Mikal at Belicove.com asks: If and when your hair turns gray, will you let the gray in or will you use an over-the-counter product to turn it away?
I had answered that I would just let my hair go gray. I have no reason to hide my age. Aging is a natural process of life and I wouldn't want to look like a bottle of preserves. Besides, so far in my life, I have never relied on my youth or looks to get what I want or to get friends. Sure, people will treat a frumpled nerd differently than a beauty queen. There's no way around that no matter how politically correct you claim to be. But wouldn't it be better to just be yourself than worry constantly if your mask is still in place?
Also, I don't get people's obsession with youth. When I was nine or ten and I saw an ad with some kind of model, my brain registered, this person looks like an adult. Then again, people who were in the grade above me, let alone high school, looked like adults. Now, whenever I see those kinds of ads I think, gosh those anemic girls look young. Do they have any idea that not only hunky guys but balding and paunchy old men are slavering over them? (Or maybe they do.) I go to the grocery store and high school kids are bagging the groceries and I think--even if they're eighteen, they don't look old enough to drive! But that is all perception. The middle-aged techs at the animal facility probably think I'm not old enough* to wield a dinner knife let alone dissection instruments.
So I guess I find it a little underhanded that people would try to hide their age by coloring their hair. It's harmless, but I can't help feeling that people aren't being honest with me. It's like the woman who keeps on claiming that she is 29 for the twentieth year in a row--except more insidious. Who knows how many superficial old people with pretty hair are out there?
*All right, so maybe I don't look that young, but I always feel like a mental idiot when people run around looking like they do know what the heck they're doing.
