Going Gray in Tinseltown

Mandy May Cheetham talks to Best Selling Author, Actor, Improvisor, Educator, Giver of Life, Goddess with Piercing Eyes, Studio 54 Voyeur, Seller of Pilots, and Teller of Truths Brett Paesel. They discuss her newest novel Everything is Just Fine, and they don't discuss how big of a fangirl Mandy is of Brett's work in Transparent playing Rita.

Blogger and grey-haired advocate Katie Emery of  www.katiegoesplatiunum.com chats with host Mandy May Cheetham about her experiences letting her natural grey grow in, the women who have influenced her transition, and the pros and cons of becoming the town crazy lady. Mandy asks the question - does spending most of our lives dying our hair make us sheeple? 

Going Gray in Tinsel Town: The Subject, The Object and The Artist People keep sending me messages telling me to Be Positive. One message I got today was a link to an article about how difficult it is to be disciplined with your optimism.  I didn’t read it. I am starting to feel disdain for people who tell me to think positive and look on the bright side. It feels manipulative. Like something they want me to do so they can feel more comfortable. There are a few people who reach out to me with their messages of positivity. Some are practical, but mostly they feel weighted in judgement and fear. Their happiness feels aggressive and judgemental, and I resent it, because, ultimately it doesn’t feel like they are really listening to what I’m saying or writing.  Although I am expressing my emotions in a public space — I’m not asking to be fixed. I am exploring this experience of shedding my self-objectification and self-surveillance through social media as I grow out my naturally grey hair. I have turned aging into an experimental art exhibition, happening in real-time so you can experience it through me, and I can go back and watch what happened with curiosity to my days-younger self. I am deep diving into this experience because it is my experience that I can not change my behaviour or attitude just by focusing on a new behaviour or attitude, I need to bring that unwanted behaviour or attitude into the light where I can look at it and see it for what it really is. In most cases, it is just F-E-A-R (False Evidence Appearing Real). In this case it is fear coated in the icing of a societal idea of who and what I am and who and what my value is to the world. This has caked (pun intended) my thinking with ideas and philosophies which are not mine. I can’t just wish them away, or turn toward something else that is more positive, I have to call that shit out for what it is first, figure out if it even belonged to me in the first place, stand up to it, and then, like the Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland, and every other well developed bully in literature, it will disappear. But I definitely can’t try to manage the fear or keep it in check it while I’m expressing it, or I won’t get a clear shot at it, and, based on this weird feedback on Instagram, I’m assuming that what people are seeing looks like someone who needs encouraging messages, a great deal of external validation and lots of emojis. The thing is — that external validation is what I am trying to cure myself of. For me, the thing that makes me feel better is just posting. Well. Not posting. Posting feels gross. But it feels less gross than feeling lonely, and the external validation makes me feel temporarily connected, and provides a sense of intimacy that I don’t get so often in my everyday life.  I’m definitely triggering people.  The biggest thing I’ve realized through all of this self surveilling and self objectifying and posting and looking at likes and messages and detaching and taking breaks and taking 600 selfies to get one and then feeling depressed cause it’s not a selfie taking day because my hair looks like shit, is that, it is just all fucking predicated on how lonely I am most of the time. My father once said that one of his favourite lines in a country song was ‘at the times I felt the most alone, someone was sitting right next to me.’  The person sitting right next to me now — is me; the instagram version.  The process of exploring my aging as an art experiment has me as The Subject, The Object and The Artist. In this case — the subject is my body, the object is the selfie, and the artist is the one asking all the questions. Part of this exploration means toggling back and forth between these three positions, working on not judging any of them, figuring out where they intersect, and then, taking a step out of them and determining how each is growing and changing through all of this.  I’m trying to draw a diagram of this, and having trouble drawing the subject, because maybe the subject isn’t my body at all. Maybe the subject is that thing which can not be defined, maybe I’m just fruitlessly trying to capture an image that defines my existence, that proves that I was, and that shows me in all forms and feelings that I present in the course of a day, and that is why this process is so thought-provoking and dynamic. The selfie is just a moment in the existence of my life. As soon as I see that image I immediately feel disconnected from it. I know it is not me. It’s just some version of me that’s now gone, and I tell myself — particularly when the selfie is not so attractive — that the unattractive version is really me — that’s the one people who know me IRL see. The one that slips out when they catch a glimpse without me being aware, or holding tension in my face and body to maintain the image I’m trying to uphold.  But neither the attractive or the unattractive image is a true representation of me. And, if the other theory that I keep exploring is true; that if I focus on the positive external affirmations of my beauty then I also will be susceptible to being ruled by the negative judgements that other people shit or spew in my direction about how I look, then the positive shit has just as much as an opportunity to be toxic as the negative.  I had a guy on the subway approach me yesterday. Tell my I was beautiful, ask me to marry him, and then proceed to talk about Vietnam, conspiracy theories and name-drop JFK and each of his relatives for 7 stops before it actually occurred to him to ask me my name. He was super offended BTW that I didn’t remember his after he told me seven times. But I digress — the fact that I even listened to him in the first place is because I am addicted to external validation and I have been generously allowing people to suck my time and energy in order to get their need for attention met by buttering me up with a really well-phrased compliment for almost my entire life.  I imagine it has a lot to do with the loneliness.  What’s interesting to me about my relationship with being alone is that it has changed so drastically in the past year. It was actually a non-issue before. If I wanted male attention I would call someone to come over and give me some. If I wanted to hang with a friend I would pick up the phone or invite myself over to their place. Suddenly, amongst all this metamorphosis with my hair, I am feeling outside of my tribe. I am questioning my worth as a friend, a lover, and a creative partner, because I am questioning what my worth is. Side Bar: Just in case it’s not clear at this point in the essay…Please don’t mistake this as a call for help. I am calling out these thoughts as a way to replace them with others, or to examine them so they can be called out as bullshit, not because I’m hoping you will send me messages telling me I’m beautiful. Thanks. When I first started posting photos of my grey hair journey online I was soooo moved by the comments people made on said photos. When people told me I looked beautiful or told me to keep going I felt like it was such a profound act of love. Now I don’t. Now I feel like they have an agenda. Of course they don’t. I mean, maybe some of them do, but a lot of it is just unconscious. Nothing has changed except the fact that I now have an agenda. My new agenda is to get people to listen to my podcast and maybe buy a ‘grey curious’ mug from my artsy fartsy website or a book, when I write it. Pretty vague I know, but underlying that agenda (that commodification of the art) is a very tidy excuse to NEED external response. Here is my pain for the purposes of getting you to listen to more podcasts so I can eventually get advertisers to help support the time and expense of running the thing, and I need to use instagram to promote and support it so I must take selfies and they must be the kind that people like so they click my profile and my hair doesn’t look good today and and and… This always happens with me. I start to do something out of passion and then I commodify it, and then I resent it and I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s a violent form of self sabotage that I point at my career to try to shut down anything I am doing because of passion and generosity by starving myself of the ability to make money doing it. I start keeping score.  Today I have been sitting online for several hours trying to buy burning man tickets. They are having some sort of technical difficulties and so it is taking forever. On the page I have been staring at there is a lot of info on not trying to make money off of the tickets by reselling them — it says ‘Don’t Exploit the Thing You Love.”  I cried when I read that.  What does exploit even mean? Especially to an artist. I once had a teacher that said the reason actors are paid so much is because we are willing to reveal the human experience in ways that regular people just aren’t. To reveal in ourselves the darkness, the ugly shit, the shit that we don’t admit to in polite company. It’s hard to put yourself out there, and, as an actor, I get to hide behind a script and unleash my inner demons and claim I was just using my imagination. Imagination is an important part of the work, but fundamentally I believe, like Stanislavski did, that it is just me in the given circumstances. Life experiencing itself.  A few days ago, during my morning meditation from A Course In Miracles that asked me to understand that this world I see is not real; I asked for answers from the depths as to what that means. I like this world, and it feels real to me, but the more I explore the idea and practice of being able to tap into an infinite source of possibilities I realize just how constructed the constructs of my life are.  One of my favourite things about the entertainment industry is that it is a bunch of people creating their own versions of paradise out of a flashing light show. We literally create worlds out of light that are visible and disappearing from moment to moment. During my meditation the idea that came to me was that the process of creating and filming a movie is the same thing I am doing as I create and experience my life.  I had a vision of myself on the set of a movie I had written and was directing and starring in. In the scene we were filming, I was crying. It was deeply moving, and everyone in the room was captivated, present and affected. I felt completely elated at what I had created, and, at the same time felt the deep sadness of the character, and the broader remembrance of the universal experience of life at its most painful. This is what I strive for — I am creating a life where I get to experience the fullness of being alive, and where I can also be the observer who watches myself, in my life having experiences. When I don’t judge the bad experiences I realize that underlying those experiences is a great deal of joy at just being alive to experience it in the first place. Just like there is a great deal of joy when I am on set getting to make a movie I wrote, am directing and starring in even when we’re over time, over budget, my feet hurt, and the caterer is stuck in traffic.  That is what I strive for — to be experiencing myself experiencing my life. It just so happens that social media gives me a real time way to do this. I can observe myself observing myself, and the beauty of this — the GREAT beauty of this — is that I can choose to be brave enough to experience myself in all my fullness, and that includes all of the emotions, as they are, in the moment I feel inspired to share them. Fear of and repression of my emotional life does not serve me or the world, and it’s kind of missing the point.  If you happen to be an emoji sender; know this: I feel your pain. I know you are not trying to shut me up, but I would ask you to explore if it is your pain you don’t want to feel, and I would urge you to allow it. It will feel big at first, but with practice, and a sense of humor as you step into the role of The Observer you may just start to see the joy underlying it all. The real joy, not the emoji kind. 

Actress Karen Rich and hostess Mandy May Cheetham discuss the gritty details of going gray in a society that is vehemently opposed to aging. They talk itchy scalps, rejection and dirty looks and why it's important for us to keep showing up in our careers and our lives if we're going to change the stigma surrounding this hair color choice. 

Going Gray in Tinseltown: The Anti-Choice Mandy May Cheetham Apr 16   Month Three Sil-ver Sis-ter / ˈsilvər ˈsistər / noun A precious shiny woman in relation to other precious, shiny women who has been mined from a pit of darkness and called to shine her light upon the world. She has walked through the fire and harnessed the energy of the cosmos as evidenced by her flickering hair. Those who are privileged enough to look upon her with an open heart shall be forever changed, and those who look upon her with judgement shall be forever blinded by her light. A group of precious shiny women with open hearts whose magic may only be seen by those who believe. Last week I attended my first Silver Sisters meetup. It was at a restaurant in the valley that served rubbery, over-buttered eggs and was filled with screaming children. A good first step in my public going gray process since no one of any Hollywood stature was likely to be there. I was nervous to go, but not for the reason I expected to be. I realized on my way there, 20 minutes late, that I was delaying because I felt like going would be an admission of sorts. An admission that I was one of them — that I had joined some club that I hadn’t willfully wanted to be a part of — that nature had thrown me into without my permission, and that, despite the fact that I was protesting on instagram that this transformation is a radical act of self love, and a political one at that, the truth is, it is a group I have joined because I simply couldn’t hack the stamina required to remain a part of the other group — the one that was causing nerve damage to my scalp and rotting the skin off my head. It wasn’t a choice I made to champion being a natural woman, it was a choice I made away from the alternative. So why would this anti-choice be something I would want to celebrate? One of the most incredible parts of this journey for me has been the shock and awe of watching myself dive from one extreme to the next — literally feeling like a sex-pot superhero one day and the next feeling like a frumpy grandmother in slide-on cardboard slippers holding a broom and twirling my braidable chin hair. Sometimes I feel like I’m at war with myself, and am deeply concerned that this is not a radical act of self love, but a radical act of self sabotage — a way to bow out of my career as an actress with a giant plate of fuck-you-to-the-man, and a side of it’s-all-the-industry’s-fault on the way down. Needless to say I’ve been feeling a little conflicted. I would have bailed on the breakfast — especially since it was at 10AM… on a Sunday …in the valley — I don’t need to tell anyone who lives in LA why all of those things are problematic, but I was curious to meet Karen, one of the women running the Silver Sisters 2020 conference, and Katie, a woman with a popular blog and amazon site for silver sister products. I have a background in running events and am very excited to help Karen and her partner Marina run the 2020 conference. At least I was until I got to this brunch. I scurried down the street toward the restaurant feeling very self conscious for being late and acutely aware that I would be joining a tableful of women whom everyone in the restaurant would know were there together because of the collective head-glare. I tried to imagine we were like a group of people who like to wear stuffed animal outfits out in public and pretend it’s no big deal cause we are all there together, and just sit and laugh amongst ourselves. Yet it was still a big deal, and even more so because we were all there together. Glaringly. I cringed when I walked past the window and all these women whom I don’t know saw me and waved — they knew it was me cause my gray hair is that obvious now, and there’s no other reason why a gray haired woman would be out in public in daylight so I must be with them. A sign to me that I’m not flying under the radar anymore. I actually walked by another woman who was feeding her meter on the street who was fully gray and I thought of saying hello, but I am ashamed to admit that IGNORED her. I hate when people do that! Like, I know we are going to the same place, soooo are you going to pretend-you-don’t-see-me until we get in there and then give me a smiley face and a nice-to-meet-you and an ‘oh, did we pass each other in the parking lot?’ kind of shit. I did that. She was quite a few years older than me, and, how do I say this without sounding like an arsehole, not dressed very cool. Now I’m aware that this is some Hollywood garbage, but I’m just going to admit this — I was embarrassed to be seen with the table of gray haired ladies. I never felt this way about grey haired ladies before, and I would have felt so privileged to have been sitting at that table four months ago with my formerly dyed-red hair, but now I felt like I had crossed over into Northern Reflections territory (see below). Like I was admitting that I had given up on my fashion and style and am now actually admitting that I am old.   (No one was dressed like this. My ego and I were in an alternate Universe.) I’m admitting to this so I can stop feeling this way. I am making this admission because I feel I need to face my own judgements about women, aging and gray hair in order to make peace with how I am judging myself. It is a slippery slope if I start to try to distinguish myself from other women by COMPARING myself to them. (As Karen keeps reminding me ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’) If I am the one at the table with the youngest looking face today that does not make me superior because I’m more fuckable to the waiter (who I think was into men anyway). And Lord knows I won’t have the youngest face forever! So I walked through the front door of the restaurant and passed by two non-gray women in their 50s who were having brunch and I experienced what was my so-far second middle-aged-rage death stare scenario. No other way to really describe it beyond pure, open-mouthed disgust. Like, why-are-YOU-gray? You’re too young, and why are you disturbing my brunch by letting it hang out like that!? There’s this weird resentment I feel from some older women, even those within the budding #sliversister community, who maybe regret not going gray when they were younger because they could have dealt with the signs of aging one bit at a time ?— hair first, then face? I certainly didn’t plan to go gray now so I could have the ‘face advantage’. It’s so exhausting to be now transfering my old neurosis about comparing myself to other women who aren’t grey with a new one of being compared to other women who are — so, even if I can’t control the comparisons coming at me from other women, I can, and will try to stop it in myself, and that’s why I am talking about it publically now. I always felt like I would dye my hair until my 50s or 60s. I’m not even sure I was cognisant of why — just as I believed as a younger woman that I wouldn’t dye my hair until I had to, which happened at 30, and that I wouldn’t stop dying until I was at a socially acceptable age to stop — which clearly is not my age now based on the death stares at brunch. Man, I haven’t heard that term in a long time. Socially acceptable. It used to be socially acceptable to say socially acceptable. I’m not sure it is anymore. Socially acceptable seems like a scary thing these days, what with the social media monster lurking like an angry mob waiting to demolish and publicly shame anyone who dare go against what the people with the blue checks beside their names want. I am digressing. Let’s get back to my discomfort at this powerful meeting of the minds at the restaurant with the rubbery eggs. I’m not sure what I expected when I sat down. A table full of deep-breathing power-goddesses all calling forth the natural elements and shining our light to help be the change we want to see in the valley, but, instead, it was a table full of open, sensitive women talking about hair care products and sharing candidly about divorce, dry hair and career changes. Life; happening. The Silver Sister group is such an incredible cross-section of humanity, and we are all doing this for different reasons. I realized I had been idealizing these women and their processes. Watching everyone go gray on instagram with their empowering and supportive statements and emojis made me think they all knew something I didn’t. Because from looking at them you think that they have fully transitioned from slimy caterpillars and are butterflies now and have thrown off the cocoon of aging fears with it. Not so caterpillar. That became apparent to me yesterday when I was in the locker room at the Athletic Club where I am a member. I saw a woman with beautiful fully grown-out, soft gray hair and I went galloping toward her (in a towel and flip flops) and said; ‘It’s like I am the caterpillar and you are the butterfly!” She looked at me dumbfounded. Bathing suit in hand — clearly about to strip down. I pointed at my hairline aggressively. ‘I’m growing out my hair!’ She kindly refrained from changing so we weren’t both standing there emotionally and physically naked. She looked embarrassed that I had noticed. I understand that embarrassment. I felt it myself at that brunch, and had seen it on the faces of the women who were part of the catalyst for my decision — a director I worked with in my early acting days, and an actress friend in Toronto that I saw over Christmas. They all sort of slough it off like it’s no big deal — like they just did it because they were allergic, or because of a role, or because they just didn’t want their lives to be about how the looked anymore, which I sensed to be the case with this woman too, but, yet, here we were talking about how how we look. They don’t always want to talk about it because they didn’t do it in order to talk about it — mostly they did it to get away from the dye, not to go toward the gray. I get it. I wish I could walk around and just feel normal, it seems to be mostly moments of extreme feelings, and since the aforementioned rock star moments are less frequent lately, I’m wondering if I’ll ever get to that normal feeling stage at all. As it seems as though this lovely woman is not there either yet. And I was making it worse for this her by fan-girling about it in the locker room in a towel and flip flops. To cover the awkwardness she launched into slightly-off-topic, but totally relevant story about how she and her husband were riding their bikes in Venice and someone had yelled at them out the window of a car… ‘Wow, two old people riding their bikes, that’s so West-side,’ and how she and her husband had felt strange being referred to as old and I imagined how she may have felt responsible for him being called old because she had gray hair too. Like, if he has gray hair and she dyes then they still aren’t old somehow, but as soon as she goes grey she’s ruined it for the both of them. It made me think of those old Clairol ads — ‘Your husband will love it too. It’ll make him feel younger just to look at you.’ Such fing garbage. No one would have yelled at a gray haired guy and called him old — why bother? He’s not threatening the fabric of society by going gray — he’s just allowed to follow the natural course of his life. I guess we can add gray-privilege to a man’s list of advantages. Goodie. So, back to the brunch. I felt a bit depressed afterward (getting dumped didn’t help, but that’s another blog, grrr). I was surprised by the lingering sadness after this supposed to be empowering meetup. Then today, when Karen came over to sit for an interview for my Going Gray in Tinseltown podcast I admitted to her that I had felt embarrassed at the brunch, not empowered as I had expected, and I was worried that women may not want to come to the conference because they wouldn’t want to be seen with us. I’d like to say it had something to do with the dirty looks I got when I went into the restaurant, but it wasn’t that — it was building up in me way before that went down. I take for granted that I have lived the life of a privileged hot chick, and that, if I turn heads in a restaurant, it’s because I’m with a bunch of other hot chicks. Man, I HAVE SO MANY HANG-UPS ABOUT AGING! My ego was having a freakin field day thinking that hanging out with women just because they have gray hair is like being invited into a club that I didn’t want to join, and there’s no barrier to entry; oh, save one: These women have walked through the f-ing fire of being a gray haired lady in a world that is ageist, antagonistic, dismissive, rude, prejudiced and downright aggressive toward women who decide to let their grey hair live free. It is a sacred decision each woman makes to go gray and I respect it. I am grateful to have been in the presence of these women and I hope they will invite me back so we can heal this shit together and maybe share a makeup and clothing tip or two along the way. I went to a stand-up comedy show tonight that was an all female lineup. At the show there was an ‘older’ woman with fully white hair. She gave me that knowing look — the one that Harley Davidson drivers give to each other when they pass on the highway — like I was part of the club. I gave her a shaky smile back. She was there supporting one of her still-dyeing friends who was doing stand-up for the first time at 50 (HELL YES!) — the one who got up and made jokes about getting Botox and fillers. When the grey lady stood next to her friend after her set- she looked older than her in my mind (my projection and my issue, not hers), and also, now that I think about it, more at ease. I was not conscious of that ease at the time and instead felt embarrassed for her and realized that I will soon be the woman in my friend group who looks older than everyone else. Will this preclude me from being invited to be the wing-woman when my girlfriends want to go to Coachella? Because if I look old, and they are trying to pick up, I will be the ultimate cock-block — and the eyes of the hot guys that are already glazed over will just pass right on by the group of old ladies — even if only one of us is gray. This shit is invading my mind because I believe that is what looking older is: having gray hair. It’s not, but it’s a stigma that has to change, and if I don’t change it — who will? I hope that by airing all of this ugly self-sabotaging, self-objectifying, self-surveilling crap I will free myself from its grip on me and find the Miracle. The Miracle with a capital M — the one referred to in A Course in Miracles as a Change in Perception, because perception is not knowledge. That’s what the grey haired woman at the stand up show knew, and that was the real reason why our brunch table was getting so much attention — they, we, were glowing, and sometimes, those who stand on the periphery of the light are blinded by it. I want to reiterate that I feel very privileged to have been invited to that brunch — rubbery eggs and all, and that the best part about this community is our acceptance of each other’s neurosis, and our willingness to tell each other the truth. I’ve had a few conversations with the women from the group now, and, along with writing this article, I am finding my way to eradicating my judgements. This is a group that I hope will continue to have me as a member. And even though I have been getting the occasional death stare; it’s never from younger women. I am actually starting to notice young women really taking it in that I am doing this and witnessing it with kindness and respect. I remember seeing a woman with a beautiful gray bob when I was about 7 or 8 and thinking it was glorious, and that I couldn’t wait for it to happen to me. I think I thought then that it would happen over-night, which it really is, and which is why it’s all up in my face like this, but it is not lost on me that there are younger women seeing what I am doing with my hair who may think twice about dumping chemicals on their head if they don’t want to. In moments when I’m not all up in my ego shit I feel a deep sense of responsibility to them to keep going with the grey grow out. Because as each day goes by and I decide anew to keep letting my hair grow dye-free, it is becoming an active choice instead of just a side effect of my anti-choice. When I saw the vulnerability on the faces of the silver sisters I met with I was triggered, yes, and my ego came out in full force and I am ashamed of my narcissistic response, and I am so fucking grateful to each one of them for showing up wearing whatever makes them feel beautiful and alive and I couldn’t do this without them and we are changing the world and we are doing it together and that is so freaking much cooler than the clothing you wear to brunch. This may not get easier, but this is my choice, and I am so grateful I have made it. Silver Sisters 4EVA.

Nancy Nigrosh, former head of the Gersh Agency's literary department and team member at Innovative Artists has worked in Hollywood since the 70s, and has re-defined her self many times over the course of her incredible career. She discusses working with Martin Scorsese on Mean Streets, re-building after a divorce, and spending her 40th Birthday celebrating the Million dollar sale of a script. She graciously discusses her goal of experiencing aging using the philosophy behind Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic centered on transience and imperfection. 

What if You Suddenly had 2 Million Instagram Followers?   How would that affect your art? Would you feel compelled to monetize your community’s love for you? Would you post more selfies and ‘lifestyle’ photos to keep the bots and the potential advertisers happy? I’ve been contemplating this recently. After realizing I have been posting in the same way you may throw bread to a flock of pigeons and then run and hide behind a glass wall. Wanting them to fly toward me, and frenzie over the content, but not get too close. Realizing that I had an unhealthy relationship with my ‘followers’ was a side effect of realizing I had an unhealthy relationship with my own image. That I was running behind that glass wall because I didn’t actually want to engage with the identity that I was presenting either, or admit it wasn’t really me. But that image of me was pretty successful. Not 2 million followers successful, but decent. The main problem with what I had created online was that it didn’t represent me anymore. I wanted to post what I saw, photos I take of the world, not always photos of me, but the social media baby didn’t like that. The only posts I was getting love for were shots of me like, times 200%: 60 likes for a shot of the world, 300 for a shot of me. Slowly, Instagram went from a fun place to interact with mostly strangers and look at art to a place where I could go to look at some version of myself that consistently lives in good lighting. You know you’re in trouble when you spend more time on your own page than everyone else’s. Despite the good lighting, consistency is not my strength. For me, consistency requires disciplined behaviour that is motivated by some deep need, or unanswerable life-defining question, something other than cartoon hearts. It feels like the true discipline required to achieve social media success is like the discipline required to be a sitcom-parent from the 50s: consistently presentable, knows more, is bigger than you, and never lets you see them fight or cry. What kind of cluster-f*ery is this social media persona s***? I recently read that Instagram determines who your posts are sent to based on how quickly people respond to your photo. I need to do more research, but I believe there are also claims that the algorithm favours selfies over all other forms of content. I’d love to know if this is a chicken or egg scenario. Did we create this monster where posts only do well with selfies in them by liking everyone’s selfies more than their other photos? By making people feel loved by liking their image did we create a culture obsessed with it’s own image? Amazingly, I stopped feeling disconnected from my own image when I decided to let my gray hair grow in without dying it. I was (am) very scared about it and needed support and approval from loved ones and strangers (mostly strangers) to stick to my guns. All of the posts I’ve been creating are authentically me while I’ve been documenting the big change on social media, and it feels great, but... I’ve been saying that the reason I’m documenting it on social media is to dismantle the tool that turned me against myself by using said tool to post about my struggles with it — ie; the fact that the social media baby only seems to be happy when I post photos of myself looking hot, happy and young. And by posting about the struggles while looking normal, how every I’m feeling at that moment, and my age, but I have to be honest and say that that is not working, and I am just as needy for cartoon hearts as I ever was, maybe more so now that I am being myself online. It is making me supremely unhappy to be turning this deeply personal project of going grey into a social media extravaganza, hoping to build a following for my pain, write a book and be able to turn down endorsements from hair dye companies someday. It is also filling me with joy to find empowerment to continue on this journey and connect with others who are walking the walk with me, and those who’ve been listening to my podcast, and I am writing a book that I need to read. But I feel once again trapped by the algorithm. My engagement goes up when I have moments where I cry and tell the truth about how hard this is. So what happens when it starts to become easy? Do I drop the victim experience and opt for happy? How do I build a brand around something that is not true anymore? And WHY THE F* DO I HAVE TO TURN EVERYTHING INTO A BRAND IN THE FIRST PLACE? I attempted to beat the algorithm at its own game by showing up with grey hair and a different attitude, to loosen its grip on what I post, and when and why, but it’s got me again. It’s winning. It seems like the algorithm is too consistent, knows more, is bigger than me, and it doesn’t fight or cry in public. Because it knows that to do so would be to lose followers. A friend’s poetry professor once said that people like to see happy, uplifting art, and my other friend, who is legitimately famous for being happy and funny, but who also battles addiction, denial, and sometimes has to sleep on the subway, agreed with her. I used to hear nearly the same thing when I worked in the galleries; blue paintings sell better than brown, yellow better than red, etc. I mean, it was true, but, sleep on the subway much, ye artist who paints with blue when you really want to f some stuff up with a tube of red? What responsibility do we as artists have to make everyone else happy with our art? If no one likes my art, it is becoming increasingly hard to continue to create it — especially when I release it before it is fully baked — which is often the case with Instagram ‘art’, but half-baked art is a whole other topic (I’ll share a poem I wrote about it at the end of this essay). Sometimes, of course, I make happy art, but happy times are not often when I feel most inspired to create. When I am full, my capacity to give love is enormous, when I am not, I am easily depleted by my hungry social media baby seeking to have more of what I just fed it on Instagram — which I can not do when the inspiration pot is empty. When I create just for myself, one of two things happen: I go into complete disorder and abstractions and my emotional experience of the output is more in charge than the actual organization of thought into something concrete, or (and sometimes just after the first thing) I get totally out of the way and something inspired and organized comes out. When I’m not in a heightened emotional state while creating art (which is most of the time) I enjoy creating within the context of what I think the public will like. Like, allowing the shape of expression to come out in the form of an article with a beginning, middle and end (unlike the meandering masterpiece you are currently reading). It too gives me a release of some stored up tension, makes me feel accomplished, takes the edge off. But easing the tension and rejuvenating my creative well by pulling deeply from the tank of the Universe are two very different things. Easing that immediate tension is what I do when I post on social media. The platform gives me a framework in which I can share, but, I as a human and an artist start to shrink in the face of the feedback that framework gives me if I’m not constantly breaking, rebutting and rebuilding that framework to suit my creative expression. I have heard many times in acting classes that professional art is not supposed to be therapy (I think this is a slippery slope on the part of acting teachers who I believe should have training in psychotherapy in order to understand how to support their students who do deep work, and create a safe space by also understanding transference and countertransference, but that is another blog topic). If you are a professional, you are supposed to create until you discover what your audience responds to, and then keep the fighting and crying to yourself. Maybe this is actually a good thing; to keep less sensitive public eyes from going deeper into the rabbit hole with you. To not share the work until it is fully baked, not let them see your process. Like, when you discover what they respond to, the happy stuff, then this can become the artistic space in which you can rest awhile, or the space that can be used as an amusement to keep the social media baby happy while you go and do some wild finger painting on your face. Maybe, when it feels tedious that you have to keep posting photos of mid-century doors when you really want to show the ones of you and your dog in matching hair bows, just create a new, private instagram account for that, and don’t let anyone follow you, ever. POEM: The art that separates; the art of absolutes, is not the art that gestates; it is the art that you consume. You get to dictate to terminate to equate without relating, just by making it of the other. A morsel of the divine plucked up too soon like green fruit set to turn to color on a truck skimming through miles ripening on fumes only to never be devoured because the algorithms dictations were detained by a glitch, the truck cornered and obliterated by the highest bidder. The origin of species of originality of new specifics was about to intensify, but instead the neurons were commodified and sold for the highest ad buy. Only the palletable will survive in the name of keeping the masses satiated satisfied complying. IDEAS THOUGH! They continue to intensify. Many demand time be taken to emulsify but commerce can’t be satisfied by proper timing. One piece of art for each! (Makes me want to consume everyone else’s niche, (But then I don’t see it cause I’m busy reaching while I’m eating)). And if I do have a moment with your muse I seek atune-ment, but there’s no one there to tune into. All those other souls just consuming and shitting it out. Unable to digest divine in-sight the same way my intestines won’t let nutrients pass into my in-sides. Walls lined with parasites just eat it all up. Un-ripened art: soon to be consumed before it’s plucked.

Hostess Mandy May Cheetham interviews veteran stage and screen actress, Pamela Hyatt. At 83 years young, Pam explains her philosophy of living 'entheos'; an enthusiastic life, why you should never go to a hotel room with Davy Crockett, and Mandy's hopes that her grey hair will have a trickle up effect from the audition room.  Pam is a Canadian stage, screen and voice actress who can be seen currently on the Baroness Von Sketch show on IFC. 

Photographer and Photoshop expert Nicole Barton joins host Mandy May Cheetham in a discussion on how Darwin's theory of natural selection has been manipulated to keep women buying beauty products, the differences between what we see as beautiful in other women vs. how we allow ourselves to be seen, and how an Oprah Magazine spread of women with grey hair changed Nicole's perspective on aging and beauty at a young age. 

To Change The World We Must Focus on The Change and Not The World  I had a conversation today with a woman I have become friends with on instagram. She sent me some claps over a Marianne Williamson post I put up about her running for President. I really like this Instagram woman. She posts lovely, honest things, and she is generous and authentic in her messages to me. Being that she is African American I thought she may want to know that Reparations are a part of Marianne’s platform. She did not know and was very surprised. It’s not for me to get into the details of that conversation because it was private. I will say that I think it’s about  time, and that for the US to pay reparations to Japan and not to its own citizens is just some next-level bull. The point I want to discuss here is how our conversation relates to the mental, spiritual and emotional exhaustion we all feel in any given moment when we look beyond just managing our own day to day lives toward getting involved in changing the world. What is it that makes someone believe they can change the world? What type of upbringing makes a Nelson Mandela, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a Marianne Williamson? Whatever type it is, I’m pretty sure I didn’t have it… who am I to think I can change things enough in ‘Hollywood’ so women will still be considered viable after 40, or even to stop hair care companies from pimping toxic chemicals that seep into our skin month after month so we can pretend we are cheating death, and remaining our perky, f*ckable selves? I want to change all of that, but it feels too big for me. My Instagram friend said she is not going to get involved in the process of the democratic nomination, or maybe even the Presidency until it’s time to vote because she doesn’t have the energy. Which I translated to mean that her heart is fucking broken and she’s not ready to date again. I get it, except I’m worried that the country needs all the card carrying democrats it can get to vote in the democratic nomination so they are invested in the person they are going to throw up against the unconscious crew that are currently in office. I am Canadian, it is easier for me to yell and scream because, while the betrayal exists for me, it does not cut as deeply because this is not my country. We have problems of our own — we just happen to be on the pendulum as it is swinging left, but it’ll go back — so we are not immune to this disease of unconconscious capitalism. But, still, I get it. I have been on a pendulum swinging myself. Spending more and more time in the house because this part Wolverine part skunk look is something to behold, and I don’t always have the energy to stand tall with it. I told her I will speak on her behalf until she feels ready because in this moment I feel tall. That was at about 6PM. It’s now 10:30 PM and I just had an Instagram melt down because I had to go out and pick up my food from across the street and face the world with my skunk streaks, and no Valentine’s date, and a make-up-less-face (I wore lipstick, obviously). I’m tired just thinking about it. It was exhausting, not because anyone gave a shit, but because I did. I was walking out like a googlie-eyed monster hissing and waving my claws at people lest they look at me funny, or worse, look right through me. Someone did and bumped into me. It was tragic. The interesting part of aging is that the world does not care that I am becoming invisible. They are not even the ones trying to shove me in the box. It is me doing all the shoving and all the judging. I feel like a dog that has been trained to stand next to a pole with a chain, and now, even though the chain is off, I’m still standing next to that pole. Sitting in my own excrement waiting for my master to come and rub my belly. My Mom always used to tell me when I’m on the verge of a meltdown to H.A.L.T. — check if I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. If I am any of those things I should not try to make any decisions, (or post on social media). At 10:30 PM I was ALL of those things so I felt like it was a great decision to indulge the little monsters and cry away on my cell phone in bad lighting. My friend (one I’ve met face to face) called me shortly after my double posts. When I saw him calling I picked it up and said “I’m Ok.” He started to laugh. We both laughed for a bit, and then I explained to him why I am doing this on social media. He didn’t ask, but I needed to explain it to myself because I was having some post post regret. So here’s what I told him: Social media is a snake eating its own tail. It has us all in a Pavlovian cycle of responding when the bell rings, each time it rings we are fed a like, a heart, a message, some love. Once we receive that like, heart, message, love, we try to re-create the thing we received the like, heart, message, love for in the first place. The problem is — that is impossible. Yesterday, I looked at my Instagram ‘insights’ I NEVER do this. I did it because I am planning to release a podcast along with these articles and experimented with running an ad to see how that works as I plan to use ads to get the message out to potential listeners. I have had a significant (600%) increase in my instagram activity since I started going gray (after I lost the first 200 followers — those who have stayed are more engaged). Who cares. Well, apparently I do because I started posting pretty pictures of myself again. Which should be ok, but it caused a flare up in my ego. Like an addict who had one shot of gin and now needs to drink a whole bottle. What I explained to my thoughtful, concerned friend is that social media has heightened, and blown my relationship with my own image waaaaay out of proportion. It has literally trained me to take half-naked, edited and filtered photos of myself to the point where I am no longer clear as to what I actually look like — the same way Pavlov trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. That is why I am using social media to have my meltdowns. It is literally the Cure and the Cause of my Blues (there is a killer song by Fish Go Deep by that name BTW check it out). If I post my blues, and my weeping in bad lighting on the very space that rewards me only for glamour shots I am telling Pavlov to shove his bell up his ass and biting the hand that feeds me.   Of course the next phase of the cycle is to receive all the likes, hearts, messages and love BECAUSE of my blues, and then we get to start again — the blues become the new half naked photo. But I can’t help but hope that by being conscious of this snake eating its tail loop that I will somehow be able to break free from it. I don’t think it’s about me not using social media because the videos, and stories and photos other women have shared helped me to make this decision to perform this radical act of self love that is growing out my gray hair. I do think it is imperative that I break this cycle of addictive behaviour in myself. My addiction to external validation and drama. Which brings me back to my Instagram friend. I understand where she is coming from. She’s tired. We’re all tired. When I think about the world, and what an uphill climb this is — this being my having the audacity to age in the entertainment industry and not try to hide it, and expect to still be afforded the opportunity to make my living doing what I have spent years of dedicated study and tens of thousands of dollars doing — it feels like a mountain range surrounded by a moat full of alligators, a barbed wire fence, hungry mountain lions and an easily penetrable border-wall that I can fly over in a plane…(at least one thing can be overcome). Now, I don’t believe that focusing on the change means we can ignore the world. It is important to be informed. We have been asleep for too long, and that is why the f*ckety-f*cks are having their way with us at the moment, but we will make change happen, just like millions of men and women throughout the course of history have stood up in the face of oppression, and faced their own role in that oppression and taken responsibility for their roles in that oppression — and even made reparations for their roles in that oppression, no,I do not think we ignore the world. But there is a point when, if I stare at that world for too long, and if I do it unconsciously, it starts to mesmerize, and to tell me what it is, and what it will always be, and when the entertainment world tells me what it is — you won’t work as an actor, you’ll look ten years older, you’ll be invisible etc., I start to believe it because I am at the effect of the world instead of affecting it. I am only focusing on THE WORLD. So — it is at that point that I must switch my perspective and focus on the CHANGE. Preferably pre-meltdown, but hey, no one here is an enlightened master (as Marianne often says). It is not going to help me or anyone else if I run around accusing the world of ignoring me. Of seeking out all of the insidious behaviours of those in the entertainment industry and beyond and trying to call them all out on them. What will help me is to hold space for those people who are facing their own fears about aging and know that I too suffer from the same disease. I am just on the road to recovery, and they haven’t yet decided to walk through the fire. Who can blame them? They’re tired. I’m tired too, but I know that on the other side of this fire is peace. I know it because I’ve walked through other fires, and each time it gets easier and even funnier because I have a little more humility. I think it may be a long road, but I’m willing to walk it, because I believe I can change my experience of the world by taking ownership of my perspective of it. I said that to my phone-call friend tonight too. I have two choices — walk through the fire — face my face, and everything else, as it ages, or stuff myself with my addiction to the belief I have some control over what is inevitably going to happen in my life (aging, death, taxes). Like I can stave off aging if I just keep dying my hair. I can’t choose the unconscious path unless I cover it with alcohol or drugs, or sex, or botox, or Instagram…wait, what? It would be soooo nice though to be unconscious, but we no longer have the luxury of that given the current state of the world. So I’ve chosen to walk through the fire. I’ve chosen it for myself as an act of love. And I know that love will spread because my choice will inspire the other men and women to face their faces, and love their hair, and that it will be a little bit easier for them because love spreads faster than fire. To answer my earlier question about how someone becomes a world changer I have to come back to Marianne (hero-worship much?)… Twice today Marianne Williamson’s paragraph from her book A Return to Love (life changer guys, seriously, read it or listen to it free here) has been mentioned to me so I will quote it here for you: (goes to find link…) — — — funny, as I was looking for the ‘who am I to be brilliant’ quote, I found this other quote from the book instead: “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” Courage. I have that. So do you for reading this post. So does my instagram friend because she sent me the claps. So does my phone friend because he called me at midnight (it takes balls to call y’all). Every time you do something that makes you uncomfortable you make that courage-muscle stronger. Everytime I post unflattering images of myself I make that courage-muscle stronger. And someday I’m going to be so strong that not even Instagram can affect my sense of self, and I will be so strong that I can lift others simply by holding space for them to shine their light onto the room, and to see them for their beautiful, authentic selves, the way I want to be seen. That’s the person I aspire to be: A world-changer. Because Courage eradicates tired. That’s the change. Be the change. Much Love.

Event planner, Artist and Recovering New Yorker KP Lawless sits down with Mandy May Cheetham to discuss how her inability to train her tresses in middle school has lead to a crippling relationship with her hair. She and Mandy swap stories about how each of their Father's relationships with women have affected their sense of self, and the mortification of going through puberty under the male gaze.

An Actress Goes Gray. I am not my hair.   This line from India Arie’s song has been running through my head as a mantra for weeks. The problem is, right now, I am very much my hair. Maybe more so than I’ve ever been. The ego is a tricky little bugger. I had it by the balls about three weeks ago. Admitting that I had a problem — that I was addicted to my image and obsessed about looking younger had this amazing effect on my relationship with my ego. I was totally on to her. I could tell exactly when she was rearing her head, and that kind of attention made it much easier to shut her down before she got out of control. The day I decided to stop dying my hair and the subsequent 1sts that followed were very activating experiences that forced me to be in the present and take things one day, and even one minute at a time, as addicts must. The firsts: first time walking to the bathroom on a full flight to LAX without my hat on, first time posting an instagram story with the white roots and crying about it, first photo shoot, first audition, first time at the gym… What all of these experiences were making very clear to me was that my (not natural) red hair which happened by accident when I asked my colorist to go lighter to help hide the grays, had very much become my (ewww) brand, and dare I admit, a big part of my identity. Of course my identity has been carabinered to all sorts of unsustainable things. My eyes, my skin, my ass, the way I walk in low-heeled boots, and somehow, feeling good or bad about all of these things always migrated into my hair. When I felt all those things were being noticed by others, I became a sort of movie in my own mind, watching myself and the effect I had on others. The hair was the final shot in the slow mo version of that movie. I was under the delusion that all the people in the cars lined up at the light as I crossed the street were (a) watching me and (b) experiencing a curated experience of me that I was firmly in control of. Control. Control. If I just keep those roots covered I will have some control. I will be able to continue along like nothing is changing. Like I’m not slowly creeping toward catching herpes in an old age home. What is truly blowing my mind about all this, and I have the good fortune to be facing it all at once cause I haven’t seen what’s under all that dye for like 14 years and it’s pure white old lady hair, is that I was willing to keep on pretending forEVER. I probably would have written it into my will that they touch up my roots — and died with the powder in my hands just in case so they didn’t get the color wrong. So what happened? Why did I stop dying? The rest of the lyrics of India’s song happened: I am not my hair. I am not my skin. I am not your expectations, no. I am not my hair. I am not this skin. I am the soul that lives within. As much as I have tried to make my body my identity, my self worth, my best asset, the thing I lead with, how I get my foot in the door, how I know I am alive, what makes me desirable… I can no longer deny that there is a soul in there too (my soul is in the body and all around the body so don’t get too close or I’ll infect you with the inability to remain deluded). While I was still dying — every three weeks my soul’s glowing white strings of passion would sprout up out of my scalp and patiently ask to be seen, and, like most women in relationships, one day she just got tired of my shit and announced that she will no longer be ignored. So I saw her. And I stopped trying to cover her up, no matter how afraid I was that the version of me that I was putting out into the world was the only version the world wanted, I made a commitment to my art and to myself as an artist that I would show up to my own life whether the world wanted me to or not. And what I started to see emerge was a woman. Not a girl, or an object, or an instagram image. A feminine soul. That woman is more curious about love and inclusion, she thrives on overcoming her judgements of others and herself and seeing the parts of others that are peeking out and patiently asking to be seen too. I like her, and I wanted to know more about her so I just didn’t dye. I didn’t not dye, but I didn’t dye either. I wanted to look at her a little longer. And the more I did the more I discovered. Not only is she curious, she is fierce. Her showing up and shining the way she does is a political statement, a statement that it is not shameful, but it is a gift to myself to watch my hair go gray. It is a gift to bear witness to my life. So, ya. I was thinking all this good shit until the sneaky freaky ego and I decided to go to the gym. I’ve been making a habit of posting on Instagram whenever I feel like being mean to myself because of how I look (which is still nearly every morning BTW until I get some trusty red lipstick on). I have been doing this to try to turn the tool that helped make me into this identity obsessed monster into one that calls me out on my vanity, that I can use as a cognitive-behavioural tool to interrupt these patterns of active self-hatred. I am a student of A Course in Miracles. In that book it says that the ego (the part of our self that believes it is separate from God and from other humans) is suspicious at best and vicious at worst. You can never eliminate the ego, but you can teach her who is in charge. I like to think of her as a toddler who needs to be kept busy with games and toys, and I’m in the best spiritual shape when I can keep her busy with creating characters for my shows and songs, which I try to do as much as possible. And, although she misbehaves when I’m in the creative space, I know how amazing it is when she is out of the way and I can quiet her with more ease, so there’s a big payoff for keeping her quiet (my art). But when I’m not creating, and especially when I’m procrastinating, she gets vicious. I’ve been so riled up. I feel like I’m having that post-menopausal zest that my Mom keeps promising me will happen, but I’m not there yet. My periods are pretty regular still and, although I sometimes wake up drenched in my own sweat; I think it may be from my duvet. I’ve been more productive than I’ve been in a while, and had so much energy still at 8PM this night that I decided to go work out. One of the ways my ego tries to take over is to tell me how great I am. On this particular day, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for deciding to go to the gym, and she assured me it’s ok if I indulge in my self aggrandizement and wander down the rabbit hole of telling myself how much better I am than everyone else for going to the gym and even though my spirit self just wanted me to be in the moment and commune with my body, but I deserve to give myself props. I have a small gym in my building that is nearly always empty, but tonight there was a woman in there on the only elliptical… the one that I use for the main event of my workout. I saw her in the window before I went in and I stopped, turned around and literally had a physical fit. Didn’t she know it was MY time to work out and that I hadn’t done it in weeks? Why was she there now? Didn’t she know how busy I had been all day and how popular I am becoming on Instagram and that I started applying today to be a gray-haired model and the top agencies were definitely gonna sign me and then I am gonna get an offer from L’Oreal to dye my hair for 40 Million and I’m gonna say no? …I think I even stomped my foot. My spirit self intervened. I took a breath and got a grip. Decided there was a chance she may be almost done and that I could stretch first. She is a child of God after all, and therefore deserves her time on the elliptical. I went in the tiny gym and smiled at her. She ignored me. LIKE I WAS INVISIBLE. ok. wow. young. well-off. perfect body. obviously an actress. stressed because she had too many auditions this week and her boyfriend is pressuring her to go on vacation and doesn’t he understand it’s pilot season? entitled b!tch. WHOA. I look at myself in the mirror. My tummy’s hanging out between my stretchy pants and spaghetti strap tank top with built in bra. I make it disappear and am a little glad she’s been ignoring me in her sports bra and ripped abs — elliptical incline on 9, resistance on 6. She’s in the zone. C*nt. The ego is suspicious at best and vicious at worst. Spirit-self intervention. Saying those things about her — I may as well be saying them about myself. Ten years ago, ok, two years ago, hell, even two months ago, I was all those things I accused her of being. Find some empathy for this woman. Not because she needs it, because I do. She doesn’t know you’re taking one for the team right now by going gray publically. It is not mandated that women make a deep connection with every other woman we walk by right now. She doesn’t have to be a part of this movement to make it ok for you to age. She doesn’t get it yet, and she doesn’t owe you anything. I stretch. The belly peeks out. Armpit hair. Neck wrinkles. Gray. When is she going to leave? I get through one sun salutation, look over at her increasing the intensity of her workout, and realize this may take awhile. So, I decide to use my YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AS AN ATHLETE AND COACH AND DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSICAL FITNESS to start a deeply satisfying and effective workout that does not involve an elliptical (because I am more creative than that)….which quickly becomes the most ridiculous and aggressive series of exercises I’ve ever done. Including, but not limited to, reaching out wide in a legs askance power pose with front and back shoulder isolations that made me look like a professional conga dancer whose world champion placement depends on my ability to have perfect shoulder roll symmetry and fix the jenky forward jerking on the left side of my body with the determination of Rocky Balboa. Realizing I look ridiculous and wondering why the fuck I am inventing new shoulder roll choreography I tell myself it’s because I am so confident with my new gray hair that my true artistry is just coming out in everything I do, and definitely has nothing to do with her refusing to acknowledge my existence or a desire to just take up as much space as obnoxiously as I can — I add a wrist flick to the shoulder roll. All of the love and camaraderie between me and my new Instagram silver sisters from the past month have now fueled a vicious separation between young and older. In my head she is disregarding me me because I am old. I think I look pretty darn good for 43, and it’s because I do shoulder rolls and wrist flicks instead of the elliptical, and I’m certain she’s secretly trying to learn the routine that I’m just making up as I go along because of my wisdom and I don’t need a machine to tell me when it’s time to climb a hill. I mean. LOOK AT ME! Also. I’m allowed to have a flabby ass and arms and belly because I’m 43. She should know that. I mean, I have gray hair for God’s sake — she should be nice to me — I’m not competition for her anymore!!!! ooooo. There’s the rub. Ya. I do look pretty damn good for 43 when my shirt meets my pants without rolling up, but 43 is irrelevant to her. She doesn’t need role models who are aging gracefully because she is just never going to age. I was like her. Like two months ago. Until I just wasn’t anymore. But I have replaced that old feeling of beauty superiority with a new one. Why do I feel the desire to still make it us against them? Did I somehow just switch teams? Do I feel like letting my hair go gray makes me the now wise, Queen of the pile who, if she can no longer gain the attention of men, will instead seek the adoration of women, and will viscously scorn those who do not bow down to me, deny their beauty and curse their workout?! Or worse, have I become one of those women who tell everyone who will listen how old they are as evidence in the validity of their argument, or accuracy of their pessimism, or to gain a competitive advantage against younger women that I can’t out sexify? This may take more than a spirit self intervention. Ever since going gray I have realized how inflamed my identification with my youth and beauty have become. My pretty girl image, my red hair, now I have just swapped one addiction for another. Being identified with anything other than my spirit is an identification with ego, and is not sustainable if I chose to live a creative, curious life. I will never be able to see beyond my identifications to ask the questions that make great art. So here’s my spirit self intervention that got me through the rest of my work-out. To my sweet work out frenemy: B!tch it up girl. You don’t owe me anything. If you want to ignore me, sweat all over the machine and then walk out the back door with no eye contact cause you’re pissed I’m hogging the stretching area with my conga routine — I gots you. I can hold space for that. It sucks when you think you have the place to yourself and then some person comes in and wants you to smile. You’re young, you’re beautiful, and you’re furious, and you’re not allowed to be all those things at once and you’re not here for my entertainment or to make me feel better about my life choices. Actually, I feel privileged that you felt safe enough in my company to just be yourself. It makes me feel like there is hope for the women of the next generation like you. That you won’t do what I did and spend 30 years making everyone around me feel safe and comfortable and enabling their misogynistic behaviour. Instead you will express yourself in honest and glorious fullness. That you will feel inspired to invent a new conga exercise at the gym no matter who is watching, and, in the process, discover a new way to target saggy triceps and name it the gray haired shoulder roll with wrist flick. And maybe your bitch face inspired me too. Maybe it made me feel safe to be myself. To be b!tchy sometimes too. To let my maniacal freak flag fly. Maybe conga is the new me.

Mandy's Guest this week is Megan Vigil. The women discuss Megan's work to find the intersection between her spiritual beliefs and the industry she works in, how our parents influence our beauty ideals, and how words affect water. Based in Los Angeles, Megan has been a licensed esthetician and makeup and eyebrow artist for over 15 years. As a makeup artist, Vigil has helmed numerous projects throughout the US and Europe and has worked with names like Adriana Lima and Emmy Rossum. Currently, the beauty expert is an Educational Content Writer for Anastasia Beverly Hills and an advanced beauty educator, having written multiple books, blogs and courses on the subject.

A play-by-play of Mandy's first two auditions with her silver roots shining. Based on her Medium article of the same title. My name is Mandy, and I am a dye-a-holic. It has been 9 1/2 weeks since I last died my hair. As they say in the most famous of 12-step programs. ‘It’s not the drinking, it’s the thinking.’ When I first started acting as my professional career I was 35 years old. I was very worried that it was too late, but, after an insane series of events — losing my business, my house and the passing of my father in the same year — I decided to take life by the balls (I didn’t just decide, I did The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron — if you don’t know what that is, go buy it immediately. You’re welcome). Early on, I met with a neighbour who was an agent for some advice. She told me I would have a tough time breaking in because I was competing with other women my age with very deep resumes. ‘You don’t look your age though so that will help. You can pass for younger.’ And pass I did. I’ve never been the right age for anything. I left home at 15, had a child at 17, graduated from high school at 20, started my first business at 22, actress at 35, always trying to fit in, but always either way behind, or way ahead of everyone else in the room. In any case, her words stuck with me. You’re behind in skill, but ahead in looks. I clung to that, unknowingly, through stints in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles, building a resume of mostly work I created myself (wrote, starred in and sold two shows to networks in 2016), and digging deeply into the exploration of the craft. Despite being the wrong age for everything, I never felt there was anything wrong with my age until I started acting. I hadn’t realized how deeply ingrained the idea that I had to be able to pass for women who were younger was to succeed as an actor until I turned 40, then 41, then 42, and now, at 43, and as the work is just dwindling away, I am furious. I am furious that I am just starting to become great at this acting thing because, in mid-life, I am just starting to feel free enough as a woman to speak the truth about humanity through my art, and I am furious with myself for having acquiesced to this game of playing young so I could fit in and get work and uphold the objectification and sexualization of women in entertainment. I am furious enough that I decided to stop dying my hair. Because I just don’t want to pass anymore. There is something that happens to you around 40. A reckoning. I realized on some level that I was approaching a precipice I had not anticipated. I didn’t think I would be one of those women who have a mid-life crisis because I have a healthy set of self-esteems. I am living my dream, have ascertained that I’m not delusional in my assumption that I can make a living as an actress, and making real progress. But I did have a mid-life crisis, and it was a big one.* I think growing in my grey hair is my mid-life equivalent to a man who buys a Porsche and cheats on his wife. It was a big mid-life crisis because I decided to face the truth. Not THE truth, as though there is only one of us and we are all made of love, that is not something I believe we face, but that we practice moment to moment. The Truth that needed facing was to tell myself the truth about myself. I started to work with some acting coaches whose work is based on this, and it was an absolutely life-changing experience. They helped me to stop lying to myself by telling me the truth about the games I was playing by trying to pass as a little girl, crying, hiding, whining, denying my strength, denying my rage, manipulating. All of these things were (and still are) getting in the way of the artist I am. The artist in me didn’t want to play all of those games, or hide all of the facets of my personality, the beautiful and the ugly, she wanted to use them in our work, and use them in our life. As I slowly let my true self shine, I realized how normal it is to be angry, cunning, ugly, old, sexual, poor, successful, healthy, dysfunctional, all of it. The problem is, once you start to admit the truth in one area of your life, and do so consciously, it is really difficult to live the rest of your life in an unconscious state. If I listen to my artist and do what she says (which is really my ONLY job), she will tell me to eat, to exercise, to do my vocal exercises, to study my lines, to show up early, to do my laundry, and to play because she wants to express fully and deeply and she treats the work as a sacred expression of joy. She has also told me not to dye my hair. I mean, maybe yours tells you the opposite, but for me the message has been clear for some time. I am not dying my hair because I feel there is a deep connection between the vulnerability of facing the world in a truthful way about my age, and the vulnerability necessary to be the type of artist I desire to be. So, it’s been a week of going out without spraying or powdering my roots, and in that time I’ve had four auditions. Each one occurred with varying degrees of terror. Here I am the night before deciding to stop dying and go to the audition with exposed roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBgqX8f-dWw The first one was the catalyst for my making the choice to stop dying my hair. I had a melt-down on instagram. I decided to publicly come out about going grey because I knew if I didn’t make a big deal out of it I likely would not follow through. The night before the audition I stayed up all night googling videos about grey haired women and what they did to get through the grow out stage, if there were any ways to do it without the ‘demarcation line’ as they called it, and if there were any (mostly not) working actresses who were doing the same. Didn’t find any of those, but I sure found lots of opinions from friends and family about my hair off of my Instagram post. I got a lot of very supportive messages of course, but a small percentage of two categories of folks — older women and men of all ages — were NOT impressed. I got all the go-to responses: you’ll look 5–10 years older, you won’t be able to be as successful as an actress, you should meet my colourist, you’re being naive if you think you will work as an actor with gray hair, why don’t you use natural dyes, you’ll look like a grandma. But by the time those messages started coming in, I was in touch with my middle age rage, and I had already decided. As I had learned in that fabulous acting class; it’s making the admission that sets you free from the block that is holding you back, and once I had admitted what I was scared of in dying my hair — that everyone will know I’m infertile, and that I’ll never work again as an actress — I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. I strode out of the house the next day after negative five hours of sleep and took the world by storm. I felt like a Superhero! Iron-Haired Man! The Gray Hornet! Skunk-Woman! I realized so many things in that one trip to the audition. I was in my shoes and my eyeballs as my Mom would say. Looking people in the eyes. Striding!! I felt like a WOMAN, not like I was passing for a young girl. People were staring. Granted, it may have been because I was overcompensating with my outfit (lots of leopard, gold and very red lips), but I like think it was because I had that air about me. The same one that kids have before they hit like 7 or 8. Excited, engaged, present — ALIVE! As I sat in the waiting room I saw the other women looking at me too. I resisted the urge to talk about my grey, as much as I wanted to. I long ago learned my lesson of losing my chi in the waiting room by talking to everyone else. So I sat quietly. My hair at the stage that I could just be delusional enough to think no one sees the roots, or that the blowout is working as a comb-over, but one or two of the women noticed. One of them even looked at me with slight admiration. In the studio next to where the audition was held was a dance rehearsal. I could see the silhouettes of the women in the class through the curtain covered glass doors. They were dancing to Pussy Cat Dolls — the siren songs of us club going women in the aughts. I longed to be in there with them. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind then the monster in me tried to shut it down with “this is LA, all the women who dance here are young and professional, you can’t go to a dance class here, you’re too old!” Caught it, but not till I had finished the complete rant in my head, but my next thought was “wait a minute, you have grey hair now, if you went to dance class you’d actually be able to BE the ‘older’ woman that you are and not have to pretend it doesn’t hurt or that your memory isn’t as good as it used to be, and they would have ZERO expectations of you. You’d be the cute old lady who needs help in dance class! JOY!” It’s not the drinking; it’s the thinking. Ok, so all of those thoughts are pretty messed up, and the deeper concern I have for my sweet self is all of this drama about what everyone else thinks that is getting in the way of my joy. It’s getting in the way of my ability to see the world instead of being seen by it. Which is not only a waste of time, it is making me go through my day at the effect of the world instead of affecting it. Imagine this. You are 7. You walk into a room. Your first instinct is to look for the fun — fun toys, fun colours, fun people, fun smells, fun fun fun. Now, you are 8. Just before you go into the room, your friend tells you your hair is ugly. Now you walk into the room and think everyone is looking at you. You get quiet. You realize people can think mean things about you, and that makes you sad. You stop shining. There is a point between childhood and early adolescence when we start to become concerned with how we look to the room instead of how the room looks to us. One of the most important instincts I have trying to recover as an artist is that one — to see the world instead of worrying about how the world sees me, and the audition room is the toughest place in which to do so. It feels like a firing squad. I recently helped a friend run an audition and I seriously thought about sitting beside the actor while they performed. Sitting on the other side of the table felt combative. It pulled the essence of the person out of nearly every woman who came in, not matter how welcoming we tried to be, and most of them just gave us the safest version of themself and covered whatever it was they thought they were getting away with passing as. I discovered there that we are all trying to pass as something. So, back to the audition. It was for a play, written by a man, about abortion in which many of the characters’ experiences are based on misinformation and assumptions and that, although attempting to portray a liberal view, present some very deeply misogynistic views about the practice. The whole process was troubling. I very much wanted to call him out on many of the issues I had with the script, but I can only fight one battle at a time, and right now, it’s a battle with my addiction to passing as a younger woman, and dying my hair to feel like I still have sexual power over men. After a first reading of the sides, he asked me to re-do the monologue and make it more personal. The monologue was about another person having the right to determine what someone should or shouldn’t be able to do with their bodies. I am not into melodramatics, but it was pretty easy to get personal about this speech by thinking — oh, this is about my hair. I spit it right at him. He asked me immediately to come back for a call back. I was elated. I felt like anything was possible. I got on the phone with my friend Alice, a fellow actress and redhead, who had said the night before she would do it with me. She confessed she had relented and decided to keep dying until she finds a new agent. I felt all powerful. I told her I loved her no matter what she did, and that it would be better for the podcast we were going to start if she decided not to dye so we could have alternate experiences, but I knew I was right. I sent her a picture. She said ‘if the person casting was a guy, he may not have noticed your greys, they aren’t really long enough yet.’ That was a kicker. You mean, I’ve been walking around thinking EVERYONE sees this and is just accepting me, and it’s just because they haven’t actually noticed yet? Audition 2. The Call Back. He called a lot of people back, and gave us 25 pages of sides to prepare. Don’t get me started on how disrespectful it is to ask an actor to prepare 25 pages of sides for a callback. Particularly if the subject matter is heavy and the writing is awkward (sorry, had to do it — God I’m such a judgmental control freak). He told me I would read through 5 scenes with the different actors in the room. I read through two and he cut me off and told me I could go. A clear sign that my auditioning process was over for this project. I left feeling dejected with that adrenaline you have when you know you’ve blown it. My first thought? The grey was longer today. He discovered that I am too old for the role. Firstly the character is a lawyer with several years experience, married for 11 years with a 9 year old daughter. So shut the hell up. But what I realized is that OLD is my go to response. Since the beginning of my acting career I have been working hard to ensure that no one discovers the secret I have been hiding (and the one that is blocking my artist from playing as deeply as she desires!), the secret that I am older than I look, that I have a grown, 26 year old child! I always feel like if casting knows these things, or any other thing I’m trying to hide on that particular day, that I will be out of the running for doing the thing that I so long to do, to act, to play! So I try to hide it, and in return miss out on what casting really wants. Me. I went to a coffee shop to drown my sorrows in a chocolate chip cookie and called my Mom. I told her all of the things I hated about the project, and compared my disappointment to the same disappointment I felt every time a guy I knew I was better than ditched me (we are all one, we are all love). Guys know when you don’t like them. Writer/director/casting directors know when you are judging their plays. I only want them when they don’t want me. I felt better. I threw out my script. I remembered that I now had my grey haired super power. I started to notice how many men have grey hair. I wonder what going grey is like for them. 20 minutes later I’m on the subway and a (barely) 20 year old guy sits across from me and tells me I’m really beautiful. Thought #1: Can you see my grey hair? Thought #2: Do you have Mommy issues? Thought #3: Are you trying to steal my wallet? He’s fresh off the plane, still has that starry look in his eyes. He wants to hang out cause he has no life yet. I can’t. I have grey hair, and have to go start my new life going to art openings where grey hair is seen more as a political statement than giving up on your career. He’s confused, but he moves on easily from the rejection because he’s still young. As I walk away from him in my hurried older woman pace my phone pings. A message from the director/writer/casting director asking my availability for a second call back for the project I was slamming not less than 60 minutes ago. I was thrilled, and felt like a jerk. And I would have to print those 25 pages out again. Next audition is for a Mom in a MOW. I drive to Calabassas in a torrential rainstorm because I need to stay in the habit of going to the places I say I will go, otherwise I will crawl into a pit and not leave again until my face catches up with my hair. The audition itself goes well. I think I showed a lot of love and some conflict. No notes. Just on to the next cause they are running late. On my way out the door, my ego takes over and starts moving my mouth: ‘So, I’m growing out my hair’ (aggressively slicks hair down at the part) ‘so I can spray it, there’s this root spray, if they don’t like it, or they can just let me ROCK IT like it is, or whatever, ha ha ha.’ The man smiles and nods and fake chuckles while escorting me out of the room. I realize that my having grey haired roots has made me think that I am suddenly one of the people. That I am no longer just a lowly actress trying to pretend she is younger, I am honest and truthful and waaaaay better than everyone else (we are all one, we are all love), and I know what it’s like to sit on that side of the camera cause I did it those other two times, and I know you would have just cast me right away if I had just emailed you about the grey hair thing before coming in and I wouldn’t have to have risked my life on the Zumba Flume Log Ride that was the 101 after three days of solid rain, but I came, and I just said what was on your mind already cause I’m sure the grey roots are a big consideration for this job. OMG shut up! It’s not the drinking it’s the thinking. It’s not the dying it’s the hiding. I have a lot more work to do to get to the state where I am in my shoes and my eyeballs. Present. Doing my work, not concerned with approval, just collaboration. I am practicing it with my day to day life. They choice to go grey is accelerating that learning. I am proud of myself. I am taking it one day at a time. PS: Send love. I still need the external validation. *I actually think middle-aged rage is some sort of Darwinian trait that rears its head at this point in life to make sure we, as elders, get mad enough to use our wealth and power to fix all the stuff in the world that we can before we die to secure the survival of our progeny. Now that the sexual urges and motivations are waning we need something to take its place, no?

Mandy's first guest is Alice Barden. A 30 year veteran actress of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Mandy and Alice discuss their concerns about Mandy's ability to work as an actress with gray roots showing, and her ability to go to the grocery store without having a meltdown. Mandy and Alice also discuss the difference between British Actresses and American Actresses and their ability to age like actual humans.   

The premier episode of Going Gray in Tinseltown features a Medium article written by Actress, Writer, Producer Mandy May Cheetham about her public decision to stop dying her hair red and allow her silver hair to grow in.  75 percent of women dye their hair in America. The other 25 percent are infants. I wish I were kidding. Ok, it’s closer to 20 percent infants, 18.5 percent of women in America are aged 0 to 14, but do some math and that leaves only 6 percent of women over 14 who are not dying their hair. I mean, of course this is true. It doesn’t mean they dye it every month of course, and this study was done by Clairol in 2008 so let’s keep that in mind, and plenty of women do it for fun, and not to cover grey, but I think it’s safe to say that we all know 1, 2 or 377 secretly grey haired ladies. Why do we dye? I recently came to the decision that I would stop dying my hair, which is currently red, and allow my natural color to grow in, which, I think, is dark brown with at least 50 percent - 60 percent white. I have been thinking about it for years, and I don’t know what put me over the edge. Maybe the nausea I feel everytime I smell the dye, the THOUSANDS I have spent on color - was spending 2 hundred dollars a month for several years until I finally just started getting the professional tubes online and mixing at home myself- or the deep sadness I felt every time I considered the me that I have not allowed to be seen. The me who is aging. The me who is 43. I spent the holidays at my Mom’s home in a small town in rural Ontario where I could wear touques and pyjamas pretty much everywhere, slap on some lipstick and look like an eccentric up from the city for some R&R. Three weeks at her place and a semi-permanent two weeks before I left and I had a pretty significant amount of growth by the time I hit the tarmac back to LA in mid-Jan. I kept telling myself I would dye it when I got back here. Go to the fancy Melrose salon and pay 300 dollars for the assistant of my hair guru to accidentally use the scalp-burning, remove-a-layer-of-skin-every-time peroxide color instead of the ‘non-allergenic’ Inoa kind. But, as each merciful day of not dying passed something was happening. I was spending less and less time aggressively pawing and gawking at my roots every time I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and humming and hawing about how much longer I could go before I’d have to pull out the chemicals, and more time considering the big what if… This was the longest amount of time I had ever spent without covering my roots. I was starting to see shocks of white hair against my skin that brightened my eyes and that looked, dare I say it; beautiful. I’m sure no one would blame me if I had sent my uber straight from LAX to the salon, or even question why I dye. I am an actress. I live in LA. I look younger than I am. At times that feels like my only power here. That last line was meant as a joke. One of those jokes that’s funny because it’s true. I did not know I was submerged in a quicksand of fear over the possibility that physical signs of aging would overtake what little power I thought I had until I made the decision to go grey. I went into panic mode. Frantically trying to figure out how I would A. continue to have a ‘career’ in hollywood one which, let’s be honest has been moving in reverse since I hit 40, and B. continue to trap men into dating me without my fantasy-invoking red waterfall, and a white beacon of infertility above my brow. The protestations came fast and furious. You won’t work. You won’t date. People will know you will soon be infertile. You will look old. Old. There is that word. The one that made me cringe every time I saw my grey hairline peaking through during the weeks when I knew I didn’t have to leave the house — trying to give my scalp a break from the burning, flaking and peeling — looking at myself with sad eyes as I denied any knowledge of how deep I am into the progression of my life. If I faced the grey — I’d have to face everything that went with it; the dark circles starting to puff, the neck wrinkles, drooping breasts, having hit 30, and then 40, and maybe even hitting 50 without the house, the man, the career, the Louboutins. If I just kept covering it up I wouldn’t have to face the failure. I wouldn’t have to admit that there was supposed to be more. I was supposed to be more. So I dyed. And dyed. Died. Dyed-it. Dye-it. Diet. But I digress. For 13 years I’ve been dying away the grey. It was fun at first — particularly when I went red about ten years ago. With those first red tinged highlights I walked out of the salon and a man on the street said ‘WOW! A redhead!’ I had never had any stranger comment specifically on my hair like that before. I felt uneasy because he was slightly lecherous, but I flicked my head around and thanked him none-the-less. Power. For years after that I was known for my red hair. The complements were frequent and plenty. The colour went progressively from a strawberry blond to a hey look-at-me-muther-chucker-I’m-not-dead-yet RED. Headshots, videos, films, tv shows, performances, and uber profile photos all screamed my identity. I am red head: mysterious, cunning, sexy, charming, willful, passionate; and my scalp is flaking off in chunks as the glorious red tendrils rapidly thin and recceed — each hair making its escape from further rounds of torture by parachuting off my head any chance she gets. Oh yes, the hair thinning may have something to do with it. 43 seems a little young to be losing it. I have my suspicions that the dying has something to do with it. Hair dye has been a known allergen since the late 1800s, and several oft quieted or dismissed studies have shown higher rates of cancers in women who dye their hair and the sweet colorists who enable them* (In the EU, despite the banning of PPD or Paraphenylenediamine as a carcinogenic substance, it is still allowed to comprise up to 6% of hair dye). Most of the studies I’ve seen have been related to breast cancer, but one I just read today also cited increase incidents of cervical, and vulvar cancers. Of course cancer is the big, scary word used as the final blow in any chemical discussion, and perhaps having only 6 percent of the chemicals of hair dyes capable of causing cancer is a small amount when you consider how much other stuff is in there trying to make it soft and shiny, but also, perhaps not. Any woman who has sat in a hairdresser’s chair and had the goop applied to her head and felt the heat it gives off, sometimes for days, while it processes has I’m sure had the thought that it may not be ‘healthy’, but it’s much better than looking old, right? But it can’t be. If hair dye were really that bad for us we would know, right?! All of the governing bodies set out to protect us from big bad beauty, and big bad pharma would not have anything other than our best interests at heart. Surely some University would cough up millions of dollars to do extensive trials on patent-protected products responsible for an expected 6.5 Billion in sales in 2019 — which is a tiny amount considering the overall hair care market is worth 211 Billion. That’s about 325 Million tubes of color. I’m sure that keeps a few folks in their Louboutins. My thesis is that my insistence on poisoning myself has to do with my previously unexplored belief that grey hair means I am old. If I am old I am invisible, unviable and my time for dreaming and achieving is over. Does grey equal old? One statistic I found said that 32% of british women UNDER 30 are starting to go grey. Or is it a sign of something else? Are the very products we are using killing the hair we are trying to festoon? Causing us to dive deeper into the pool of self hatred connected to aging? If women are going grey earlier… Is grey even an indicator of age? I don’t think so, and I believe that this is the narrative that needs to be changed. I also know that I can’t expect anyone else to change that narrative for me until I change it for myself. I am only into the first week of leaving the house with my skunk streaks showing along the hairline — no matter where I part it, and I’ve no straight answer as to how it’s going. I just know there is a lot to unpack in the exploration of my relationship to aging, and the glaring indicator of such on my head. I have felt equal parts super hero, and complete self-sabotaging maniac. Trying to take it one day at a time because the thought of letting go of the red hair that has defined me is too much to do all at once. I just know I’m not going to dye it today.