I Can Do Magic!

I did a magic trick on Friday. I colored my hair, and presto! I became visible to the opposite sex again.

Premature gray runs in my mother's side of the family, so while it may not be all that uncommon for a forty-five year old woman like myself to be going gray, I started going gray in my twenties. And I used to color it, but when I had a daughter and she got old enough to notice, I thought I ought to set an example of aging gracefully (and not giving in to the impossible beauty standard foisted upon women in popular media) by letting my hair go gray. I've never worn Spanx either, even though my body's not quite what it was pre-childbirth. And since my then-husband seemed just fine with both decisions, I saw no reason to change course. Until recently, that is.

My husband dumped me back in March. It's been four months since, and while I'm in no rush to jump into a new relationship after having been with the same man for nearly twenty years, I *am* making an effort to start getting out there in public and acting like a single person again. It feels strange to me, but that's precisely why I have to do it. I AM a single person now, for all intents and purposes, and I need to start getting used to what that feels like.

I figured it would be enough to dress up a little when going out with friends, it was never my intention to go get an I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar, post-breakup makeover like you see so often in the movies. But now, I understand why the post-breakup makeover is such a common fixture in those movies.

I never used to notice if any men were looking at me in public when I was married, because I just wasn't tuned in to that kind of thing. I was married, off the market, end of story. Since getting back on the Table For One team, I *have* started tuning in, and I've discovered that if you're a woman with salt-and-pepper hair, you may as well be invisible to most men when you're out in public. Here's me, invisible:

See, even though I was born and raised and still live in Southern California, the land of Botox, breast implants, spray tan and vaginoplasty (yes, women here really do have plastic surgery to make their lady parts prettier), I figured that since I still have a fairly youthful face and an okay body---not perfect, but at least I'm back in a two-piece bathing suit this summer---, I shouldn't have to make any major changes in my appearance for the sake of being single. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Three weekends in a row I went out with friends. For the first two, I was invisible. No men talked to me or even seemed to notice I was there, though they were only too happy to flirt with my married, non-gray girlfriends. The third weekend, this past Friday night specifically, I went out with my hair newly-colored:

And guess what? Guys not only noticed me, they talked to me and flirted with me.

It's like having gray in your hair erects some kind of invisibility force field that can only be breached by a bottle of Miss Clairol.

What's up with that, guys?! I'm the same woman. Same face. Same body. Same personality.

And just for kicks and giggles, I went on the dating site Match.com to check out what the guys there are posting in the 'what I'm looking for' section of their profiles. Not surprisingly, while "salt and pepper" is one of the available choices for hair color, and the guys can list as many different acceptable hair colors as they'd like, very, very few have "salt and pepper" in their lists of acceptable hair colors.

Also not surprisingly---though depressingly---most of the men my age also list an upper acceptable age limit five years or more below their own ages. I've never seen so many fifty year old guys out trawling for someone no older than forty. Thanks to my hair dye I can now easily pass for 35, but I don't plan on lying about my age.

In short, ageism is alive and well on the singles' scene, and Spanx, Miss Clairol and the demand for plastic surgery won't be going away anytime soon. ='/