The Aging Taking Place On Top Of My Head

Several recent events converged that made me think about - of all things - gray hair.

I know. I should be spending time laughing (or fuming. I’m often not sure which is appropriate) about the clown show in Washington DC, the dilemma of all of our social media being controlled by rich geeks with no social skills (irony really is dead, isn’t it), and whether I should be handing out pot-laced gummies at Halloween…wait, scratch that last one.

Anyway, I recently had my “salt-and-pepper” hair complemented, which is unusual of course, and resulted in a conversation about hair coloring amongst middle-age women and the bravery associated with “going natural.” Bravery had nothing to do with my own decision, it was more about laziness and having better things to spend my money on. I can buy a very nice bottle of wine for the cost of a few highlights.

Then I visited an old friend who was sporting an absolutely gorgeous head of gray hair. After years of coloring, she started to see younger coworkers who purposely colored their hair gray, and figured fuck it. Why am I bothering? So she stopped bothering, with no regrets.

Of course, I have many female friends and colleagues, in all stages of life, who choose to color their hair because, why not? (I also have a very few who do not color their hair…but seriously, it’s definitely a few). As they get older, it’s just a thing they have always done, because they want to, but now it serves the purpose of covering up the gray that society assures us is undesirable, unattractive and makes us “look old.”

It’s that insidious messaging that I’ve been thinking about, ever since I attended a board meeting last week and noticed that I was the only middle-aged woman in the room who did not color her hair.

The men were all sporting their natural hair - with plenty of gray and white and, in some cases, little to no hair at all.

When I posted this observation on social media, the comments - all from women - were along the lines that not everyone “looks good” with gray hair and wasn’t it just the sad truth that men did not need to concern themselves with this issue.

Not everyone looks good with gray hair. But men don’t need to worry about it.

Hard-to-avoid translation: women need to worry about it. Because it’s unattractive.

Set aside all your “but what abouts” for a minute - yes I know there are plenty. Men color their hair. Comb-overs are a nightmare. Lots of women color their hair because it’s fun and it looks good and it pleases them. There’s nothing wrong with it! There really isn’t. Well, except chemicals sitting on your scalp maybe, but ha ha I’m sure it’s all fine! Probably.

Not everyone looks good with gray hair. But men don’t need to worry about it. THIS is the subtle sexism we often have trouble articulating. It’s so ingrained, it’s the first thing out of our mouths and it doesn’t even occur to us where it came from and whether it actually makes any sense at all - and this is from women about other women.

And then, as I am musing about all of that, a friend of mine published an essay on the very topic of aging and defying societal convention while doing it - and who recalls considering just “going gray” and the horror of her female friends who assured her it would age her instantly. Instantly!

Well, I guess I’ve been instantly aged for a while now. On top of my head, anyway.