Monday, September 26, 2011

I found a white leg hair

Never Done: I found a white leg hair

A long one. It's long because the other ones are also long, not because it's a particularly freakishly long white one. The other ones are also long because I am sporadic with my leg hair removal; sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. I have a couple other randomly positioned white hairs (arm, eyelash, chin) but this is definitely the first one on my leg, and it feels like some new rite of passage. Early on in the writing of this blog, my cousin told me she was surprised by my middle aged tag -- and I was surprised by her surprise. I mean, I know I don't fit the normal model of what a middle aged woman is like, but I am 48, and I have silvery hair, and the whole impetus behind the Never Done year was to make sure my life stayed expansive instead of diminished. But what Leigh told me stuck with me, and literally every time I put the middle aged tag on, I think of her and her perception of me as not so very middle aged. And how that makes me feel good -- like somehow I've beaten the system, or done it right, or stayed young, or stayed current, or lived outside the mainstream norm for so long that I just don't look like most of the other women of my generation.

And then I found a long white hair on my muscular right shin. Part of me feels like it's quirky -- like when I got my white streak in my hair in my early 30s. In fact, I feel that it's actually like my white streak -- a premature, stand-alone statement, in contrast with its surroundings, that stands out and says, "I'm an iconoclast."  But another part of me feels like it's the beginning of a transition I wasn't even thinking about. One, in fact, that I didn't actually anticipate. Is all my body hair is going to turn white? Am I going to get white eyebrows like my uncle has? (I have long ones like he has, but I tame them.)
And it all that happens, then am I still an iconoclast? Or am I just middle aged?

5 comments:

  1. Why I love Jenny's blog: Even when I don't have time to read it, just seeing the headline often heartens me or makes me laugh! LOVED this one!
    L
    www.lorihope.com

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  2. Thanks, Lori! It was a sobering day when I discovered the hair. (I even took a photo I decided not to post.)

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  3. I feel so honored to be in a post about leg hair!

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  4. But also, you're not middle-aged, you're just middle-Jennyed

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