You Can Pry My Dye & Tinted Brush From My Cold, Almost Dead Hands
PLUS: Vent your own odd stance and get paid a whopping $50 for letting me publish it here - by sending it to Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com
Hi there!
I will be extra succinct today (love you too, Andy!) as I'm posting this just-completed gem at the very last minute.* So I will let the piece speak for itself (which, like all good Unpopular Opinions, it clearly has no problem doing). And I will save my many stories and takes for the comments. I can't wait to talk to you and Genevieve more there. She is chatty, so you don’t really have to worry about the content of what you say. She’ll chat anyway.
Now if you're new here, don't get too accustomed to this brevity, because usually I ramble on quite a bit more. And if you're new here, big big welcome and thank you for being here! If you're old, well, so am I and that's what we can talk about - among other things - in that comment section we all love so much. See you there once again!
Xo Jane
*Partly because its theme sort of ties into the glowing interview with Oldster Magazine’s Sari Botton in the New York Times today and I wanted an excuse to congratulate her again here before the day is out. Go, Sari!
By Genevieve Sage
I’m in Madison Reed, the national hair color bar with nearly 100 franchises across the country.
They don’t cut hair. They don’t even pretend to care about your layers. They just color it. That’s it. It’s a root triage center. And it is filled — respectfully — with “women of a certain age.”
We’re all there for the same reason: to eradicate the grey halo jutting from our scalp like something Tyler Henry might see as a spirit who’s crossed over to deliver you a message. And that message would be: ditch that skunk stripe, babe.
I’m snapped into my black salon smock, clear plastic shower cap crinkling like a microwaved popcorn bag over my head, settling in for the 45-minute miracle that promises to move me from “late 40s” to “early 40s if the lighting is soft, the camera is forgiving, and the Filter Gods accept my humble offering of a 3 year old box of unused tampons.”
I pay $42 a month for my signature Barletta Brown 4.5NN touch-ups. It is technically a color, but spiritually it’s a belief system. A tax bracket for my childless womb I never got deductive credits for. Nay. Maybe even simply for “serving lewks.”
The color dye bar is more like a suburban coven. All of us there, a ream of cotton fluff worn like a sad crown beneath our shower caps. We’re there to reclaim our beauty and maybe even our youth. It’s a resistance movement. A silent war against the Crone archetype. Yeah, I said it.
I can hear you typing already: “It’s a privilege to age!” Correct. It is. I’m thrilled to be alive. But I have a personal rule based on hours of observation and zero facts: silver works in only two windows — women under 32 (cool, downtown art girl) or over 75 (regal matriarch energy). The middle stretch? That’s a lawless no-man’s-land. That’s where you either look chic… or like you’re kinda tired, Janice.
Yeah, I know: come at me.
Before Madison Reed, I forced my brawny, manly, 6’6” husband to dye my roots in our bathroom like we were running a meth lab but for vanity. He treated it like a painting project. “Ooooh boy,” he’d say, parting my hair with the tint brush, “a lot of snakes in the grass this month!” Charming. But impractical. My natural hair is (was) dark brown. When the greys come in, they don’t whisper. They scream. It’s less “distinguished streak” and more “electrical wire exposed.”
I don’t remember the first gray hair I found. I don’t even remember when I started dying it. But it was never sparkling flecks, never the chic streak that Stacy London has. It was a BAND of whitish gray that grew all around the crown of my scalp and sprouted like a Chia Pet marshmallow cloud against my natural dark brown hair, it was…stark. It was..not cute. I’ve heard the phrase “going gray gracefully” too many times. I’m sorry but it will add about 15 years on me! Is it a pain in the ass? 1,000%!! If the whole world was blind, I would’ve gone gray a loooonnnnnggg time ago (ok, not that long ago…calm down, self). But I have a teensy bit of vanity. Ergo. I dye.
As a burgeoning TV/film writer, I’m fully committed to the Delulu that I’ll soon land on a real red carpet, and I BETTER BE READY. I may not make it to the gym, and the plastic-y gel nails make me itchy and irritated, but damn it, I will not—not—be caught without great hair. (What can I say? I’m a Leo Rising. The mane is non-negotiable.)
Now let me tell you about the time I tried to go grey.
Five years ago, I decided I was done. I was evolved. I was a “good feminist” (still am!! I promise!). I was sticking it to The Man. I marched into my stylist’s chair with my very dark brown hair and the delusional confidence of someone who had clicked on one too many Pinterest boards. I said, “Make me silver.”
Reader. I wish that stylist had said a simple, “No.” She did not. She moved forward like Mark Zuckerberg launching TheFacebook — a little unsure at first, then fully committed to the takeover.
They stripped it. They bleached it. They hovered. I wish someone had just been honest and said, “There is no universe in which this espresso bean becomes icy Edie Sedgwick.” It would not lift past angry tangerine.
After hours in the chair, I emerged Ronald McDonald orange. Not auburn. Not copper. Traffic cone. Emergency flare. I could’ve directed airplanes on a runway.
And it was damaged A.F. so it looked like fried cheetos. On my head.
Before You Look At The Fried Cheeto Head And Continue To Follow Genevieve On Her Journey (and so that we can pay her), Please Consider A Paid Subscription Here - Or just take out the free 7-day trial offer and cancel when you want.
It was in such bad shape, I had no choice but to chop it into a Michelle Williams pixie cut except I do not have Michelle Williams bone structure. And to fix the color, they threw a dark denim rinse on it so I wouldn’t blind pedestrians. Friends said things like, “It’s cute! But you’re more of a long-hair girl.”
There’s a meme about why women over 40 keep their hair long. It’s because we remember the trauma of 1987 school photos — triangle bobs, crunchy perms, Carol Brady flips, wearing their Guess? jeans with that coveted white triangle on the butt to compliment their new mullets.
So, now?
You will pry my dye from my cold, almost dead hands.
Yes, some women are embracing the silver revolution. Great. Stunning. Ethereal. But I ain’t no Andie McDowell. Let’s be honest: when you go grey, you look older. That is not misogyny. That is biology with fluorescent lighting.
Men get “distinguished.” We get “embracing our journey.” I don’t make the rules, people.
I remember when Cybill Shepherd said on Oprah she knew the exact day men stopped turning to look at her on the street. That haunted me. I like being looked at. I miss when construction workers whistled. There. I said it. External validation? Delicious. I’m not above it.
Refusing to go grey is not internalized patriarchy. It’s not denial. It’s not fear. It’s branding. It’s stage lighting. It’s saying: I am still the main character.
And no, I’m not trying to look 28. I’m trying to look like the best possible version of (cough cough, my age) with good contrast.
Silver hair is powerful. Sure. But so is a sharp, contrasted root line. Like a powerful, angry Zebra attacking in the tundra. And it can get frizzy. It’s breakage-prone. Sometimes it gives Mrs. Frizzle. It’s giving Looney Tunes “Witch Hazel” when she frantically leaves a room but her hair pins stay elevated in the air.
The Crone archetype can wait. She’ll get me eventually. We all get there. But I don’t have to RSVP early.
Maybe we’re not afraid of grey.
Maybe we’re afraid of disappearing.
And if a $42 monthly membership and 45 minutes under a plastic cap buys me a little more presence, a little more pizazz in that Temu version of Nigella Lawson that I strive to be like, a little more “Oh, she still has it”?
Pass the tint brush.
I’m dying with dye.
Genevieve - Your title won the title test! The people have spoken and they wanted that Tinted Brush in there even though my 40 years of editorial expertise weren't sure. Congrats, lady! And thanks for making me laugh so hard a million times while I edited this thing.