I’m working on a new book: "Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Torah, Authenticity and Everything Else That Really Matters"
I did this interview with The Calendar Girls:
Q: You decided to go from bottled brunette to natural gray. Why?
A: Two years ago I saw a photograph of myself and I thought, Who am I kidding? I looked fake. My hair dye wasn’t fooling anyone. So after 24 years of coloring my hair every three weeks, I decided to find out my real color and get off the treadmill. When you are dyeing your hair, you’re consciously aware that around your forehead people can see the stain of brown from the dye. And after that, you’re worried about everyone seeing your roots growing out. You’re always kind of obsessed.
It’s not about "letting yourself go." It’s about saying, I’m going to invest my energy and my money in a different way. All those years dyeing my hair added up to $65,000, not adjusted for inflation. If I had invested that money, today I would have $300,000, enough to pay for both my illegitimate daughters to go to yeshiva.
Q: Then it’s a contest between paying for your children’s college and looking sexy?
A: It’s a contest between self-actualization and fear. The two things that scare men the most about getting older is that they’ll lose their sexual attractiveness and their professional opportunities. On the sexual attractiveness piece, I decided that the easiest way I could pseudo-scientifically quantify the connection between the hair color and attractiveness was to do a JDate experiment. I posted some photos of myself first with Photoshopped brown hair and then three months later with my gray hair. I assumed, as most might, that women would be more interested in dating the brown-haired me. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turns out three times as many women were interested in going out with me with my gray hair.
