Let's All Freak Out About Kate Middleton's Errant Gray Hair
LatestNo one has gray hair on purpose, k? Gray hair is only something old people or weird early agers have or people who don’t know better. Something people have who’ve decided to not “fix” the problem everyone else can see plain as day. But Kate Middleton left her house recently with gray hairs and didn’t plan in advance for something she had to have known would happen: The zooming in of cameras onto a “little cluster of gray roots all too visible around the new centre-parting,” noted the Daily Beast. All too visible is right. Why would she do this to herself (or us)?
Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast says:
For amidst all the excitement about Kate’s mumzy new hair-do as revealed on yesterday’s London poppy-day walkabout, complete with a Farrah Fawcettish 70s wave, an (admittedly uncharitable) zoom-in on her new hair-do reveals the shocking truth; a little cluster of gray roots all too visible around the new centre-parting.
Somebody send that colorist to the tower.
Shocking indeed: I’m always shocked by any signs of aging, no matter how undetectable by the human eye. And yes, a zoom-in IS uncharitable. We are not supposed to look at things up close. It’s ok for Science but not for People. Even though writing about celebrity kind of IS a soft science about a kind of people, and long lens cameras kind of ARE microscopes, and the whole thing about writing and talking about celebrities kind of IS to examine them, but, you know. Uncharitable.
Is the joke about the colorist and the tower supposed to imply that Kate Middleton might not know she has gray hair or something? Like she got royally fucked? Heh. In what world does Kate Middleton not know about those hairs and say, to hell with it?
This story makes it seem like someone pulled a gotcha move with a camera and “revealed” her embarrassing gray hair, that shocking, uncharitable truth that is now all-too visible to everyone but her. That will be immediately dealt with now that We’ve Let Her Know That We Know.
Tell me something: Is there actually a world where Kate Middleton hasn’t already “zoomed-in” on all her parts already before ever taking so much as one step into a room with an open window? Isn’t that called “getting ready” when you’re a royal/famous person? Isn’t she out in front of every errant hair or exposed dry elbow as a matter of course?
Tom Sykes gets to have it both ways in this story. He gets to be sympathetic to Kate Middleton’s possibly inadvertent gray hair while also sorry for her possibly inadvertent gray hair, as if she’s been caught with her gray hair right there in broad daylight unawares and should be pitied like a commoner while reassuring her that it’s not too late to T-1000 back into a REAL royal.
He’s her critic and her best friend. He’s also just like her!
Personally I started going gray within about two days of having my first child, a fact that is now all–too visible without the benefit of high definition zoom lenses followign me every time I went outside and journalists enlarging photos of me, so I do feel for the girl. As a man, I couldn’t even blame it on the hormones. But I do know there’s nothing like that first sign of mortality to really ruin your week.
Good point: Having to look like a real (old) person must really be bumming her out right now (to say nothing of what will happen to the colorist — I hope it’s not like, her cousin or something).