Word: colorism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...later, approaching midnight on a Saturday in November, when Mitchell filed into a room in the bowels of Sydney's Telstra Stadium to face the world's media. In a boilover, his side had just lost its semi-final against Australia. Mitchell's black blazer highlighted the absence of color in his face. With dignity, he answered every question, some of them insulting like, "Did you have a game plan tonight?" But he looked and sounded like a man who'd just foreseen the end of the world. Within a month, the New Zealand Rugby Union sacked...
...Mary had neglected to tell her sister that she had given up artificial color. So as the twins drew near each other, Alice recalls, "I got to watch my undyed older self walking toward me. I was sort of fascinated. My roots told me I was as gray or grayer than she, but here she was with it all hanging out. And no offense to my sister, but I thought it was a sort of haggard look." After the reunion, Mary decided her experiment in gray was over, and she redyed her hair the same shade of brown...
...Friends and strangers responded to my newly revealed natural hair color in one of two ways: a sort of proud, sometimes sanctimonious right-on-sister enthusiasm from fellow gray-haired women or an equally proud, sometimes resentful don't-judge-my-choices-I-do-this-to-feel-good-about-me defensiveness in the comments of the committed-to-dyeing cohort. Hardly anyone was lukewarm in their reactions, which suggests to me we 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...
...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...
...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...