As Luisa Dunn approached 50, she decided to embrace her gray hair – something that would prove to have a significant impact on her life. “Now I see gray hair as a sign of strength,” she says.
Australian Luisa Dunn has many strings to her lyre: she’s gone from working in marketing and PR to working as a photographer, and for the past couple of years she’s been a part-time model and influencer – something that started when she decided to quit dye your hair.
“Never wanted to use chemicals again”
“Aging is a privilege, not a punishment,” Luisa Dunn wrote in a post on Instagram, where she currently has over 500,000 followers.
Dunn has become an inspiration to many women who have wanted to take the step to stop coloring over their gray hair, all thanks to her Instagram account that she started during the pandemic. The actual decision to let the gray hair grow out Dunn describes as simple – she was tired of dyeing her hair roots every ten to fourteen days.
But the transition got off to a tricky start:
“I decided to go to a hairdresser and ask her to change my dark brown hair by removing the color so that I could return to a more steely blonde colour. My goal was not to let mine [naturliga] hair growing out at that time. What happened was that the hairdresser and my hair couldn’t handle the bleaching, so I ended up with a burnt scalp. My hair broke. It was very bad.”
Dunn says she started the Instagram account to warn others to do as she did:
“My mature hair couldn’t handle the chemical treatment. So one day I came home and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I just want healthy hair’. That’s when I decided I never wanted to use chemicals again.”
“Grey hair is a sign of strength”
All said and done: Dunn decided to embrace her gray hair, and she used her photo studio to document the transition. On Instagram, she showed off her experiments with both hair and makeup during the process:
“It almost became like a diary of what you can do when you let your hair grow out,” she says.
On social media, Dunn also connected with other people who were in the same position. In the interview, she says that this community helped her through the process – especially on the days when she woke up and disliked her short, gray hair:
“Don’t underestimate the community that exists online. Many women have successfully transitioned to gray hair thanks to social media. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have – it’s not about numbers,” she says.
Today, Dunn has a whole new take on gray hair:
“Grey doesn’t mean older,” she says. “There are women in their 30s, 20s, 40s who have naturally gray hair. It’s just that we don’t see it anymore. I had to work with my own perceptions of what I thought I saw, and to challenge them. Now I actually see gray hair as a sign of strength. I think it’s beautiful. I feel that my skin looks better than before, because mature skin sometimes looks better with [mjuka färger]. Sometimes I look back at old photos, and I prefer the color I have now.”
