Cloudy with a Hint of Condescension
Don't Trust Whitey
Nora Ephron used to say that the biggest reason women look younger now than in decades past is due to one thing: hair dye.
I think I saw her say this on Oprah, but I’m not entirely sure because I was home sick whenever I watched Oprah and it may have been a fever dream. Maybe she was actually on The Montel Williams show or the Maury Povich show taking a paternity test. But in my memory, Nora was wearing a turtleneck at the time and promoting her brilliant book I Feel Bad About My Neck.
Something my friend Emily Flake recently referenced in this piece for The New Yorker.
But the hair dye comment stuck with me because she’s right. Women have always dyed their hair to cover grey, or to change up their look, or to hide from the law after committing a heinous crime and fleeing to the border with their married lover Reginald. However, it wasn’t as easy for them to do it then as it is for us now. Now you can just grab a box of color at CVS along with a can of Pringles and a bottle of $5 Josh chardonnay and have yourself a good ol’ night.
Not that I’ve done that. This month.
Plus I myself am not that experienced in covering up grey hair because I don’t have any. What I have is white hair. Like raisins in potato salad white. Like clapping on the wrong beat white. Like Winter Is Coming white. It’s true. Here’s me during Texas’s last ice storm after I forgot to moisturize:
I’m actually not part Targaryen, but close enough. I have Frozen DNA. I have my Norwegian grandma Cora to thank for my cloud hair. She was fully white by the age of 40. My dad was, too. He and Steve Martin could compare notes. But because my natural hair color is blonde, the white has been easy to hide for a long time.
“Let’s just use your natural platinum as the highlights and I’ll put some in some blonde lowlights,” is what my stylist usually says, before covering my head in enough foil to pick up a Russian satellite signal. Then an hour later I pay her an obscene amount of money and walk out of the salon hoping I don’t look like a demented Palm Beach Trumpette ready to slap a waiter at Mar-A-Lago.
I’ve thought about not doing the salon business anymore. To just let it grow out. Spend my money on a case of Josh instead. Many of my friends have gorgeous white or grey hair and they’re really happy with it. Of course, I’ll have to avoid getting my face too tan so I don’t look like a witch doctor or George Hamilton, but that’s easy. I always wear my SPF 2000.
But then last month when I was visiting my mom, she made me realize that I’m not quite ready to end the charade after all. She looked at my hair that was overdue for a highlight session and said, “It’s such a pretty color. You should just let it be all white.”
“Go full Ted Baxter?” I gasped. “No, thank you. Because if I do, people will condescend to me even more than they do now.”
She didn’t believe me, but I realized that truly is the real reason. The condescension. (Condescension means “talking down to.”) People see a white-haired woman heading their way and immediately think, “Look at that sweet old dummy. I should make sure she knows she’s walking around in a Target and not in a WWII USO canteen waiting for Glenn Miller to hit the stage. HELLO, ELDERLY LADY. I AM HERE TO HELP. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YEAR IT IS?”
I know that sounds paranoid, but just a few days later, my point was proven. My son Jack and I were at the University of Oregon where he’s a student and I’m an alum. I know the campus really well, and of course I was wearing my Oregon sweatshirt. We saw bright lights on at Hayward Field, the world-renowned track stadium, and headed over to check it out. Hayward is where Bill Bowerman invented Nike shoes. It’s where Steve Prefontaine smashed records. It’s adjacent to where Otter and Boone hit golf balls at the Faber College ROTC in Animal House and the site of my inner thigh injury while competing in the Unofficial Drunk Footraces of 1987. I know Hayward Field.
We walked up to the stadium that was filled with people in the stands cheering for the runners on the track that surrounds a field while an announcer yelled about the 1,500 meter race. I smiled and asked the student ticket taker what was going on. Like was this a big meet or a small meet or a qualifying race, etc. She looked at me and my hair, and said in the voice you’d use to talk to a two day old kitten, “This is a TRACK and FIELD event.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, sarcastically, handing her my five dollars. “Because I thought it was SWIMMING.” I mean, what the hell? Would she only say that to someone with white or grey hair? Would she have even said it to freaking Einstein? Or was the problem all hers and not mine? Maybe she was just really bad at her job. Maybe the previous 10 people she’d sold tickets to had arrived via spaceship and needed her to explain why people in little suits were running in a circle. Maybe she’d had multiple weed gummies and was telling herself where she was. I DON’T KNOW.
But I do know that while I don’t feel bad about my neck, I kind of feel bad about my white hair. I wish I didn’t. Ted Baxter was awesome.
Thanks for reading!
—Wendi
OTHER THINGS:
There are still a few spots left for my upcoming humor writing class.
This week on It’s Pronounced Memwah, we discuss Matthew Perry’s book.
If you’re in Los Angeles, go see this awesome one-woman show by Austinite Katie Folger.
Read up on Trad Wives then wait for my upcoming satire piece.
I dunno, darlin'! Maybe you get used to the condescension after a while, since it's so much better than being ignored.
And do remember, dropping the F-bomb can clear away those clouds.
“Let’s just use your natural platinum as the highlights and I’ll put some in some blonde lowlights,” is what my stylist usually says, before covering my head in enough foil to pick up a Russian satellite signal. Bahahahahah... 😂 Elon Musk has me mapped on Starlink.