Baby Boomers: Going Gray — and Aging

Yes, there is a double standard. Although that is changing.The double standard dictates that women who go grey are not as attractive as men who go grey. Mind you, this is a GENERAL opinion, and there are plenty of exceptions. But the exceptions are few and far between as evidenced by the thriving beauty industry that does not stop just because a woman is over thirty. In fact, women in their 40s, 50s and 60s are huge consumers of hair products and services because they try to keep their hair from going grey. Hair color is a huge market both in salons and in the form of boxed hair color that women purchase and use at home.The psychology behind going grey has to do with aging. Grey hair is associated with older people, and older women are not seen by most of society as sexual and vibrant in the same way younger women are. Most older men look for younger women, and older women who want to appear younger will color their hair in an attempt to maintain that aspect of beauty. Whether or not it’s fair or right, it is a dynamic and a behavior that exists.The interesting part of the double standard is that while it’s definitely more acceptable for a “handsome man” to be grey or even salt and pepper, a lovely term that is only applied to the now defunct rock group, Salt and Peppa, but never women’s hair, men are actually succumbing in greater numbers to hair color (just check out Donald Trump’s bottle blonde locks or Sly Stallone’s ebony do) and hair plugs to “correct” receding hairlines.Vanity crosses gender lines. But when it comes to gray, most women hit the bottle, and probably will continue to.