Going Gray by Anne Kreamer, is a book I picked up from a second-hand book shop on the way to the hair-dressers.  The irony was, of course, lost on the seventeen-year-old girl who was colouring my hair that day to replace my tired old gray roots with uplifting and shiny “natural” blonde tresses.

Going Gray is not so much about hair colour as how we, both men and women, handle the inevitable aging process.  Like death and taxes, it is not something we can avoid.  So why not embrace it as Anne Kreamer has.

One day Anne woke up and realised that her hair was out of kilter with the rest of herself.  She felt it was harsh and that she wasn’t fooling anyone she was not forty-nine anymore. 

Not only was colouring time-consuming and expensive, it was also a vain attempt to hang onto her rapidly vanishing youth.  So she decided to go gray and accept and welcome who she felt she was and who she might become. 

Along with her gray hair comes wisdom and insight into the human condition.  It is a journey of personal development and authenticity.  It is also very funny in a wistful, self-deprecating way that only older women can really understand and appreciate.

Having a philosophical sense of humour is crucial to happiness and contentment when one ages.  My fourteen year old son sits and counts my facial wrinkles and my daughter tells me, “what would I know, I’m so old!”  But isn’t that the point of aging? 

Isn’t it fabulous to sit back and watch my naïve, innocent, unworldly, dismissive and sometimes contemptuous nineteen-year-old daughter learn about real life knowing that one day she will stand in my shoes, with her daughter, and realise that her mother did know more than she ever would at that tender age?  The same way I now know my mother knew more (and still does) than I ever will.

While Anne also knows about the vagaries of real life, she was very surprised at the results of an experiment she conducted through the internet.  To test out her newly gray attractiveness Anne joined an on-line dating service which included a photo.  She joined as a brunette (in a wig) and got few responses and then joined in her natural gray hair colour and got an overwhelming response from men who saw past those gray locks and found something they liked.  Gray was definitely the new blonde.

But while men may appreciate gray hair, women are far more brutally critical of themselves and others and going gray does not suit everyone.  I, for one, am not ready to go gray.  I don’t mind going out in public without make-up, but changing my hair colour, like joining funeral funds and pushing zimmerframes, is a bandwagon I not quite ready to jump up on yet. 

Going gray is much more than just not colouring your hair, it’s about meditating on aging, sexuality, selfhood and the very soul of what makes up a woman’s life.  There are no absolutes, just explorations and forays into who we are, both inside and outside, and in the end it all boils down to what suits you personally.