Browse archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995

Published on 08/17/1998 All articles from this issue

What to do about the approaching gray army?

printer friendly version

By Joan Passarelli

Blue Jeans & Jelly Beans

Dilemma. It's about my gray hair. Yes, I'm only 35, and the gray hairs are few and randomly scattered for now. But they are converting all the hairs around them to their subversive ways, and before long, I'll have a rebellious gray army on top of my head.

The question is what to do about it.

Should I relax and accept that this is part of getting older, along with wrinkled elbows and slower recovery from injury? Perhaps I should. Perhaps I should rejoice in my gray hair, glorify it as a mark of increasing womanly wisdom, and go on gracefully about life. It's more natural, it's healthier for my hair than chemical colorings, and it keeps me the way Nature made me.

On the other hand ...

I've seen how people treat women with gray hair. People assume silver-maned women of any age are older, feebler, and less smart than they really are. And most important, though it has no right to be, is the subtle assumption that a woman with gray hair is no longer young or sexy, which in our society, removes her excuse for living and her right to walk down the street.

Besides, people call gray-haired women "ma'am." I don't see myself as a "ma'am."

Yes, I am only talking about women on purpose. Men just don't suffer from the same kind of prejudice. People assume that a man's gray hairs connote wisdom, experience, and money. And not only are the gray hairs not supposed to diminish a man's sexual attractiveness, they may actually increase it for women attracted to power.

Bah.

My mother started to let her hair go gray when she was about my age. "It's natural," she said. "My worth is on the inside, not the outside. What difference does it make what color my hair is?"

It made a big difference, she found out. Bag boys at the supermarket not only offered to carry her groceries out, they also held the automatic door for her. Other tennis players turned her down for matches, apparently concerned about the risk of cardiac arrest during set point.

OK, those are exaggerations. But very real were the looks she got when she tried to go back to teaching after having raised us kids. I think the school board thought she was ready to retire.

She started coloring her hair, and what a difference it made. Even I thought she looked 20 years younger. She rose rapidly from substitute teacher at the high school to department chair at the junior college. And while no one ever said so, I can't help wondering if she would have been able to do the same with gray hair.

I don't have a professional career on the line; I raise my kids and do volunteer work. The color of my hair is not important in those pursuits. I know this. People may think less of me when I go completely gray, but it doesn't matter what people think of me. I know that, too. I tell it to my kids all the time.

But having removed those reasons to color my hair, I think I may do it anyway. My reason will be that I just want to. The color of my hair is one of the very few things about my appearance I can change. I can't change my eyes, skin, height or weight (at least not easily), but I can decide how I want my hair to look.

I just think it will be fun not to have gray hair - until I'm ready to.