What is it about older people that makes us uncomfortable to see them express physical individuality and long to get them into a barber’s chair for that traditional baby-bird-looking crop you see on grandpas everywhere? I mean, I certainly feel that way when I see almost- or definitely geriatric dudes with a Willie Nelson thing going on. A HuffPo piece asks this question in, um, a different, perhaps slightly hyperbolic way. “Do older women with long hair look like something akin to a Halloween hag with a wretched, withered appearance?” And, oddly enough, I do sort of have an instinctive and unfair sterotypical image of the long-haired 50+ woman: she’s friends with your weird aunt, she wears a Three Wolf Moon t-shirt and a shawl she bought on St. Mark’s Place, she gives you unsolicited and descriptive sex advice in crowded restaurants, etc. Obviously, this is a hella-shitty snap judgment to make and I’m not proud of it—why is it so common?
The website’s 50-and-older vertical did a crowdsource of opinions on the matter, and the comments are pretty divisive. The way people seem to interpret older women who choose to wear their hair seems a lot more indicative of these judgmental folks than the long-haired ladies themselves: “I’ve seen older women with very long hair or hair extensions that go way down their backs. They do look ridiculous … so do their wrinkles and makeup… They’re trying too hard to rejuvenate their youth. And those who are very old and wrinkled with black hair and black eyebrows … geez … OMG. Get a grip!”