There has been a definite and very disturbing hair-related change in Playboy Playmates over the years. You know what I mean.

Of course we lighten our hair to compensate for aging!

First of all, our complexions lose the rosy glow of youth, and after a certain age darker hair just makes you look ... haggard.

Secondly, gray hair is more resistant to haircolor than non-gray hair; the result is that your grays will retain haircolor for a much shorter period than your non-gray hair. You don't want to color your hair every two weeks, but neither do you want your gray hair to pop back out and contrast with your chestnut locks.

So, the most practical solution from a maintenance standpoint is to go to a lighter, cooler blond-ish shade with highlights. That camoflauges your gray streaks quite effectively. Once you have large areas of gray, coloring a lighter shade will make regrowth less noticeable (imagine raven black tresses with a half-inch of gray or white new growth at the root -- yuck!).

I suspect that womens' fondness for blonde hair is based in fairly equal parts on nostalgia for the blonde hair they had as children, and for how practical it is once they start graying.

As a natural strawberry-blonde myself, I find it easier and less maintenance to go with a cooler ash-blonde shade now that I am hitting 40, because red shades of haircolor are hard to do convincingly (they usually are too red or too brassy) and the red pigments are the first to fade.

I'll have to take your word on all this -- I only buy Playboy for the articles....

I'll have to take your word on all this -- I only buy Playboy for the articles....

well, you obviously have internet access, so i'm skeptical of that... :-)

Razib, I think you intended that paper for a different comment thread.

Count me as among those preferring the darker hair. Which one of you was it that pointed out how blonde hair distracts from the face?

tx unicorn-rider. that's dienekes theory....

I don't know about the age thing, but my observations are that brunettes who dye their hair blond tend to look "cheap" or slutty. The reason is that brunettes and natural blonds tend to have facial features that differ. Natural blonds tend to have a somewhat "germanic" or "nordic" look, whereas most brunettes have facial features that are different from this. So, when I see a woman with "blond" hair but with facial features that do not match, something registers in my brain that "there is something wrong with this picture".

There are plenty of brunette women in their 40's who look good with "brunette" hair. I just saw on a website a few days ago a photo profile of over 40 year old hollywood women who definitely look as good (if not better) than their younger counterparts.

The over 40 women who weight lift in the gym to increase muscle-tone and maintain height-weight proportionality look quite good, regardless of hair colour.

Going blonde is smart for middle-aged women because it is easier to grow it out somewhat gracefully in your sixties or seventies than a dark shade is.

You kind of wince to see a 75-year-old woman painfully growing out a dark dyejob.

(but yes, I think blonde distracts from actual facial features, which is kind of good in my case; I'm a very light blonde with a lot of hair who would be thoroughly mediocre-looking if not for the memorable head of hair, lol.)

Going blonde is smart for middle-aged women because it is easier to grow it out somewhat gracefully in your sixties or seventies than a dark shade is.

You kind of wince to see a 75-year-old woman painfully growing out a dark dyejob.

(but yes, I think blonde distracts from actual facial features, which is kind of good in my case; I'm a very light blonde with a lot of hair who would be thoroughly mediocre-looking if not for the memorable head of hair, lol.)

kurt, you may be reacting to a poor color job, too.

Lower-class gals will tend to rely on home kits instead of shelling out for a professional, and that will often produce a really cheap-looking result.

It helps the pros will steer a client to a better shade for their skin tone, instead of picking it out out on a whim under the soft glow of Wal-Mart's flourescent tubes, with little idea how it will react their their natural hair color.

So Agnostic admits, ceteris paribus, that blond hair is more attractive than dark hair is? Hehe.

Salamander and Aurora Borealis,

Perhaps you can answer a question for me. As you know well, women expend a great deal of effort, time, and money to counter-act the effects of aging. Billions of dollars are spent on everything from hair coloring to cosmetic surgery for this purpose. Yet, when it comes to technology that may actually eliminate aging in the near future (such as SENS, nanotech, etc) interest on the part of women seems to be lacking. Stuff like cryonics and radical life extension appears to be a "male" thing.

Why is this?

I would think that the desire to remain young would translate into interest into the technologies and organizations that could make this happen, for real, in the medium term (2-3 decades) future.

Yes, for some reason, this does not appear to be the case for most women. Perhaps you can shed some light on this.