Anne Kreamer was 49 when she winced at a photograph of herself. She was
pictured alongside her teenage daughter and her old friend Aki, whose hair
was now grey. Alongside them she appeared, she had to admit, “like a
confused, schlubby middle-aged woman with a much-too-darkly shellacked
helmet of hair”. She had hitherto thought her long dark hair made her look
youthful. Now she saw her pretence for what it was – pretence. She decided
that in her 50th year she would embrace “authenticity”.
Going Gray(as she calls her book) was not a decision taken lightly. Kreamer
and her husband Kurt Andersen, the novelist, live in Manhattan, surrounded
by metropolitan media chic. Andersen writes for New York magazine and hosts
a radio arts programme. They founded Spy magazine with Graydon Carter. Nora
Ephron, screenwriter and wit, is a good friend. Ephron’s recent book, I
Feel Bad About My Neck, stated unequivocally that you can’t be grey-haired
in a creative milieu. “What has transformed women’s lives in our lifetime is
not feminism or aerobics,” Ephron wrote. “What has kept them in the
workplace is hair dye.”
Ephron had a good point. You wouldn’t catch me turning up at The Times with
greying locks. Once a brunette, always a brunette! Grey hair makes women
feel invisible. I’ve had the same long hair, same fringe since schooldays,
and the same hairdresser (Smile, first in Knightsbridge, then the Kings
Road) since 1969. It has been my prop: keeping the same hair, I could hold
back the tide. Indeed, my time-warp brown bob darkened with age. At my last
milestone birthday, my husband read out a parody of You are old, Father
William. “You grow old, Mrs Grove,” the husband said. “Yet your hair has
become very black . . .”
But recently I had a rethink, a lightbulb flash while sitting in the chair at
Smile. The incomparable Chris cut my hair short, layered it and lightened
it. It was amazing how different I felt. Younger, definitely. Unrecognisably
so. People in our tennis club thought that my husband was playing with a New
Woman. And my instinct was confirmed when Private Eye last week did one of
their lookalikes – my Times mugshot, hilariously likened to Olivier
playing Richard III.
So I was intrigued to meet Anne Kreamer, whose book is subtitled “What I
learned about beauty, sex, work, motherhood, authenticity and everything
else that really matters”. She looked terrific. Casual-chic, slender, and
completely, naturally grey. Over a porridge breakfast in an Edinburgh hotel
we agreed that we had clung on to our long dark fringed hairstyles because
we thought they were almost talismanic, indicating that you belong to the
age of rock’n’roll and are still jiving. Kreamer has, over the years, veered
from brunette towards red and blonde, but she was jet-black on her 40th
birthday, when her friend Larry told her she looked “like her own evil
twin”. Yet she stayed on the tyrannical treadmill of hair-colour upkeep for
another decade – $300 (£148) a time, and three hours in the chair, at least
every three weeks. But for whose benefit was she doing this? Like me, she
was no longer going to an office every day, surrounded by Bright Young
Things. So cui bono? “You’ve been married 30 years, you’re self-employed,
your kids are almost adults – who are you kidding?” she asked herself.
The dilemma about succumbing to grey gave her sleepless nights. Would she
remind her husband of his mother, as Jack Nicholson said in About Schmidt?
Did their relationship hinge on the colour of her hair? One daughter said,
go ahead; the younger one said she didn’t want “one of those old mommies”.
But Kreamer grasped the nettle: to hell with media-induced cultural hysteria
that dictates that grey is unsexy. Why not swim against the tide? Three
months into her transformation, with two-tone hair, she almost backslid.
Grey hair was like fog, rainy days, dirty laundry: a downer. She became a
self-conscious wallflower at parties. In Los Angeles, land of the honed and
toned and buffed and blonde, she shied away from joining the poolside
narcissists at the Chateau Marmont Hotel. But at Martha’s Vineyard, among
East Coast intellectuals, the idea of fussing over appearance suddenly
seemed shallow, sinful; here she realised that nobody cares a whit what
anyone else’s hair looks like.
And so she emerged, hair grey and shorter, feeling “sleek and light and
sophisticated and unencumbered and optimistic”. She was saving thousands of
dollars, and hours of time – and she still got “Hey, beautiful!” calls in
the street. This was the real revelation. Men find grey hair sexy. Men read
youth in “attitude and energy and vitality, and the way a woman carries
herself”. She experimented with theoretical internet dating: posting herself
as 50, separated, living in Brooklyn, no children – first as a brunette,
then after three months posting the same information but substituting
“silver hair”. “And do you know, four times as many men ‘winked’ me – which
is the online term for wanting to know you better – with my hair grey! Maybe
this is unique to New York, I thought. So I tried it in Chicago and LA as
well: and the national average was that three times as many men were
interested in me with grey hair.
“I was dumbfounded. It was counter-intuitive! We’re scared of losing our
sexual attractiveness, but the exact opposite happened.” Perhaps, she
concluded, at the age of 50, honesty and authenticity is valued by mature
males.
She didn’t actually go through the charade of dating anyone. But she did go
bar-hopping (with a couple of friends for protection) and discovered that
the hair was no barrier – “It’s all in the vibes” – although as a friendly
bartender advised, she’d be better off alone. “I met one guy, 36, a merchant
marine, cute, earnest, unmarried. I could have carried it further but I’m
not a good dissembler.”
What about the other lurking fear – being unwanted in the workplace? When she
worked at MTV, looking young had been “nonnegotiable”. Now, masquerading as
a “returner” whose children had grown up, she was advised by headhunters
that she was no longer hirable, except as a consultant. A grey-haired woman
over 40 is regarded as out of touch, even if she has expertise: “Not a good
fit” is US employers’ code for too old. “On Wall Street there is only one
woman, Ellen Levine of the Hearst Corporation, with fabulous white hair. But
she refused to be interviewed: she didn’t want to be known as the only
white-haired woman on Wall Street.”
The paradox, Kreamer points out, is that despite women’s progress, the range
of acceptable women’s looks has narrowed. In the shoulder-padded 1980s when
baby boomers turned 40, the illusion of perma-youthfulness became
obligatory. The breach between the dyers and nondyers is as great as that
between women in paid work and those who stay at home and look after their
children. And there is a sense of moral superiority in mothering and going
grey.
Image consultants advised Kreamer to up-date her clothes, to alter her palette
of colours and improve her silhouette (she shed 15lb, previously camouflaged
by her youthful hairstyle). Ninety seven per cent of the respondents in her
survey actually said that they would rather be thin and grey than overweight
with coloured hair. But perhaps her most interesting discovery was that in
the world of politics, “where maturity and experience should matter”, out of
16 female senators aged 54 to 76, not one has grey hair. If she finds a
British publisher she will turn her gaze on the equivalent Blair babes and
other women MPs. She has noticed, on holiday this summer in Gloucestershire,
the Lake District and Scotland, a greater prevalence of grey here than in
the US. Perhaps, she suspects, thanks to the European reverence for old
buildings and classical architecture, women enjoy a richer range of
acceptable beauty.
If only she were more French, instead of being so American, she writes.
Catherine Deneuve, Isabel Adjani and Juliette Binoche manage to age with
inherent style, without great artifice and without the American obsession
with looking youthful. She sought advice from Mireille Giuliano, author of French
Women Don’t Get Fat, who explained that French men value women of any
age who are “ bien dans sa peau” (comfortable in their skins). It
gives them a quiet confidence and serenity, that seductive je ne sais quoi.
Men (who are increasingly prone to dye their hair) should observe George
Clooney, Richard Gere, Paul Newman, Steve Martin – all gorgeously grey. I
asked Kreamer’s husband – whose hair is almost suspiciously dark – how he
liked being anchored to a grey-haired woman. “It was Anne’s decision. I have
never particularly noticed women’s hair colour, which is odd given that I
earn my living as an observer. I think her hair is lovely, and I’m glad
she’s not spending hundreds of dollars a month. But it’s not in the top five
or even ten things I care about with regard to my wife.”
It’s definitely in her top five, though. Its significance goes beyond external
appearance. “Having become honest about my looks, I became more honest in
dealing straight with people,” she told me. “It’s about growing up, evolving
as a person, letting go of crutches I don’t need. I didn’t anticipate this,
but I feel tremendously more grounded and confident with my hair its natural
colour.”
Could I be as brave? No. Not yet. If I ever do take the plunge, I know short
hair will make it easier. “But I don’t want people to feel bad about
colouring their hair,” Kreamer says. “I just want women to feel that they
have a choice. You can age any way you want to, and be comfortable about it.
Just because I don’t dye my hair doesn’t mean I can’t go out and buy a pair
of Manolos.”
