I apologize in advance for the possible vapidity of this column. In my next piece I will discuss my plan for Middle East Peace, the fate of the Jewish people in an age of rampant intermarriage, and Martin Buber.
But right now, I’m anxious about my hair. It’s getting gray, and I am not happy about it.
On the one hand, yes, there are bigger problems in the world — and even in my house — than my follicles. And there’s a whole gray-hair-embracing movement afoot, thanks to books like Anne Kreamer’s “Going Gray” (Little, Brown, 2007) and Web sites like Jane Hanstein Cunniffe’s Graygirls.com. I look at women like my mom, with her chic silver crop, and my aunt Belleruth, with her mane of snow-white curls, and think they look gorgeous.
On the other hand, aging sucks, especially for women. Study after study indicates that older women experience bias in job-searching, and anecdotal experience shows that there are financial penalties associated with aging. (There’s a term for it: “the gray ceiling.”) Is it any wonder that among the eight women who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and the 16 female senators currently in office, not a single one has gray hair?
And the social adjustment to going gray can be miserable. It’s hard to turn invisible, to go from “miss” to “ma’am.” If you were considered a hottie as a young woman, it’s hard to feel that you’re becoming a nottie.
And going gray is no longer the norm. According to Procter & Gamble Co., 54% of American women currently color their hair. (In Europe, it’s closer to 60%.) We’ve forgotten that until the mid-1950s, hair dye was pretty much the exclusive province of actresses, showgirls and shady ladies; only 7% of women dyed their hair.
But then Shirley Polykoff, a copywriter for the ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding (and one of only nine women in the 187-member Advertising Hall of Fame) changed all that nearly singlehandedly. She came up with the “Does she… or doesn’t she?” campaign for Clairol. The genesis of the slogan, according to The New Yorker: In 1933, after meeting her future husband George’s parents for the first time at a Passover dinner, Shirley asked George whether she’d passed muster. George’s father, a rabbi, had liked her. But his mother? George hemmed and hawed, finally admitting that the rebbetzin had said only that Shirley “paint[ed] her hair.” He added, “Well, do you?” (She did.) Shirley felt humiliated. “In her mind,” wrote Malcolm Gladwell, “she could hear her future mother-in-law: ‘Fahrbt zi der huer? Oder fahrbt zi nisht?’ ‘Does she color her hair? Or doesn’t she?’”
So when Polykoff’s Clairol campaign debuted in 1956, the models weren’t glamorous actress-y types. They looked like the girl next door, just a little prettier. All the ads had a child in them, to show the wholesomeness of the product and the similarity between the supposed mom’s hair and that of her naturally-fabulous-haired spawn. Within a decade of the first ad’s debut, nearly half of all American women were coloring their hair. National hair-color sales skyrocketed to $200 million from $25 million a year, with over half those sales going to Clairol products.
I didn’t grow up with a Polykoff-esque, glam mother. She didn’t do her nails or wear fancy dresses. She was a teacher. But when my brother Andy was about 4, he looked around our temple’s sanctuary and whispered to my mom, “Why do the other mommies here get blonder and blonder and you get grayer and grayer?” (Astonishing that this boy grew up to be gay.) About a year later, when she leaned over to kiss him before bedtime, he touched her hair and said, “Are you going to die soon?” That week, she bought a box of hair color.
She only dyed for a year or so. She never felt comfortable; she was only doing it to make Andy happy. My dad constantly told her that she looked more beautiful as she got older. So mom let her gray grow in; my brother learned to cope.
Mom was in her early 30s then. My own gray hair didn’t appear until my late 30s. (At least, I don’t think so. In my early 30s, I had pink and purple hair, which made it hard to see any gray and is both a sign that my generation matured later than my mother’s and that I was an idiot with a serious case of arrested development.) When I turned 40 last year, I suddenly focused on all the individual grays sproinging out like tiny escaped Slinkies all over my head. I freaked out; I dyed.
But it’s been less than a year and I want to stop. I see a future of irksome maintenance looming in front of me. (In “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” Nora Ephron wrote, “Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.”) I don’t want the financial and controlling-my-life costs of looking young. I want to have more Lofty Thoughts than this. And I fear becoming one of those pitiable women who doesn’t know how silly her undifferentiated mass of fudgy brown hair looks; someone who looks like she has a cat on her head.
But only one of my friends has gray hair. I can’t look to our aforementioned female political and business leaders as tress-for-success gray role models. We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, and all around me I see actresses and singers desperately clinging to their luxuriant weaves, extensions, hairpieces and total lack of gray the way an Olsen twin clings to her giant latte. (Yes, Emmylou Harris. I know. Shut up.) I want not to care, but I do. And many of my girlfriends — smart, accomplished women who identify as feminists — are doing Botox and pondering lifts and tucks of various kinds. And I am truly ambivalent. My response is more nuanced than either “Ack! Bad feminists!” or “Shut up! Feminism gave us choices! Our bodies! Our lives! Our right to decide we want lipo!”
I wish we didn’t live in such a body-dictatorial age; I wish we viewed gray hair and wrinkles and sag as beautiful (and not in a “Hey, who doesn’t love Judi Dench!” way). But truthfully, I feel scared of being the only one who looks her real age. I’m reminded of the late, great Wendy Wasserstein’s line in “The Heidi Chronicles,” about how everyone else seems to have made different choices: “I don’t blame any of us,” Heidi says. “We’re all concerned, intelligent, good women. It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together.”
In mathematics, there’s a concept called discrepancy theory. It’s the deviation of a situation from where you’d like it to be. When we think we’re less than our ideal selves, we feel crappy. And sadly, we live in a time that talks a good game about respecting age and experience while actually fetishizing youth. Gloria Steinem famously said, “This is what 40 looks like,” but do any of us really know what 40 looks like anymore?
So getting back to hair color: Will I or won’t I? Ach, I don’t know.
Write to Marjorie at mamele@forward.com.
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I stopped coloring my hair in 1981, Went totally grey and am now totally white. I was 41 when I adopted my son (who was 7 at the time), and when I would pick him up after school, all of his friends thought I was his grandmother. I stopped the color because I didn't have the time, and have always gotten compliments about the color. Stop the color and enjoy the person you have become.
Gray hair is beautiful! www.goinggray.wordpress.com
Marjorie, If you are truly pondering which way to go but have some angst may I suggest you check out the following website http://goinggraylookinggreat.com. Before I got Anne Kreamer's book (which I really enjoyed) I searched high and low for a definitive resource on the ins and outs of contemplating, going and maybe finally being gray. I found it in Diana Lewis Jewell's "Going Gray Looking Great". I've had the book 1 year now and rely on it continually for its wealth of info. In December she launched the above site. I encourage you to check it out. You won't be disappointed! Dawn
I'm going through the same process. For a while I highlighted my hair. It disguised and distracted from the gray, but I wasn't actually hiding it. Somehow this seemed less like giving in. However, my hair got dry from the highlights and I got tired of the expense and the time required, so now I'm "natural" again. But every once in a while I look in the bathroom mirror and wonder if I'm too young to start looking "old". Why should I have more gray hair than my mom (who's been dyeing for 30+ years)? On the other hand, why shouldn't I?
At five years old, my daughter developed alopecia areata. By twelve she had lost all the hair on her head. She's now twenty-five with no eyebrows, eyelashes and her beautiful black curls are a vague memory. My point being - get over yourself.
love this, i actually have a co-worker who is going natuaral.she looks beautiful.i've been dying my hair for15 years.wish me luck. Gladys
Dear Marjorie, I was a hairdresser for some 40 years in L.A. Your article brought some remenicense to me. Grey hair is more flatering because the color lightens ones complexion. The absence of color, grey, reflects light. going gey was never the norm. Ofcourse the manufactures of hair color are very cleaver to play on the emotions of the golden years. The golden years suck. We did not call color dye. We called it color. A splash of color to pick up reflected light. We enhance complexions. We brighten your smile etc. etc. The Lapin Brothers, Sam, Al, Harold, and Itzy, a Jewish famuly, invented modern hair color. I have their original color chart. It is really quite interesting. They developed hair color as a result of constantly being pressured by the prostitues in Hollywood, at their Hollywood Sunset salon, to find a stable red color. At the time the only red color was from henna. Harold told me that he and Sam, in their garage, after much research, found analyn, a carbon based chemical, was stable enough to hold red color, which by the way is the most difficult color to last more than a few weeks. We shold thank the Lapin brothers. They deserve the credit. Also, the prostitues. Not Procter and Gamble or Clairol or any other manufacturer. Also, the most successful beauty salon in the world, if it is still there, was on Fairfax near Beverly. Fore moe...Luv, Irwin
is this all about self acceptance? I started going gray in my late thirties and died the gray away without a second thought. I did not feel old enough to be gray! I am now 53 and am still dying-I still dont feel old enough to be gray! When does self acceptance kick in?
Jackie, Self acceptance is whenever you are ready! A PPD allergy made me GET ready pronto. While it was scary and disheartening not to have choice..the end result was way better than I'd have planned without natures help! I am saying this to you at age 52.5! Dawn
YES! do it! and don't talk about it "No More"! It's how you project yourself in the mirror that makes you happy about yourself. I have been coloring my hair since I was 17 and I am now 66. Of course I have been doing it myself all these years. I know women who don't want to do it. They do look so much older while they could still look younger, their faces look younger. Are they happier for not doing it? I don't think so. Like you they must keep wasting time thinking shall I or shall I not?. Like a wild garden, it needs to be trimmed and a woman should be trimmed too to beautify the environment. Years ago old women wore black, brown or navy colors, and white hair, and that was really depressing. There is nothing wrong about getting old. We can appreciate all our achievements during our lifetime, good or bad, as long as we know we tried our best. I do accept getting old since there is nothing we can do about it and since it’s a fact of life, but there is nothing wrong either to improve oneself.
it's hard to go grey,don't kid yourself, you will have good hair days and extremely bad hair days.AT 53 years young and unemployed for the first time in 30 years, its a hard choice. My experience shows I am not in my 30's nor 40's ( But I look good )I am finding looking at women with solid color hair or in some cases hi-lites is not all that great looking.As long as you keep your "self up", condition you hair like crazy and have a YOUNG ATTITUDE, it's not so hard. Try to stay positive, its a new adventure and remember you can always dye your hair but your really not kidding anybody or yourself. So your not a FOX, but you can be a cougar.
I am no stranger to grey hair. I am 40 years old. I've had grey hair since I was a teen. My grandmother was completely grey before her 30th birthday. My father has been doing hair for over 30 years. I was his model for several hair shows and/or "something he wanted to try out" each time. I've had some bizarre haircuts as a child, I would be teased at school saying they cut your hair wrong and laugh at me. I cried the first time but then my father said "when you grow up girls will want to have their haircut just like this and you can say that you had that haircut when you were 8 and that's an old style to you". Boy I wish I could have put a bet on that. He was right. In high school we had several girls with the same haircut that I had when I was 8 yrs old. Then when the grey started to kick in too much I wanted to try color. He was learning different colors, and spend several years with his good friend Harold. I think Harold was more like a father figure or big brother to him. Harold taught my father so much I often run into women who work in the banks, stores, etc...and I would ask does Henry do your hair? "How did you know" is usually what I would hear. Just like any brand name product you can spot it right away. Harold gave my father his personal notes containing several formulas for each color he created. We really miss Harold but I was honored to have my father learn from one of the inventors of our modern hair color. I thank Harold for creating something I depend on. I don't like to be called my children's grandmother or my husbands mother. I've been called the mother of my husband and his best friend in the mall by some man who wants to take a family picture of us. I don't show my emotions too much but that doesn't mean my feelings didn't get hurt. I guess it's in the family genes. I wouldn't mind it so much but the dark circles under my eyes come with the grey so I feel like 60 not 40. I would keep the grey hair if I could get rid of the dark circles under my eyes. Do what makes you happy. The only one that can make you happy is you!!! Best wishes...Christine