Last week’s September 10 issue of Time had an interesting article about women and gray hair, written by Anne Kreamer, author of Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters.
. . . [W]e may have a contentious new baby-boomer argument over gray hair that is as mutually judgmental as the mommy wars between working and stay-at-home mothers was in the 1980s and ’90s.
There are differences between the gray wars and the mommy wars, of course. For starters, the stakes in the debate between stay-at-home mothers vs. working mothers are plainly, unequivocally serious, since that’s a zero-sum game between maximum professional fulfillment and maximum parental availability. But there are serious and similar social crosscurrents underlying the apparently trivial issue of hair color as well, and the divide is of roughly the same scale. Three-quarters of women from 25 to 54 are in the labor force these days, twice as many as worked a half-century ago — which is why the decision to be a stay-at-home mother became a difficult and fraught minority choice. And according to a 2005 Procter & Gamble survey, 65% of women had colored their hair in the previous year, several times as many as in the 1950s, which is why going gray has become a difficult and an equally fraught choice for modern women to make.
Both are about endlessly self-obsessed boomers dealing with self-worth — about work and children in the late 1980s and ’90s when the median boomer was in her 30s and about authenticity and aging now that the median boomer is 52. And both conflicts are about the right ways to interpret the legacies of feminism. If the personal is the political, as the women on the barricades made us believe, then even choices about how to face old age are going to be loaded.
Since the book hasn’t even been released yet, I obviously haven’t read it. But there were definitely some troubling “feminist” views expressed in the article. The first is apparent in the quote from above. Are we still taking about the “mommy wars” seriously? I mean, really? Wasn’t that debunked by feminists as a media creation designed by right-wingers to pit women against each other a long time ago? To me, saying that the “gray wars” are like the “mommy wars” is like saying that they gray wars must really not exist.
And that’s probably true. Tension and unanswered debate, yes. A “war?” Er, no. Then there’s this:
Today, four decades after the youthquake’s transformation of the culture, most baby-boomer women have held on to the hedonistic forever-young part of their Woodstock dreams a lot more tenaciously than to the open-and-honest part. And in doing so, they have presided over a narrowing of the range of acceptable looks for women. Women may be CEOs, Cabinet officers and TV-news anchors and may openly indulge their sexual appetites — but only if they appear eternally youthful. And a main requirement is a hair color other than gray or white.
. . . Ironically, it’s feminism’s success that has driven today’s widespread, virtually obligatory camouflage of gray hair. Meg Reggie, 49, a public relations executive in Atlanta, believes having dyed hair is essential to advancing in her career. “Since I am in the image business, it is very important that I look as current as my clients and the products and services they sell and I promote. If I stopped, I think my confidence level would drop, and I would feel at a disadvantage competitively. In the South, if [a woman] is not well maintained and current, one will hear whispers of ‘Bless her heart.’”
Ugh. Though the fact that we’re still needing to have this conversation is perhaps evidence of a short-coming of feminism, and a sign that we still have a long way to go, I’d hardly say that it’s feminism’s fault. It’s actually the fault of the system that begrudgingly accepted women in while still refusing to treat them as equals. Maybe Kreamer was told to put a more mainstream spin on the issue? Who knows.
But in any case, I’d still say that it’s an issue, and a feminist one at that. And I’m fairly impressed by the fact that Time decided to print a story about a feminist issue while openly referring to it as such.
Being only 23, I obviously have not had to deal with the to gray or not to gray decision yet. But women in my family do start sprouting gray hairs really early, so I can probably expect to see my first in the next several years. Will I dye? I’d like to think that once my hair is all gray that no, I won’t. But at this point, who the hell knows. I mean, I dye my hair now for the fun of it. I’d be interested in hearing about the experiences of women who are older than myself.
I also think that in terms of authentic aging, we have much larger issues to worry about– mostly the surging use of botox, cosmetic surgery and the huge double standard that older women look frumpy and older men look distinguished. The print version of this article shows the double standard in terms of hair rather well, by putting gray hair on several different politicians who don’t have gray hair, and conducting surveys about changed public perceptions of the figure. All were deemed to be less attractive, but the women were called so much a much larger margin. Also, while women’s points for intellect and trustworthiness increased marginally, men’s shot up by huge numbers.
Of course, the view that women lose value with age while men generally gain value is nothing new. What is new are all of the “cures” for women aging that allow us to completely circumvent the problem rather than attacking it. Attitudes surrounding gray hair are quite clearly a symptom of a much larger problem.
As for the book, it seems like it could be really interesting . . . but due to the tone of this article, I’m going to wait and read the reviews first.
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As a huge sci-fi/fantasy fan I think I have adopted the perspective that long silvery, grey hair should be worn as a sign of wisdom and timeless knowledge. It shows that a woman has reached a point in her life that she has learned enough to pass on the next generation. She is a role model, but she is also aged, and thus human. I realize its a slightly dramatic and romanticized way at looking at the world, however, I firmly believe that grey hair should be let alone and does not need to be covered.
beautifully put, rose…
At your age I, too, dyed my hair for the fun of it. Then when all the grey started showing up, I was stuck–you can’t “grow old gracefully” with a sudden transition, you need to allow the grey to appear gradually. I think I’ll have to move away and cut off all my hair, and then reappear all “mature and wise.”
Being only 23, I obviously have not had to deal with the to gray or not to gray decision yet.
Not so obvious. My 24 year old husband has quite a lot of grey hairs. Hundreds of them. Since he has light brown/dark blond hair, it doesn’t show unless you’re as close to him as, well, as close as only I would get. But he has tons. And will definitely not be coloring it. He would agree with Rose. I’ve colored my hair a very dark auburn a couple times since we’ve been together, so close to my natural color that almost no one notices, and he hates that. He says, “It looks dyed.” Or, “It looks fake.”
I have a bit of grey hair right in front of my ears. Not much, just a few strands on each side. But my hair is darkdarkdark, and those strands really stand out. So I tend to pull those out. But there will eventually be too many to pull out, of course. I asked my hair stylist how people with dark hair like mine typically handle going grey, aside from the obvious answer, which is just let your hair do what it’s going to do. She said women tend to gradually lighten their hair, until it’s a color that doesn’t show grey so much, and then as more grey comes, they tend to highlight it so the grey blends in, and then let it gradually go grey.
Now it all makes sense! That’s why women in their 50s so often have that “streaked” or “frosted” multi-color stripey thing going on. They’re in that in-between stage where their hair is not all grey, but not their regular color, either. Not that I think it looks bad. I just wondered how that style got started, and I think what my stylist said is the answer.
But I can’t believe something so trivial as hair color is being compared to one of the most complicated decisions many mothers make in their entire lives, which is whether to keep working or stay at home with her kid(s).
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