Robin Salls Founded 'Tangled Silver Magazine' to Inspire Women to Define Beauty and Aging on Their Terms. What's Followed Is a Growing #IAmSilver Community

Hair—whether or not we have it, whether it's sparse or thick, whether it's long or short—is one of the most personal attributes of our physicality. For Robin Salls, her hair has ignited a new chapter in her life—one of community, connection, and revolution. Salls is the founder and CEO of Tangled Silver Magazine, a growing online publication anchored in the mission to inspire midlife women to "define beauty and aging on their own terms," as she says, and to embrace their gray or silver hair.

Tangled Silver came after Salls stopped coloring her hair in 2018. She made this decision after noticing an uptick in women younger than her, many her daughter's age, embracing silver strands. That inspired Salls and sparked a desire to let go of years' worth of societal conditioning.  

"I grew up in the 70s and 80s where the commercials of 'color that gray right out of your hair!' were a big deal. And I wasn't scared of gray then," Salls recalls. "But I had a stepfather around when I was almost 30, who made a comment that was, 'If you don't cover up those grays, you're going to look older than your mother.' For whatever reason, that stopped me in my tracks—and I spent the next 20-plus years coloring my hair."

The tides turned in 2018 when she said goodbye to the dye and let her hair go natural. In more than five years since, Salls, a longtime entrepreneur, has launched a magazine and touched the hearts of countless other women seeking to release themselves from the conventional grips of beauty. We spoke to her about the wild ride it's been to (metaphorically and literally) embrace her roots and to grow her #iamsilver community.

A CONVERSATION WITH ROBIN SALLS

You announced on social media that you were giving up hair dye. What was the response?

It was kind of quiet at first. I had been following women who were already going Silver, so they were all very encouraging. It was funny; some of my friends in my local community were like, 'Robin, I can't do that with you.' And I said, 'I'm not asking you to do it with me; I just want to share that this is what I'm doing.' My mother's response was probably the best. She said, 'Oh, honey, I know your mother's supposed to be gray before you, but I just can't go there.' However, after 2020, when COVID shut things down, she had to go gray, and her hair started to grow silvery and beautiful. So now she has a full head of silver hair.

Why do you feel our hair is so personal and rooted in our identity, particularly for women?

As women, whether we like it or not, we're prone to automatically go to outward features first versus our inner worlds. It's probably because of all the spoon-fed stuff given to us, from the commercials to seeing older gentlemen with younger women in movies, but never really seeing older women with younger men. With our hair, it's always been a key piece of focus for women and our upbringing. Maybe it wasn't even conscious, maybe it was subconscious, but we're fed that this is how women are supposed to look this way. You think about Barbie dolls and all these examples. So hair has always played a big role in all this. 

You've been creating Tangled Silver Magazine for over four years now. Tell us about it and how it's evolved. 

Initially, it was more about women embracing their silver hair. Since then, we still are about women embracing their silver hair, but we're also about the that it may start as a hair decision, but it's so much more—it's freeing, it's liberating, and you suddenly start peeling back all these layers of yourself that you didn't realize you had because you're so caught up in what people thought about your outward appearance. So, it's become so much more about midlife now, as well. We're really a community of sisters. We have some younger members in their early 20s and 30s, but our core is women 45-plus who are embracing silver hair, or they like the concept, and they're not ready to go Silver yet, but they want to play along for when they are ready to jump in. It's a nice mix of women coming together. I say we're embracing ourselves for who we want to be and not what everybody else was telling us to be and inspiring each other to define beauty and aging on our terms. I want women to define it for themselves. I'm not anti-hair color, but I am anti-anyone telling a woman she has to color to be relevant. 

Do you feel the beauty industry is evolving in embracing women as they age?

We're moving forward. COVID helped make prevalent all the women who were embracing their gray hairs or whatever their natural colors were. There's been such a focus on anti-aging, and now you're starting to see pro-aging comments. But I prefer the terms ageless and timeless because you want to be your best self where you are at that moment. But often [the marketing] can forget about that. We don't need the fountain of youth, we need the fountain of a lifestyle that fits who we are today and will help us be our best today.

What have you learned about yourself in this journey?

I was living other people's stories. Other people were writing my pages for me. I wasn't really being Robin. I was doing what everybody thought Robin was supposed to be. As I really started to peel back the layers, I started to see this. For whatever reason, I let someone else's comment about my hair throw me into a loop suddenly. I thought I got to cover the grays! So, it's been really interesting to realize that part of who I was was spoon fed to me. It was what was expected of me versus who I wanted to become.

I have never felt so at home than when I went to launch this magazine. And I didn't intend to turn it into a business. It was more or less my love letter to the silver community. But then it started to grow, so I really jumped in. 

You can learn more about Robin Salls and Tangled Silver Magazine at tangledsilvermagazine.com.

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