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| Being a model helps |
A fashion trend is emerging, at least in New York City, and it’s
one I’m not comfortable with.
Yet.
Just as it became de rigeur for New York City men to wear
black, black, and more black, a la Steve Jobs, it’s now white, white, and more
white for women.
I’m talking hair.
I have two New Yorker friends who have joyfully stopped
coloring their hair. And the initial
shock of arriving in town and seeing them au naturel is fading for me. They
actually look pretty youthful, despite their hair. Or maybe I am seeing past
their coiffes, in the way you do at a high school reunion, when after awhile
your mind’s eye sees your old friends the way they once were.
Last night, at a dinner party, a woman whose hair is finally
just growing back after chemotherapy, took off the gray manicured wig she was
wearing.
I tried it on.
“You look good,” my husband said. Dashing to a mirror, I didn’t recognize
myself.
Was he just being polite? Or – as the guys at dinner said –
“Think of the money you’ll save!”
I hadn’t planned on writing about this major life transition
that arguably should be easier to make once you’ve left your career. But an essay in today’s Wall St. Journal reinforced the queasiness of this
decision, even for a woman’s spouse.
When his wife (who must live in New York) asked him if she
should go gray, Rob Lazebnik writes that he had visions of being “married to
the Queen of England.”
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| Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth |
He pondered his discomfort, concluding that “society, sadly, deems old as
unattractive, and that for some reason gray equals old more in women than in
men.”
Congresswomen are not gray.
Women newscasters are not gray.
And no way did he really want his wife to go (old and) gray,
though he couldn’t come out and say it.
After thinking about how to respond to her, he eventually
“dropped a bomb, one that I knew would strike deep inside the bunker.” He told
her: “You know, I remember when I met your mother and thought to myself what a
great-looking gray-haired lady she was.”
Yeah. I’m not going to rush out to look like my mother for a
little while longer. But then, I don’t live in New York.
