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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Is gray the Hair Fashion Statement of the Future?



You almost never get to see gray hair anymore on women over 50. Everyone is a lustrous and shimmering brunette or blonde, at any age. The trouble is, there are very few proud celebrity representatives for natural hair fashion for those older than stepping into old age. Of course, there is Helen Mirren, or Meryl Streep. But those are just two well-admired celebrities, that people tend to sideline what they're doing as high society rebellion. For most women, to go about with gray hair is like wearing a sandwich board that says they are over the hill, past a good future, past romance. As much as it seems like a terrible sacrifice to make at the altar of mature self-acceptance, most people hate being stuck on the gerbil wheel of constant skincare and hair care. If it's six weeks, you simply have to run off to get your roots colored. Years spent on regular hair coloring can end up feeling quite like you've been somehow been abusing your body, and getting off can often feel really liberating. It is funny, if you think about it. There really is nothing wrong with a hair color habit; and yet it does feel like relief when you finally step off the merry-go-round.

Will the silver mane catch on as the new hair fashion statement for today among older women? In a country where more than half of all of those who belong to the female gender, choose hair color, either for their gray hair, or to make a fashion statement? A natural gray, is all poised to become the new politically correct position; and colored hair, to become the new implants that those with women's rights politics will love to oppose. Most women in their 50s, choose to visit the salon to have their hair colored but not to indulge in some kind of hair fashion; appearance really counts in lots of jobs these days. You could be a lawyer dealing with youngish business clients, or you could be an office manager with a bunch of fresh business school graduates under your wing. It often just feels like you are running into obsolescence, if you look your age.

Lots of older women, experienced in fashion sales, find that in large image-conscious cities like New York or Philadelphia, trying to simply do your job and help customers with their choices, doesn't really work. You don't really want your college student customers to look at you and be reminded of their mom. But you know that it gets really ridiculous, when women in a job where they are employed for their wisdom and their maturity, still have to hide how old they are. School teachers and college lecturers, can't ever seem to be taken seriously with gray hair. In America, old age is just irrelevance.

But as badly as people react to grayhair in public situations, most women feel that in personal and intimate relationships, they're never judged by the color of their hair.