Word: grayness
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...right way, when it comes to hair, to honor women's progress? Conversations with women from Camden, Maine, to Decatur, Ga., and from Flagstaff, Ariz., to Portland, Ore., expose a raw nerve. "If a woman is really old and the dye job is extreme," Cathy Hamilton, 51, a recently gray-haired managing editor of Boomergirl.com from Lawrence, says, "I do think, 'Who is she trying to kid?' I'm a bitch, I'll admit it." And on the other side of the fence is Catherine Clinton, 55, a dyed-red college professor in Greenwich, Conn., who says, "I have seen...
...Name 10 American female celebrities with gray hair. Umm ... Meryl Streep. But only in character and only occasionally, such as in The Devil Wears Prada. O.K., how about Emmylou Harris and Jamie Lee Curtis ... and that woman on the Food Network, Paula Dean, and ... and ... O.K., but that's show business. Surely there are nationally famous gray-haired women in more workaday fields, in business and politics and the professions? Uhhh ... Barbara Bush? In fact, we have almost no high-profile, female, gray-haired role models...