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Hair color 3
Here are a few synonyms for gray that appear in 432.4 of the Roget’s International Thesaurus beside my desk: “dun, drab, dingy, dull, leaden, livid; somber, sober, sad, dreary; cool, cold; iron-gray, steel-gray.” Then we’re given Quaker and pearly grays and some variations of the word silver. And off again to the land of who-wants-that? with “grizzly, grizzled” and 7 words that describe ashes. Near the end of the entry for the adjective gray we find “slate-colored, stone-colored, mouse-gray or mouse-colored.”
The color gray as lack, of liveliness, happiness, and warmth, disagrees with people’s aesthetic wishes and goals for themselves, let alone their hair. Although grizzled derives from the French grisaille, and gris simply means gray, grizzled sounds like greasy and grisly.
What about stones and mice? The first connotes immovability, even rigidity. Hmmm, rigor mortis and gravestones. Mouse-colored translates as mousiness, and people discount mice as weak and inconsequential, even though mice have a reputation for causing women to shriek in fright. I guess the mousey-haired woman is sent shrieking by her own image in the mirror.
Salt and pepper, a common contemporary term for gray hair, also belongs in this batch of rejects. Salt and pepper do liven up our food, yet they are the most common of such kinds of ingredients. Also, who wants to be thought of as salty–caustic? Or peppery–irritable? For it is those meanings, more likely than earthy and fiery, that attach themselves to the aesthetically devalued older person. Moreover, salty and peppery, as hair colors that operate metonymically–they are words that, in substituting for another word, describe or define it through association–mean spunky, feisty, spry, adjectives that our culture seems to think validate old people’s vitality but that actually operate as clichés that devitalize the individuality and true aliveness of people who are older than midlife. Why make someone you love into a stereotype by saying, “Gram was a spunky old lady”? (”Old lady” is itself an egregious stereotype. It does not convey the grace, gentleness, elegance, and beauty of lady, but rather serves to trivialize and dismiss someone. So does “old man.”)
The habit of saying “salt and pepper” has disabled our capacity to say diamond-bright and pewter, words that conjure up luminosity and, respectively, brilliance and sparkle, gloss and softness. Like “dove gray” and “Quaker gray,” they conjure up loveliness.
Gray wolf
Stone gray
Smoky gray
Are you suggesting that these are superior to the rejects? Or are they more of the same old stuff? In either case, I’d appreciate some elaboration.
Just read this:
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/young-trendsetters-streak-their-hair-with-gray/?ref=fashion
Take a look!
I have had the rainbow experience with my hair.
Redefining for myself what is my beauty with every change.
Pink and Purple was a festive combination about seeing myself out on the fringe and loving it.
Midnight blue serious compared to my playful Cookie Monster blue.
My orange, henna brown, henna red were my more earthy moments.
The bleached blonde felt stripped down and out of all color.
The black with the white blonde was the rocker in me.
Now I am two shades of red with a splash of blonde for the bangs.
It speaks about the moment.
For each styling brings about a new way to see the color . . . to see myself.
Ultimately I have celebrated every strand of hair on my head.
And adorned my crown with the highlights of white.
I have earned every white-gray hair on my head.
Each hair stands as the marker of time.
Each hair speaks of transitions, transformation, and the terra firma mapping of my journey thus far.