Gray hair: The divide between the genders

There’s a new book out getting lots of attention because it’s by a 49-year-old woman who did something shocking.

No, she didn’t abandon her children, sell a kidney or become a TV wrestler. This was even more harrowing.

She stopped dyeing her hair.

The book, by Anne Kreamer, is called, “Going Gray.”

Time magazine featured a big excerpt, and Kreamer’s been on all sorts of talk shows.

My first reaction was to wonder how anyone gets a whole book out of this. Her subtitle explained it: “What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Matters.”

I’ve been gray for years, and though it kind of bums me out, it never occurred to me to think about it on all those levels. It underscored the divide between the genders.

Women seem to feel hair color impacts their whole lives. Most adult women I know have spent decades changing it, fine-tuning it -- streaking, highlighting and agonizing over it. It may well be the most recession-proof part of the economy.

Now that men are forced to go to salons, we’re able to witness this obsession. Every time I get my hair cut, there are women around me in conditions men were never meant to see. They’ve got glop in their hair, and sometimes these weird rubber caps with shoots of hair coming through various holes. You’ll see them sitting happily while their hair is pasted with 50 aluminum-foil patches. I’ve never been able to figure that one out.

Post-transformation state

Men never saw such things in the ’50s and ’60s. Society, in its wisdom, barred us from beauty salons. We were fine with that, of course. Men prefer seeing women only in their post-transformation state. Back then, the closest you’d see them in a pre-state was when some woman would show up at the grocery store in curlers.

Eventually, the feminist movement decided the path to equality was to make things unisex -- such as the workplace and the military. I had no problem with that. But then they made salons unisex, too, and made men go there. I suppose the idea was to make us more sensitive, proven by the fact that they don’t even have men’s magazines there. You have to read Glamour or Good Housekeeping.

I’m not sure the strategy worked. Most men I know are still insensitive, the difference being that we’re insensitive and have to look at women with glop in their hair.

Now author Anne Kreamer has begun a debate about going gray. I doubt many women will join her, perhaps because they fear they’ll look like an ad for an extended-care facility. I’m not saying all un-dyed women look that old, but those ads always seem to feature 50ish gray-haired models as the residents.

All of this proves to me that men have it rough. Despite this new book, we all know that middle-aged women are encouraged to have whatever youthful hair color they want. Gray-haired men? We couldn’t even have this discussion. If a man wrote a book about letting himself go gray, it would not be excerpted in Time. We’re just expected to.

‘Deal with it’

The closest we get to sympathy is, “Deal with it; you’re lucky you have hair.” One would not say that to a woman.

The few men who do dye their hair keep it secret since they know they’ll be considered vain, and even snickered at. Gray-haired men are in a checkmate situation. If we don’t dye our hair, we no longer look youthful; if we do, we’re a finicky metro-sexual.

I began going gray years ago, and thought it was a raw deal. I still do, and admit to sometimes seeing the world through that lens. When Saddam Hussein was shown during his trial, most people thought, “What a monster.” I thought, “Lucky SOB has dark hair.”

I can’t even pull off that rugged, unshaven Hollywood look because when your three-day beard is white, you look like a vagrant.

And it doesn’t work to tell me gray-haired men look distinguished. That may have been fine for my dad, who used Brylcreem, but men of my generation still think we just got out of college. We don’t want to look distinguished.

As for Kreamer — women may well find her to be shocking, harrowing, and earth-shaking.

Speaking for men, Anne, all I have to say is, welcome to the club.

X Patinkin is a columnist for the Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service