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.

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. 

noun

1. 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.
2. 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.

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.