Grey Hair Shampoo

The Be Beautiful blog is filled with countless posts that extol youth and anti-aging, but not all signs of age should put the more mature woman to shame. Embrace crow’s feet and laugh lines – they’re a sign of a person that smiles often. The stray freckle or sunspot isn’t fatal, but shows that you don’t spend your days cooped up indoors. And gray hair doesn’t have to be smothered with dye.

Here are some gray haired women who wear their silver tresses with a badge of pride:

1. Kristen McMenamy

The 45-year-old runway model is well-known for her iconic waist-long gray hair. McMenamy has been sporting the silver style for about six years, when she told her stylist to stop dyeing her mostly graying locks, she divulges in a 2010 Vogue interview. In fact, says McMenamy, “I have one big black streak in the center of my hair. It sounds really cool, but it’s not. Josh [McMenamy's hairdresser] lightens it to match the rest.”

Gray hair certainly doesn’t stop her: McMenamy was on the cover of four magazines in 2010 and in January 2011, she closed the spring Chanel couture show in Paris.

2. Jamie Lee Curtis

In spite of misgivings from friends, Jamie Lee Curtis stopped coloring her hair over seven years ago, and her natural look hasn’t worked against her on the big screen.

In a 2007 interview with Marie Claire, she divulged the importance of keeping an edgy and contemporary cut – “otherwise I can go Bea Arthur very quickly” – and that she “[loves] Phyto Phytargent [grey hair] shampoo. It’s the color of balsamic vinegar, but it adds the most incredible shine to my silver hair.”

3. Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren made People’s 2011 Most Beautiful list for the category “Beautiful at Every Age” (so did Demi Moore and Halle Berry). We love how the actress styles her platinum gray hair into flattering chin-length bobs – tres chic!

And a special mention for Meryl Streep: though this Academy Award-winning actress is back to blond hair, no gray was more chic than her character Miranda Priestly’s in the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada.

Gray can be fashionable even for younger girls, as evidenced by countless trendsetters, among them blogger Tavi Gevinson, Pixie Geldorf, Pink, and Dazed and Confused fashion editor Katie Shillingford. The New York Times covered the trend in April 2010 and online fashion magazine Refinery29 predicted it the next hair trend for 2011.

It just goes to show that graying, even premature (when your hair goes gray before you’re forty) is something that you can spin into your own fashion statement.