Recently, I spoke to @akili_ for Vogue.com about my hair journey and the beauty in greying as a young teenager. Can’t talk about my relationship to my “premature greys” without talking about my matrilineal line - my mom, gran and great gran, all of whom greyed early - and that feels like a gift. An ancestral one. Thank you @akili_ for including me (and us). My fave quote is below in the form of advice: “I read a lot about gray hair and the science of premature graying. Understanding and knowledge are perhaps, the most important hair tools. Get to know your hair. Get into relationship with your own hair. Not just understanding or seeing your hair through the prism of hair marketing messaging, but from experts and the full body of science and information that is accessible to us. I also want to affirm, for women and femmes specifically, that we do not need to embrace anything we do not want to. If you are growing gray and don’t like the look, you’re entitled to do what you need in order to be most at ease with your hair and body. That might look like dying your hair, adding gray extensions, clip-ins or getting a perm. I think that embracing graying hair looks differently for everyone doing the embracing and that’s okay. Some work I had to do was unpack and work through my ageism. I had to unlearn the idea that premature gray hair would make me appear older and possibly more undesirable. These standards require each of us to explore our own assumptions about graying, desirability, getting older, mortality, wisdom and changing, often outright paradoxical beauty standards. Doing that inner work is guaranteed to result in an embrace and acceptance of your hair’s gorgeous and unique existence as it is—and any way it rests on your head.”