The average age of the Baby Boomer generation is now 52 years old, and the question of whether to go to a naturally gray or color up is on the minds of many people in the workforce. 

Women usually say that men have it easier; males in this county are expected to turn gray and become more dashing or even wiser looking.  Well, not so in China as I have found from informal research on the internet.  The top 5 man national political ruling group in China is aged from mid 50’s to late 60’s and they don’t have a gray hair among them.  It seems that today in the age of television Chinese politicians in order to communicate an image of health and vigor have to color their hair. 

Women in our American society have a much more complicated dynamic to wrestle with and a lot of it has to do with self-image.  There are not a significant number of gray-hair role models for women to identify with.  To the contrary, the leading edge of the boomers has been the Pied Piper for other women for decades and most of them are coloring up according to my antidotal visual survey. 

Not to let psychological insight run amuck in this entry, but I understand one of the underlying reasons women color their hair is to support the fantasy of who they think they are.  With guys we don’t fantasize in just the same way, or at least about hair color.  Whether or not there is a career linkage in a person’s motivation, most people agree that they do it to present a fresher looking version of themselves.

In the building I now work at, here in Indio, they have monster lighting in the restrooms.  (I think it is high pressure sodium vapor.)  When you look in the mirror you can see every defect in your skin, and even if you only have one gray hair, the lighting will pop it right out.  Needless to say when I look in the mirror there is more popping going on than a bag of Orville Redenbacker’s in the microwave.

I wear a mustache which is usually the first feature for men who have one, to start turning gray.  That has been going on for sometime now, but it wasn’t until I got to this building a year ago that additionally, I began to really notice those long wirery devils jutting out at all angles from the top and side of head.  (The good news for me is that I do, indeed, have hair on the top of my head, notwithstanding the color that may be creeping in.)

The historical footnote to all of this debate is that coloring hair has been intermittently fashionable for centuries, from Egyptian henna to the white-powdered wigs and hair of the 18th century. But it wasn't until the 1950s — when the baby boomers were being born and big cosmetics marketers introduced easy dyes for home use, advertising them on the new mass medium of television — that American women began to dye their hair en masse.

I understand until then, women who colored their hair risked being considered “trampy adventurers”.  Clairol's 1956 advertising — campaign slogan "Does she or doesn't she?" was specifically designed to remove the stigma attached to Mae West-Jean Harlow-style hair coloring with the reassuring answer: "Hair color so natural, only her hairdresser knows for sure." And it seems that American women never looked back.

What would I do…you ask?  Well, to know me is to love me with all my flaws showing.  But, if I were going for a job interview where I was a total stranger, I just might be tempted to add some cover up color.  That’s so I would come off with a little less pop, and more snap, crackle.