BoomerGirl Diary

Anne Kreamer wants to start a revolution. A revolution that grows, literally, from the roots.

The author of “Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters,” stopped coloring her hair at age 48 after seeing a photograph of herself that didn’t ring true.

“I was standing between a friend of mine who has gray hair and my daughter who had her natural blond hair,” Kreamer recalls. “And I was in the middle with this very dark mahogany hair that lacked any luster to it. And I just thought I looked fake. It was one of those rare nanoseconds where the fog lifts and you can see yourself objectively. And I thought, ‘Wow, I wonder what I really look like.’”

That decision led to a hair odyssey, of sorts, that resulted in a story for More magazine, an article in Time, and the book released by Little, Brown last month.

“Because I’m sort of a coward, on many levels,” she admits, “the only way I can complete many assignments that I force upon myself - like quitting smoking or changing a job I don’t like - is to tell as many people as I know. And I thought ‘what better way to do that than to write a magazine piece?’”

While Anne and her stylist moved through the often painful process of transforming her mahogany mane to a natural silver hue (making a transitional stop at blond, in order to blend the two contrasting colors), the journalist set out to discover the real world ramifications for a gray-haired woman in an anti-age culture.

Did having gray hair mean she’d be less attractive to men?

Answer: A surprising NO! (listen to audio clip for details of her fascinating Match.com experiment)

Does foregoing hair color have implications in the workplace?

Answer: Yes. Unfortunately, age discrimination runs rampant in corporate America, especially for women.

Did going gray have any practical advantages?

Answer: Time, money … and lots of it. Anne explains, “I think all of us women know on some kind of order of magnitude what we spend on our hair, but I never really wanted to face it. When I quit coloring my hair I decided I should sit down and figure it out. I found out I spent $65,000 in the 25 years I’ve been coloring my hair…that’s hair color alone.”

To the critics who cry, “It’s just hair! What’s the big deal?” she responds without hesitation.

“I couldn’t agree more. It IS just hair. But hair is the most important tool we have to kind of communicate our personality to the external world. It’s this thing that’s malleable and mutable, and it grows back and can change. So it affords people the chance to kind of try on different personalities, as I did in my youth. I just want people to think of the reasons why it has become so much a part of what women do. In 1950, 9 percent of women dyed their hair. Now, we’re at 65 percent. That’s in one generation!”

Kreamer isn’t suggesting that all women kiss their colorists good-bye. She would never tell a single mom, for instance, whose livelihood depends on maintaining a certain youthful image, to skip the highlights and embrace her salt and pepper. She doesn’t dream of a day when thousands of women simultaneously dump their Clairol boxes into the Boston Harbor (which, when you think about it, would be really cool if the dye weren’t so toxic to fish!)

“I don’t choose or deem to tell anyone to tell anybody how they should live their lives and what they should do,” Anne insists, “because everybody’s in a different point and place in their journey.”

“I can only say that, from my personal experience, having stopped (coloring) and feeling so happy and kind of relaxed and comfortable with it, that I would encourage women who are teetering and thinking about it, because they’re bummed out about spending the money and the hours in the chair, to go for it and see what happens.”

That is Anne Kreamer’s idea of a revolution - one that results in happier, relaxed and more comfortable women living authentically in a less youth-obsessed, more accepting society.

And she’s trying to make it happen, one head of hair at a time.