know, in a borne or world, or into your status in society, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like unmarried versus married, married versus with children, widowed, spinster, yes, all kinds of like categorizations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes, I have to say, I'm not like longing for that time, or those distinctions, but it would make it in some ways a little easier sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned in our intro that I, the other day, was at this T festival, and I just decided to dress for comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: cardigan and I wore hose because like straight up panty hose like nude kind of thicker like more like tights but they look like panty hose on and it was because it was a little chilly I was wearing a dress and it was a little too chilly for bear legs and I felt kind of goofy but then I thought
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm wearing is really appropriate for like what I'm doing and sort of, I don't care about what men think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the male gaze part is just not a factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was freeing in a way that I don't think all midlife women get to experience that freedom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're still all sort of dressing and doing our hair the same as the 20-year-olds.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes it more like when do we get to get off the stream?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then the comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you're playing in the same sandbox, you're also comparing to the 32-year-old, whereas if you're using a completely different rubric, then you don't have that comparison.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I support you in your panty house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well let's stay on this midlife frustration train.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any recent hair woes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Any frustrations?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean this is a time to vent.
[SPEAKER_01]: So vent about midlife hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have three things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to talk about the brassiness first because they already kind of teased that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That reddishness, I do think might be the way my hair is aging.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I think back to my dad's side, which is where we had the Irish and British and Scottish ancestry,
[SPEAKER_00]: Those women had sort of tobacco colored hair by the end of their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like sort of a yellowish gray, let's say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not like a pretty yellow, but very, yeah, like a, it's pressy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there is something, like what's happening to my hair textually and color-wise, I just think it's leaning in that direction more and more and more and I'm trying to stop dying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't have the, I don't have the out that I would have had.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I will, I will sometimes use a semi-permanent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not using any permanent dies anymore and I haven't used a permanent die and probably it's six months or more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the good news is,
[SPEAKER_00]: my roots are about the right shade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a huge distinction now that I need to patch up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's working.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I do still want to use like a semi-permanent or, um, you know, like a really temporary wash, just to kind of make the color look better.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it doesn't look great, those tend to add brassiness rather than take it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that has been a little bit of a challenge, but there are also toning conditioners and glosses that do help with that quite a bit and I'm just I'm like kind of trying to figure out how much I'm going to lean into this and and just accept that the way it is how it is now and then the ways I'm going to try to
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe alter it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I have no idea what's going to happen because I Last summer was still at least getting highlights in low lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: I Don't know what's going to happen when I'm out in the sun more this summer like I don't know what I truly don't know so TBD Yeah, I do feel like your hair is like kind of science experiment That's what I like with my great girl out and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like what's gonna?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going to happen next?
[SPEAKER_00]: Banks were they a good idea
[SPEAKER_00]: The jury is out, right after you got the very cute pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say that's the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've taken some very cute pictures right after I blow dry my bangs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look really cute, but then I go about my life and I have this hank of hair in my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually think
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard because when I see myself in a photo or something now, I actually think I look better with my hair up off my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of it is I don't have much in the way of forehead wrinkles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I know a lot of people grow their bangs that deliberately to mask forehead wrinkles?
[SPEAKER_01]: But that is not something I'm very useful skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: my forehead is very smooth.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's not quite as youthful is all the all around my eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've a lot of creepiness and like little fine lines and so there's something about the bangs and I have kind of a heavy bang that stops like at or almost below my eyebrows now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like an arrow saying look at my eyes don't I look tired so there's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also the fact that when she cut them, I thought they were too light, and I went back two days later and had her cut more to make them more of that thick heavy bang, which is what I thought I wanted, and almost immediately I was like, oops, and now I'm really committed, because now I've got the side hanks,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like some cute little pieces that come out of I put my hair in a clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's also sort of like in-between the longer pieces that are kind of chin length.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, I know exactly what's in the picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's sort of like that in-between-sized bang.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those have to be flawlessly placed, placed, and dried.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they look, or they curl.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to insert for the listeners a mental image because, and not a bad one, on the pit, which I don't think you watch Megan, but like 90% of America watches.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. McCay, the character, has her hair in a pony.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now don't, she also is frazzled, she's been in the ER for 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, she looks terrible, just
[SPEAKER_00]: I look like her every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But her bangs do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are, these characters are very realistically styled.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're supposed to look hairy like they've been in an ER all day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's not like styled to look super hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she is like a woman, I think she's in her early 40s.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like she has the bangs and then she has the long pieces and then the rest is back in a braid.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually really like it framing a face.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like those long pieces on the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that what I'm realizing, I'm looking at pictures of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's got a side swept, she's got a part of down the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very similar to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I think I'm realizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though she is styled to look frazzled.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still styled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, every single day she's getting this styled.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she would've had to do that before she went to the ER in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I've noticed is that it's like, it'll look one way when I leave the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then by the time I get to work, it looks a different way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if it's kind of a hot and sweaty day, it starts to look or I just get annoyed with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want it touching my face anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I did, I went back to my stylist who's great about doing trims.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, just come back and she doesn't charge me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just trims my bangs.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she said okay see if you're talking about so what we're gonna probably actually do is grow those hanks out on the side Those are not going to work for me long-term because my hair is naturally very wavy Yeah, and that happens to be the spot where the wave starts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just not gonna work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to work on getting those grown back out and then I'll see how I feel about this little fringe in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now I am able to pin most of it back if I'm kind of careful about the way I do it and it looks pretty cute.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm in an okay spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll just talk about one other small frustration, which has kind of come and gone and I know you've got things to say about this too, is the volume loss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, my hair's volume actually looks like it's in a pretty good spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started taking a supplement like, I don't know, nine months ago or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I started taking it was I kept looking at myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is when I didn't have bangs, but I would put my hair in a ponytail and think,
[SPEAKER_00]: am I balding like there was entire spots I already have kind of a widow's peak and then it's graying at the temples.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there'd be spots where it's like it looks like I have no hair right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I read about this supplement and I can link to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's called L's Sistine that's supposed to help with hair growth and I just kind of worked it into my daily routine didn't think about it and then one day I looked in the mirror and I was like oh
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all these baby hairs coming in around my ponytail, which would indicate that they weren't there before, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, months and months later, I do feel like a lot of that body has come back, particularly if I use my that Revlon hair dryer that is still going strong that I think, yeah, I don't have it, but I know what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one with the hair brush, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and I got my pre-COVID, I haven't had it for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still going strong, and I kind of use that in place of around, because I'm terrible at round brushing and blood drying at the same time, I don't have the dexterity for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This kind of does both.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I use it at the crown and get some heat, as I'm blood drying, I'm pretty happy with how it settles.
[SPEAKER_00]: My ponytail is not as thick as it used to be, but it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's okay right now and the bangs do I will say help with that a little bit because it's not like a whole and layering It's not like a whole bunch of hair just hanging yeah limp and long, which is kind of why I wanted the bangs to begin with I was tired of that Limp looking hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think there's some things I could have done that weren't quite so dramatic, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it looks cute, but yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just this is a vense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, yeah, I'm happy enough with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I feel like one of the things I want for my hair to look like is like I didn't give up on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want it to look as if it's intentional.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad you articulated it that way because there's lots of ways to look like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can have gray hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can have short hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can have long hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can heat style it or not, but looking like you haven't given up is like, that is my aesthetic goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bangs help with that because it's very clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did my hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, like to this is on purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just sometimes it doesn't look anywhere near the way I want it to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I look like I just put in a 12-hour shift in the ER.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, I guess that's in fashion now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everyone will think I'm just a celebrity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, tell me all your frustrations.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to hear them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I think I just have two, and they are kind of, I think, classic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you started to talk about volume loss, and this is funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime in, I'm going to say December, I was chatting a voxer with my two besties from growing up who are both about a year and a half younger than me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You think that's not a big deal, but sometimes with aging, I do feel like I'm like, just like with you to me, you're a couple years older than me, and I feel like you're going first in some categories.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were chatting about hair and they both have fine hair, so they didn't start out with like a big thick ponytail They were both kind of lamenting changes to their hair texture or volume in their forties and I said with my mouth and my words I said you know guys I have so many other issues going on But I have not noticed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like I don't think I have any I haven't lost any hair I think we were specifically talking about hair loss shedding and thinning I was like I have not experienced that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay fast forward like
[SPEAKER_01]: Six weeks like a month or two and I it felt like overnight my ponytail was half the size and it really sent me down a spiral I can be medically anxious.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got my thyroid checked.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got my iron checked.
[SPEAKER_01]: I You know, chatted with my doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to think back of like did this happen all at once or was it Happening gradually and I was just sort of like not paying attention and then I realized it all at once
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, of course I did not lose half my ponytail overnight.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do think that for me, and I've now like read up on this, there's a couple different types of midlife hair thinning or hair loss, and some can be acute, and it could be a hormone dropper spike.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be an illness or an infection that you didn't even know was happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: My doctor said sometimes like COVID or these other things like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just like after you have a baby, they're sort of a rather sudden.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't mean sudden in one day, but sudden in say one to two months, like a sort of a mass shedding event.
[SPEAKER_01]: Versus your hair is just thinning as you get older or some people have the more like thinning around their hair line or on top, that is not really what was happening to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mine was more like probably a hormonal like,
[SPEAKER_01]: dump or drop of some kind, lost a bunch of hair, kind of freaked out about it, did all the due diligence to make sure I wasn't dying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then now I'm just, I'm just left with less hair than I used to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also some texture changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this has been the last, I would say, three to four months of just like coming almost like accepting it and coming to peace with it slash also,
[SPEAKER_01]: anecdotally, a lot of people say works for them, both my dermatologist and my primary character was like, yeah, we hear from people that it works to it's expensive and the pills taste terrible, but if those two things aren't getting in your way, like knock yourself out, it hasn't quite been long enough for me to say, um, my hair's twice as thick, but I will say, I'm not shedding, I am not shedding.
[SPEAKER_01]: a crazy amount at all and I just had my hair cut and styled by my stylist and I was like are you feeling like I'm shit she's like no she's like you're not shedding any more than what would be normal for someone with a bunch of long hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is all to say it was it felt like a kind of instead of a gradual getting used to like midlife hair it felt like a kind of slap in the face of aging of like what in the world I thought I had I don't have the thickest ponytail
[SPEAKER_01]: thinness or fineness or breakage or you know some people say oh I just can't grow my hair long and it just breaks off.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never had any of those issues and this was like age and reality being like oh like you haven't had these issues yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well okay I have a few things to say about how this all relates to our mid-life lives right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all it can become
[SPEAKER_00]: tempting to think that because something hasn't happened to us yet that we are like somehow in the clear or like almost like we deserve a pass on this one Yeah, like I think that the time and then and then so insulting and kind of terrifying when you're like oh no wait, I am this too
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's like that question of the balance between Acceptance that this is just, you know, things will change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our bodies will change.
[SPEAKER_00]: New surprising things will continue to come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And and that's one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, on the other hand, it's not necessarily, I also think the temptation can be to think, well, that's it on the downward spiral now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, kind of like when I kept injuring myself a couple of years ago, it was really hard for me to not get into this mental place where I would never be whole again and like, and that everything would just be on the downward hurting or
[SPEAKER_00]: The way I think about it is I can't probably look, I'm going to say better and that is a very subjective term, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm just going to use that and everyone will know what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, whether that means for you younger or better rested or whatever, prettier, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't look or feel better than I did 10 years ago, probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can, no matter how old I get, probably look and feel better than I did two weeks to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's always room.
[SPEAKER_00]: to improve a little bit on whatever's happening right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not just a death march.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, yeah, but I don't know where to land with that either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the distance between, or the distance, but that balance between what's unavoidable change and what can be fixed, or what can be addressed if not fixed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that applies to so many things in mid-life, whether it's weight and body shape, skin, mental acuity, like all of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, is this the new normal?
[SPEAKER_01]: And my work is to love and accept and appreciate the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: brain that I have, or is there, and for me sometimes it's also like, is there an underlying medical problem that I need to investigate?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there's a little bit of, we need to be, we need to be on top of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to be as hyper-vigilant as I often am about those things, and then, or is there a way to feel better?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I don't have to live with chronic headaches, maybe I don't have to live with joint pain all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think, yes, I think what you're saying is that is the five million dollar question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I'll just say that this, this hair shedding event sent me on kind of like a low hair Confidence and a little bit of like a worry spiral.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm feeling better about all that, but it also like I found I wasn't blow drying or straightening or curling my hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't using heat on my hair very much because I was a little paranoid
[SPEAKER_01]: about damaging or losing more and I also felt like all the things I used to do to my hair to more tame the frizz and tame the volume, it actually just made it look flatter and thinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then I was just air drying.
[SPEAKER_01]: My hair is naturally wavy slash frizzy slash depends on the humidity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then all of this lead to just not feeling great about my hair, um, and so that is the frustration.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other really quick frustration that anyone who's heard me talk about the gray grow out has already heard, which is, uh, I'm very, very white hair around my face.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I pull my hair up into a ponytail or a bun, I feel like I look like a grandma.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I wear my hair down,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually a very nice mix of gray white and brown and I think it's really interesting, but I am someone who does like to throw my hair up in a ponytail.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have this constant, like, probably similar to the bangs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, I can work harder to style my hair so that it looks like I like or I can live my life and throw my hair up in a ponytail.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is that's been ongoing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I'm going to change that frustration because I really feel pretty happy with the fact that I don't die my hair So I'm not going to color my hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always going to be most white and most gray around my face even for years It's going to until I'm fully white or gray, but that could be 25 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's interesting, I have noticed recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I used to think a clip in a ponytail or like one in the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if I'm gonna clip my hair up, that's essentially the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little easier than a pony.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both times it's hair pulled back.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I have noticed recently is I actually much prefer the way I look with a ponytail than with my hair in a clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless I put the clip in a very specific position and then have the ends of my hair falling out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's just because with a pony tail, you can still visibly see there's hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like that hair in the back and it's kind of jaunty and cute and it like you can kind of see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's full too, a pony tail is so cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something it seems to bring out the best in my bang and side hunk situation whereas a clip does not.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even just that little tweak.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I really need to put my hair back, it makes sense for me to take three extra minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: and carefully gather it into a ponytail of a flattering height, then to just throw it in a clip and hope for the best, because usually it just doesn't look as good in the clip.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and for me, I have done more low ponytails than previously in my life, because that does, I like the way that you can see all the different colors in my hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I do a high pony all the white, I do, I always joke, I look like the grandma emoji, like the emoji with the white bun.
[SPEAKER_01]: right yes so yeah so I agree small tweaks and also like none of nobody out in the world is looking at our hair the way we do and we don't straight on in the mirror actually and and in a good way because they actually people do see us three dimensionally we see our so we're moving yes we're moving talking to us yes we're not just standing there staring
[SPEAKER_00]: people are just like looking at a still shot of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're looking at us living.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we should really move on from the complaining.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we share any recent hair wins or just something that you are liking about your hair lately?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I touched on the fact that the bangs are clippable and that I haven't really had to do much with dye, which is nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are winds and moving in the right direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: One other thing that I just noticed yesterday was that I'm really loving the way my hair is falling around my face like toward the bottom right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been using it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I usually do, I wash it like every third to fourth day with bangs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard to get to that fourth day because even if I wash my bangs,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still like you see so much, I don't know, like it just feels like it gets greasy so much faster.
[SPEAKER_00]: So three days is about where I'm at and what I do is I blow dry it at the roots with my hair flipped over and now here's a funny thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of times now I've had major back issues when I've stood up really fast after having my hair flipped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and I had a massage and the massage therapist said she thinks it's like the little muscles around like the fascia around my upper spine are really really tight and so when I stand up fast it's like a little pinch and it really hurts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have one day actually where I hurt for a whole day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I have to really quick insert that several years ago, let me be four or five
[SPEAKER_01]: I had an issue with the hair flippy upside down thing, but mine was, well, it was inner ear.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was, I figured out that there was water from after a shower.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I go, if I do the big dramatic like the big throw your hair over and then throw your hair back, I would get basically an ear ache for like a couple hours and then it would go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once I stopped doing that dramatic hair flippy thing, it stopped happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: So something about the way water was getting like sloshed around I would get a really intense But but it would go away in two hours earache and so I don't do that anymore either I mean, I will turn my head upside down, but I do it really carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know well So this is one of the midlife things that happens to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't take for granted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, flipping or harping All right, so yeah, so now when I very slowly and carefully lower my head to an upside-down position
[SPEAKER_00]: And I use the regular blow dryer and I blow dry the roots because it just works faster than the other one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it to where it's probably like 70% dry, maybe 75.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I use my Revlon thing to finish it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I do the crown.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just like kind of, I don't, I'm not really careful about which way, like whether I wrap it one where the other, my hair has a pretty, uh, it's been kind of curling a specific way since I was a little kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you look at pictures of me from when I was five years old,
[SPEAKER_00]: the pattern of flipping.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the outside curls under and the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it would be very difficult for me to alter that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't really bother.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just what I'm trying to do is get it is get those under ringlets to kind of calm down a little bit because I do get very ringletty hair and then to get the upper layers to kind of hang in waves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been working and it looks
[SPEAKER_00]: seven minutes to take it from almost dry to really, really close to dried, but I specifically use that tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks really nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that I'm very happy with and I do feel like some of that's having gotten the body back, but also I think it's just I'm taking a little extra time with it and it's it shows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How about you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's just sort of the end cap on the frustration journey is I had a I booked a haircut just last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had been almost feeling like I was almost feeling embarrassed or like sheepish to go get a haircut with what feels like drastically different hair volume.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that I I noticed the difference more than anybody else, but I so I kind of put it off and then and then I thought I bet that we're going to end up chopping a whole bunch off because it's it's kind of thin at the bottom.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wasn't looking forward to this haircut and I walked in and I have been to this stylus for the last several years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was so sweet and she was actually so complimentary.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, oh my gosh, your hair is so long.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had let it air dry with my natural wave that day so that she could kind of see like, this is what we're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, oh my gosh, it looks so pretty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, she couldn't flatter me if that's what she feels like her job is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it felt genuine and I right away just felt better because I'd been in this kind of like low confidence place about my hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we sat down and she's like, I don't think we need to cut very much off.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't need to chop it off just to get thickness and volume back.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like, let's just do a little trim on the ends, do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she just looks like sort of took charge in this very compassionate way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just left that haircut like truly feeling better about myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Plus I mean, I have...
[SPEAKER_01]: I have the confidence now that I'm not continuing to thin any more.
[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever happened, whatever big change has happened, I'm getting used to the new amount of hair that I have, and then I just had this haircut that felt like it took me from low confidence, almost a high confidence, because the trim was nice, and I didn't have to cut a bunch off.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really thought, oh man, I'm going to walk out of that with like shoulder length hair, because we're just going to decide, let's just start.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was burning it all down and started over but that wasn't her advice at all and so I kind of felt like yeah I felt really good when I left that haircut and I have felt pretty good sense So that's my work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big win lately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a good a good haircut makes so much difference Yeah, and having someone to match your hair You know, yes, like you're right like little tweaks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can do a lot
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, before we wrap any goals or aspirations, as you get even more midlife, even later life, this changes all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I would love to believe that one day I will have long thick silver hair that I can wear, like in a braid, yeah, over my shoulder or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't know that that's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know if my hair is going to lend itself to any of that, the thickness, the silverness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And,
[SPEAKER_00]: I also don't know if I want to mess with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I will every now and then see an older woman or an old woman with beautiful long hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like goals for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess if not that, I would like it to have a classic
[SPEAKER_00]: timeless sort of style.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really want to ever find myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I want to keep having an opinion about it and I don't want to find myself showing up in the stylist chair and just being like help just do something with this and then winding up with sort of that generic old lady cut.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe those old ladies have it generic cut intentionally, like maybe that's just where you get.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to know exactly, but that's my fantasy and we'll see if it's reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was gonna say the exact same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And before this recent thinning event, I naively just thought, I would, that's, that what, those were my goals and it did not, it seemed very attainable because I had a pretty full wavy set of hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to braid, I like long hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then this just made me realize like, oh, there's plenty of people who would like to have long full braid over the shoulder room.
[SPEAKER_01]: The hair itself is not gonna do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's very, it's been very humbling.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still think everything you said I would love to have, but also I want it to look healthy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pay a lot of attention to gray patterning when I see older women who have, even if it's not super long hair, if it's shoulder length or whatever, because gray patterning is so different.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way my hair is going to continue to get gray,
[SPEAKER_01]: for the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I stopped dying my hair at 42 and I kind of just thought, oh, the grow-out process.
[SPEAKER_01]: The grow-out process will take 18 months or two years, but actually that it's changing years and constantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I don't know if it's goals, but I just want to, yeah, piggyback on what you said, which is continue to have an opinion, um, and not give up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that the right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, not give up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep having it look like we tried.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is on purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks for listening everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was really fun, Megan.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just a reminder that you can find our expanded episode story with photos and links on Substack at midlifeladyleisurepresuits.substack.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's also where you'll find the special page we've set up with some of our favorite
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here and we'll talk to you soon.