Me and my menopausal hair

I’ve never really been bothered about my appearance. I don’t wear make-up. I don’t even own any. I’ve never had my eyebrows or nails done. I don’t stress over minor ‘flaws’. I wear comfortable clothes and keep them for years.

But I always used to love my hair.

As a kid, I had properly short hair, like a boy. In fact, far more people assumed I was a boy than realised I was actually a girl. I started growing my hair when I was 14 and never stopped.

I loved my hair. It wasn’t particularly neat or tidy, but that’s how I liked it. It was long and wavy. It was my crowning glory, my defining feature. It was the first thing anyone noticed about me.

I’m 50 now and of course time has taken its toll on me. I don’t mind my wrinkles, but I do mind what is happening to my hair.

It has been a long, slow decline.

I got my first greys in my 20s. By the time I was 38, I had sufficient greys to start dyeing my hair. (Always home dyes, because remember I’m really low maintenance and fundamentally don’t care about my appearance.)

At 40, I started taking roaccutane – the strongest acne drug there is. I might not care about my appearance, but having severe acne through my 30s and into my 40s was no joke.

Roaccutane works by drying your skin out. But it doesn’t dry just your skin out, it dries everything out. So it dried my hair out. The advantage of this is that my hair needed washing a lot less. When I was on a higher dose, I could literally go a week without washing it. I’m on a lower dose now, but can still go up to five days without washing it.

The disadvantage is that it makes my hair frizzy.

As I’ve got older, my hair has got frizzier and frizzier. This is totally down to the perimenopause, or menopause, which I’m pretty sure I reached a few years ago.

As an aside, I remember when my younger son started secondary school. I was confused as to why so many of his classmates’ mums had the same hair – grey and frizzy. Fast forward to when he was in year 12 and I had that hair too. It turns out they were just a few years older than me and menopausal hair was inevitable.

Recently, my hair hasn’t just been frizzy, it’s been getting thinner and thinner. It used to weigh so much, now when I pick it up it’s so thin and light as a feather.

My favourite dye colour has been discontinued and the closest colour to it lacks warmth. It feels like I’m dyeing grey hair with a colour which isn’t far from grey.

Grey, thin and frizzy. What a lovely combination.

I have to say that part of not caring about my appearance is not going to a hairdresser. I used to go when I was a kid, slightly against my wishes. I never liked going. Through my 20s and 30s, every three months became every six months, then every six months became every year. At some point around when I turned 40, I just stopped going altogether. I went once in 2018, when I won a haircut from a fancy hairdresser in a raffle. Then I never went back.

Possibly I thought a hairdresser might be able to help my frizziness, but I was nervous of going. I didn’t want my hair loaded with product or a complicated blowdrying routine. (That’s another thing, I’ve never blow dried my hair. Just combed through some conditioning spray and left it to dry naturally. I read far too much about heat damaging hair when I read Jackie and Just Seventeen in the 80s.)

Then one day in March, I just got fed up of looking at my hair. I really couldn’t bear it any more. It was just making me sad.

I told my daughter and husband I was fed up of my hair and my daughter said she could sort it out for me. And she did.

First she put one of her own pre-wash oils on it. This is supposed to nourish and deeply condition damaged hair. I couldn’t believe how soft it made it feel.

After washing, she made me put it in her turban towel thing. I’m not sure how necessary that is. Surely it’s just a towel? Then she blow dried it for me using a cool setting and some spray which prevents heat damage. She brushed it as she dried it and the result was unbelievable. I’d got my old hair back!

It was soft and long and wavy again. When I shared a picture on Instagram, everyone was shocked at how long my hair actually is. The frizz made it spring up so much that it only looked shoulder length.

It almost certainly needs a trim, so I will have to face that at some point. My daughter does my hair every time I wash it now. She doesn’t mind at all, although I feel like a burden. It’s more hassle than leaving it to dry, but it’s not too much trouble and it has made so much difference.