Deciding to Go Gray

Mature woman with hair brush - stock photo
( Patrick Giardino / Getty Images )

Title: Deciding to Go Gray [music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. And we're going to end today's show with a few of your calls on what? On deciding to go gray. Now, people's hair turning gray isn't really a decision we make since it's a natural part of the aging process. Right? Usually we'll notice a singular gray hair sprout somewhere, maybe in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, but then suddenly your roots are no longer black, brown, or whatever. It's at that moment when people are faced with a choice. Do you begin the cycle of dyeing your hair, kind of trying to shirk off or at least put off the appearance of the aging process, or do you let it go gray?

And listeners, the question is, when did you decide to go gray? Was it a conscious decision you made? Did you dye your roots previously and then ultimately you just gave it up? If so, what was the turning point for you? What made you decide to let yourself go gray as far as you appear to the outside world? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Why do I ask? Well, the, there was an essay in the Wall Street Journal's About Face column titled Why I Stopped Dyeing My Hair. In it, novelist and biographer Roxana Robinson, recalls finding those first few white hairs at age 35 and feeling like the aging process came for her too soon. In a particularly potent line, she wrote, "Dyeing my hair was kind of lying about my age, but turning white at 35 was also kind of lying about my age."

Listeners, anyone have an experience like that? If you started to go gray earlier than you thought you should, or earlier than most people do, possibly giving others a false impression about your age? 212-433-WNYC. It's probably a bigger issue for women than men, even though certainly men dye their hair, dye their mustaches and beards. Watch any pro sports broadcast and you'll see advertisements for men's hair dye product. Can you relate to the push and pull that Robinson describes there, of feeling like you're portraying yourself as younger than you are in an effort not to look older than you are, or maybe older than you just feel? So at what point did you give in to 212-433-WNYC.

By the way, it wasn't until being under lockdown during the early days of COVID that Robinson decided to embrace growing out her hair as what she now calls an act of defiance. Maybe some other people gave it up during COVID because you weren't seeing anybody anyway, and then you just decided, well, okay, I'm going to go back out into the world. I'm not going to start doing this again. How about you? When did you decide to let your hair go gray? Do you relate to Roxana Robinson's article in the Wall Street Journal that we excerpted from or for any other reason? 212-433-WNYC. We'll take your calls and texts right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. I'll take your calls now on when you decided to let yourself go gray as far as the outside world is concerned, based on that Wall Street Journal article. But I was thinking this could be about other so called anti-aging procedures. It could be Botox. It could be expensive skincare routines. So if you want to throw anything else into the mix, as for when you stop doing it, you can do that, too. Cynthia in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Cynthia: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. So I have been going gray. I'm about to turn 46. I have been going gray since my early 30s and I've been dying my hair dark brown, mostly because I am an actor and so there's all this, you know, I have to look, I have to fit my type, right? During the pandemic, I couldn't dye my hair because, for obvious reasons, so my grays started to come out and I started to really like them, and so I just let them go. It's affected my acting career in terms of, like, I'm not really getting as much theater work because I don't look like a grandma, because my skin is still very youthful. But I am getting a lot of commercial work, which is really great because that pays really well.

Then in a personal level, I'm getting a lot of attention from young people. A lot of Gen Y people are like, they love my hair. I get stopped on the street almost every single day, somebody tells me how amazing I look. I mean, they're just so affirming.

Brian: Are you surprised?

Cynthia: But then women--

Brian: Oh, go ahead.

Cynthia: I am, yeah. No, but then older women, like older women, are like, "Oh, you're so young and beautiful. Why are you letting yourself go?" But I look great, I think.

Brian: So you think there's a generational change with how people perceive the whole idea of dyeing your hair? It sounds like you're suggesting that maybe older people in general. Older women in general thought, "Yeah, you got to do it," and younger people don't think so, so much.

Cynthia: Yeah. I was surprised by that because I thought older women would be supportive of my decision to just look like myself, but it's actually the opposite.

Brian: Thank you, Cynthia. Great call. Natalie in Dobbs Ferry has a story about going gray really prematurely. Right, Natalie? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Natalie: Hi. Yeah, I started going gray when I was about 14, 13 years old. My family on my mother's side, we have what I call the Jay Leno hair. So we start with, like, a white patch somewhere in our black hair, and then eventually we have white hair with a black patch and then if we make it into old age, we have, like, silver hair. So when I was younger, I used to bleach out sections of my hair where I was going gray and I would color it, like, funky colors and everything. Then when I graduated college, I needed, like, a real job, so I started dyeing it natural hair colors and, you know, black, dark brown, trying to hide the roots all the time.

My hair grows really fast, so I had to touch it up every four weeks or I would look like a skunk. Then the pandemic came, and I always dyed my own hair because I had to do it so often, but the pandemic came and I was like, like, forget it. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going natural. I grew it out. Now it's all my natural color so it's kind of black on the underneath and white on top, which looks kind of funky, but I keep it. I get compliments sometimes. I do hear what the earlier caller said about a lot of older people telling me I would look so much younger. I should dye it.

I'm turning 40 this year, so I'm at the point where I'm like, yeah, I look my age. That's okay. Although my son did tell me at the dinner table a couple weeks ago, "If I had hair like you, I think I would wear a hat all the time."

Brian: Oh, yeah. So age, we can't stereotype on the basis of it. It's interesting about dyeing in the funky colors. It makes me remember that I used to work with a woman who I guess was in her 60s at the time. She would dye her hair funky colors, you know, the 60-something colleague with green hair. It was obvious that that wasn't her own hair color, so it wasn't that same thing as dyeing your hair your original hair color, but dyeing it just for the sake of fun, acknowledging that your hair had changed.

Thanks for your call. Here's Jennifer in Woodside, who's going through this right now. Decision making process. Is that right? Hey, Jennifer.

Jennifer: No, no. I mean, I made the decision. I'm in my late 40s and in comparison to my family, I'm late to start graying, which I was very proud of, because my dad growing up, he was a silver fox. All I knew was him with his gray hair. My mom always dyed her hair religiously and still to this day dyes her hair. I was actually just speaking to her about it last weekend and she's just, I think, perplexed that I don't want to dye my hair and look younger, whereas I feel it's natural. The other influence is coming from my husband. He's a healthcare practitioner and he's really, like, we're all about everything natural. The ingredients that we surround ourselves with, put on our bodies, everything. He's just got it, like, the dye just is so artificial. I feel like it's really poison in my hair and going into my skin.

Brian: Your mother doesn't--

Jennifer: We're both around the same age.

Brian: - get why you don't do it. It's interesting even what you say about how you perceived your father when you were a kid, silver Fox. Example of the double standard, probably that the phrase silver fox even exists because it generally only applies to men. And speaking of men, we've got mostly women on this call-in, but here's Allen in Montclair, who's going to get our last 30 seconds or so. Hey, Allen, thanks for calling in.

Allen: Hey, Brian, thanks so much. I'm a physician at a public hospital in New York. I've called in a bunch of times about human rights issues and refugees, so very happy to call on them something lighter. I decided about letting my hair go gray, which did happen around, I'm 65, when I was 60. When I was 18 and a freshman at University of Pennsylvania pre-med and I was 18, looked like I was 15 and probably acted like I was 12. I just hated looking so young for my age. I said at that time, I said, "I swear, whenever my hair goes gray, I'll just say thank you." That's kind of how I felt. I think I look a little young for my age, but I'm happy to just look my age.

Brian: Allen, thank you very much. I guess another whole thread we could have picked up on here was for men who are more tempted than women, because of male pattern baldness, to get hair pieces as they age. I don't know, maybe it's different no matter what gender, if you're dating but not in a stable relationship. But there are your calls on letting yourselves go gray. Thank you all for your openness. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay tuned for Allison.

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