I’ve gotta say, I think gray hair is attractive on men and women alike. Zuzu wrote about embracing gray hair awhile back and the consensus was clear: Gray hair is hott.
Now the Beauty Machine eats at men, men with gray hair, and it deems them old and unattractive. And unfortunately it gives them the worst fear-of-aging ad campaign on a website I think I’ve ever seen, pathetic even compared to women’s anti-wrinkle beauty advertising shit.
I WAS AT WOODSTOCK. I SWORE I WOULD NEVER LIVE PAST THE AGE OF THIRTY. NOW I CAN HAVE ALL THE HOT LADIES AND A TOUCH OF GRAY.
PEACE.
I like long, silver flowing hair on women. I live in a small, hippified town on the california coast which is a haven for a lot of older hippys. A lot of the older hippy women let their gray hair grow out long, which looks great. I never understood why most older women feel compelled to cut their hair short. Maybe there’s a good reason for it, what do I know. But, the long gray hair on the older hippy ladies looks awesome, to me. Let your freak flag fly, sister!
That is one awful ad, made even more infuriating by the soundtrack of Cream singing Sunshine of Your Love. Eric Clapton and Cream weren’t at Woodstock.
Hooray! Equality! *sighs*
It’s interesting that men are supposed to keep a touch of grey (but just a touch!) whereas women are supposed to of course cover it all.
Peter – A lot of the older women I’ve talked to that wear their hair short say they wore their hair long for YEARS and they were just sick of it. I think it came coupled with a realization of, “What the hell do I care what anyone thinks?? It’s MY hair!”
And some come to that realization much earlier, like me. =D
Here in Turkey (and particularly in the Kurdish south-east) men have been dying their hair (mainly with walnut shell extract) for centuries. I have yet to find a Turkish woman who considers this attractive; I think it’s less about impressing women than competing with younger males.
Oh to be a silverback gorilla. For them, a touch of grey means “Hey, I’ve survived this long, and that means I can kick your ass, sonny.”
let me see if i’ve got this right. somebody invented a hair dye that doesn’t work, and instead of getting fired they just said screw it lets go with it?
Another reason older women cut their hair is that it can start thinning, just like men’s does. My mom cut hers when she went through menopause because about half of it fell out, and it just looked better short.
When you grey has everything to do with your genetics and not how old you are. There are children and teenagers with the occasional grey hair. My parents both went grey very early and therefore I started getting grey hair at an early age. To me it wasn’t a big deal, just part of my gene pool expressing itself. If people could realize that and stop panicking and creating getting older as a bad thing they would find it so much easier.
Though I don’t know about how gray hair has been perceived through the ages, it wasn’t that long ago historically that children, adolescents, and young adults attempted to do things to make themselves look older through devices such as growing mustaches or putting on makeup in a certain manner.
This was done in a period where many societies uncritically assumed that being “middle-aged”* and up meant one was automatically imbued with seriousness, wisdom, and good sense whereas all the “young adults”* and younger were overenthusiastic inexperienced “kids” who were never to be taken seriously.**
* Taking into account the fact that the minimum ages for such labels were probably skewed downward due to lower life expectancy and the expectation that all children except those of the elite were expected to start their careers at ages considered extremely young by our 18-21+ standards.
** Assumptions which should be questioned considering we all probably know some children and adolescents with seriousness, wisdom, and good sense and middle-aged and older adults who are devoid of such qualities…..
Andy,
that makes sense. I just always liked long hair, on men and women. Its just a personal preference. I just like that long, silver hair some of the mature hippy ladies around here wear. It looks awesome to me.
I have long hair w/ a touch of gray. I used to stress about the gray, but I don’t worry about it anymore. Gray hair can look good on women or men, IMO
Renee – true. My grandmother started going gray at the age of 76. My best friend started going gray at the age of 7. Very odd.
I really, really hate what they’re doing to “Sunshine of Your Love” in this commercial
@Renee, My little guy is eight-years-old and has several very visible gray hairs right on the top of his head. He’s had them since he was about four. :)
Onymous, I thought the same thing. They play those commercials all through the boxing matches on ESPN—”no play for Mr. Gray.” But then….he dyes his hair and twenty-somethings flock all over him in the bar!! *snicker*
Peter, I think the main reason older people tend to keep hair short is because when hair goes gray, the texture is coarser. Well, for some folks anyway. My father used to wear his hair longer (in a fro), but as he aged and most of it went gray, his hair texture changed—it’s stiffer and straighter (not straight, but the curls aren’t tight), and won’t keep it’s shape. He’s resigned himself to the close crop his father wore. I’ve had friends say that their hair goes off in all different directions now that they’re gray—it doesn’t “stay put”. Maybe that isn’t true for everyone; maybe the people who’ve always had silky, Breck-girl hair keep that texture when they age, but folks who didn’t have silky hair to begin with—-well, it doesn’t get any more bouncing or behaving.
Me? Haven’t gone gray yet, but said “fuck it” to long hair a while back. Looks great on other people, not so on me. I spent years lusting after that cover-girl long hair, the kind you can run your fingers through—only to discover that the same look on me requires hours of care, tons of hair products, and fuggetabout fingers going through it. Also, it doesn’t last in midwestern humidity—about an hour maybe, if I was lucky. I got tired of feeling like a huge wet mop was sitting on my head. Nother words, what Andy said!
I have seen plenty of advertisements for men’s hair products that make the hair go grey, and plenty of advise to get the right colours for the salt and pepper look.
Therefore, to say that men are currently being pressured to NOT go grey is not taking into consideration that there are also plenty of ads out there for products that make the hair grey, all in the name of added gravitas.
I personally think that in the men’s realm of beauty, cosmetic and fashion products, there is always going to be opposing pulls from either ends of the spectrum…Look at how many terms they have coined in trying to pigeonhole men and sell products to them ….metrosexual, ubersexual, retrosexual, technosexual…..etc……
My stance on gray hair in two words: Anderson Cooper. Rawr.
On the other hand, it’s nice to see that at least they’ve put the men with women who look like they could be in the same generation, instead of pairing them with 20-somethings.
Though to me, in the video a lot of the gray hair looks fake – as if they took a bunch of men, dyed their hair a solid color, and then added gray back in. It’s jarring to me.