“GOING GRAY” and “I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT BEING A WOMAN”

© January 2, 2008 by Imelda Maurer, cdp

Several weeks ago I heard author, Anne Kreamer, interviewed on one of San Francisco’s public radio stations. She had recently published a book titled, “Going Gray.” I checked it out of our neighborhood library. It’s sort of a pop culture kind of book. So is a recent book I read by Nora Ephrom, “I Feel Bad about My Neck and Other Thoughts about Being a Woman". Both books are easy-read reflections of issues aging women face in our American culture.

Anne details her experiences as a fifty-one year old woman who decides to no longer color her hair. She is going to ‘go gray.’ The author examines culturally accepted reasons for coloring one’s hair, stereotypical values and motivations affecting both men and women to color their hair, along with a simultaneous and often unarticulated search for authenticity.

Nora has a whole chapter on “maintenance” with details of time and costs, written in her typical observant and humorous style.

Anne cites two writers near the end of her book which go beyond the pop-culture and which I wish to share: Betty Friedan in her 1993 book, “The Fountain of Age” wrote that “an accurate realistic, active identification with one’s own aging – as opposed both to resignation to the stereotype of being ‘old’ and denial of age changes – seems an important key to vital aging, and even longevity.”

Anne’s comment on Friedan is this: “An active, realistic acceptance of age-related changes” – as opposed to denial of passive resignation – was thus the key to a continued vital involvement in life, a very different face of age than disengagement and decline. . . . Mindless conformity to the standards of youth can prohibit further development and that denial can become mindless conformity to the victim-decline model of age. It takes a conscious breaking out of youthful definitions, for a man or woman to free oneself for continued development in age.”

Women, our graying hair and our changing bodies are subjects of complex, convoluted issues in our society. Some of these unexamined values are hawked even by vendors who define themselves as religious or spiritual. Material presented in a widely advertised national program which grants certification in “Spiritual Gerontology”, for example, has a self-administered survey, “Ageless in the Lord,” which measures “how you are progressing in the 12 keys to agelessness.” (Clearly the implication is that aging is a negative, and that if we are really progressing we will be 'ageless.' Please, please, don't deny me my aging!)

On the other hand, Andrew Weil in” Healthy Aging” takes the better part of the first chapter of that book to conclude that “. . . aging is written into the laws of the universe,” and that “acceptance of it must be a prerequisite for doing it in a graceful way.”

Yes, aging is going to happen (unless we die young). Accept it? Just accept it? I think not. Cherish it. Honor it. It is where Providence has brought us.

In the final pages of her book Anne Kreamer draws that same conclusion as the worthy reason to go gray. By doing so, she says, she is ‘facing it (aging) squarely, accepting it incrementally. I think that each year as my hair becomes whiter, I will be a little more ready to celebrate the good things about my ‘here and now.’. . I’m proud of what I’ve done, the years I’ve lived, how far I’ve come. I’m happier going through each day – on the sidewalk, in stores and restaurants, at parties – being as honest as I can be about who I really am.”

What are your thoughts about your neck and about going gray?

When I began writing, my intent was to raise some thoughts about accepting and cherishing our aging. Now that I have finished writing, I realize that really, the focal issue is that of the ageist society in which we live.

So my final questions are, do you think ageism is the issue? Have we just accepted these societal norms and practised one of the worst 'isms' in our society? How does one consciously articulate and then fight this aspect of ageism?