Why are grey-haired men revered while grey-haired women are silenced?
They've christened it the 'Clooney Effect' – the greyer the hair, the more attractive the man. Even the bird kingdom isn't immune, say British ornithologists, who recently discovered that when certain male birds go grey, it automatically sends the female of the species into a flutter.
For reasons far too absurd to squander my word count on, blokes such as George Clooney are seen as 'silver foxes' – sexy, powerful, distinguished and wise. Women, on the other hand, rarely make it past the bouncer at this party. Wear your grey pride as a woman and you'll be labelled an old hippy, crazy cat lady, accused of 'letting yourself go' and/or of dabbling in the dark arts.
Like it or not, ours is a culture that reveres and worships youth, that believes getting older is something to be feared and avoided. Enter the billion dollar 'hope in a jar' industries, with their potions, scalpels, suck-in-the-fat knickers and hair dyes, which paper over our anxieties and promise a youthful glow.
A recent European survey, for example, found that more than 50 percent of executive women dye their hair, as opposed to just three percent of men. As one of the survey respondents put it, "Grey hair makes a businessman look distinguished, but it just makes a woman look old and tired."
There are lots of reasons hair turns grey: genetics, stress, poor diet. The science behind it, though, is pretty simple: as we age, the follicles at the base of the hair shaft stop producing melanin, which, in turn, produces pigment. Getting older equals the death of pigment. We've been trying to dial back the grey ever since the ancient Romans slapped boiled walnuts on their locks.
Over the years, everything from plants and onion skins to turmeric and henna have been called into service; a particularly low point was the turn of last century when early adopters of peroxide-based dyes often left the salon with violent headaches, swollen eyelids and blisters on their foreheads.
When I was at primary school a friend's mother paid us five cents every time we found one of her grey hairs. She would hand us a pair of tweezers and we would yank them out with sufficient enthusiasm to keep us in $1 lolly bags. To my childish eyes, she was pretty, successful and fun; I couldn't understand why she was so keen to be rid of the silvery strands that snaked across her head.
Foolishly believing I could trump both convention and genetics, I swore I'd never do the same. I was wrong. Unlike a friend who spotted her first grey hair at 10, I came late to the greying game. I was 28 when I found my first grey hair; I plucked it out and angrily flushed it down the loo. The next week it came back – and this time it had brought friends.
As I hobbled across the threshold of my 30s, those silver suckers kept coming. Every 10 weeks I would pay someone to torture my follicles. It was expensive and time consuming (that's a helluva long time to be sitting in a chair with crap on your head reading trashy magazines).
My colourist likened it to the Hotel California – you can dye your hair any time you like, but you can never stop. Still, I told myself, it was worth it to slug my way back to an earlier version of myself. A few years ago a friend saved me from bankruptcy by switching me on to home dye jobs. They're not nearly as effective, and I often dye random bits of the bathroom walls, but they're cheaper and much less time consuming.
I could, of course, always follow Vogue fashion director Sarah Harris who recently decided to challenge society's 'white fright'. "I'm embracing the rebelliousness of my grey hair. It is honest and non-conformist," she wrote. Or actresses such as Helen Mirren and Jamie Lee Curtis, both rich enough to buy all the hair dye in the world but who choose not to camouflage the grey.
Or American author Anne Kreamer who wrote a book about her journey into grey. "We only fool ourselves about how young we look with dyed hair," believes Kreamer. In an interesting aside, Kreamer conducted an experiment to see how men view women with grey hair. She posted two profiles on a dating website -one of her with grey hair, the other with brown. Three times as many men wanted to date her with grey hair.
"Maybe the men sensed that if I was being honest about the colour of my hair, I'd be more accessible and easier to date. Or maybe the grey made me standout from the overwhelming majority of women on the site who colour their hair."
Sadly, I lack the confidence (and cheekbones) of Mirren, Kreamer and co. I don't feel comfortable having shiny silver hairs sticking out the top of my head and I'm not ready to give up my irresponsible relationship with dye. Sadly, no amount of wishing will turn my hair back to what it once was, but while I wait for the vanity and fear to wear itself out, I'll keep reaching for Clairol.
Written by Sharon Stephenson. Republished with permission of Stuff.co.nz.