Silver Crown of Mojo

Last week I went to the hairdresser for the full works:  cut, colour, local real estate gossip.  I hate sitting still but I love my hairdressers at Crown of Jewels and wish they still lived in my locker row at the gym so we could carry on our conversations in hushed tones every single day instead of once in a blue moon, which is how often I get my hair did. A couple of years ago I thought I would grow my hair long but I learned in order to reclaim one’s mojo, one does not simply NOT go to the hairdresser.  You have to go periodically and get trimmed and de-silvered.  I have brown hair mostly and probably two dozen silvers (grey, white, pigment disabled, or whatever you want to call them).  They’ve come to populate insidiously around the temple and if I wear my hair down, you can’t see them, but I’m a hair chewer/puller so I wear it in a pony tail to thwart that habit and prevent choking up hairballs.

It’s too many silvers to constantly pull out but not enough leave alone and start the process of reinvention that I am just dying to go through. Women with full silver hair rule.  Last weekend, my sister-in-law (dark brown hair) mused out loud if she should let her hair go white.  We were all shocked (not really) that she coloured her hair every three weeks!  Here’s a pro tip: If you keep your hair dark like that and you miss a week of touch up then stay out of the wind, because when it blows, the white roots make you look bald.

We fashioned a wig out of toilet paper and draped it over her head and we all agreed:  Yes, let your hair go white, just don’t forget to wear lipstick.

I get kind of tired of women complaining about the ageing process and how they have become invisible to men on the street. If I’ve learned one thing in my LOCA years, for every woman no matter how thin, fat, young, old, freaky, or dull, there is some man out there with a bottle of hand lotion and a tube sock who thinks she is the ultimate goddess of his imagination.  Unless he is sitting in a tree on front of your house, you just may never meet him.  The ones who are ignoring you can just go die in a fire.  Fuck ’em if they can’t appreciate your unique beauty, clearly they have no taste. If you can’t love yourself than who will?  This is why you have to embrace the changes and let the silvers shine.

Here are my top 5 women who rock the silver and keep their mojos in tact:

1. Kristen McMenamy

She was one of those first generation “supermodels” from the 1980s and 90s.  Her style wasn’t the kind that inspired your brother to steal your Vogue magazines as convenient fap fodder.  She had a Three Stooges haircut and a body that cried: “Nutrients!”  She inspired that whole “heroin chic” that is now the Thinspiration movement.  I liked her back then because she was super cool and edgy.  Now with her long, grey hair, she looks wise, ethereal and slightly damaged like she is one full moon away from the insane asylum. In a good way though. She is the friend you want to have for therapy and diet tips.  You can tell her about a weird dream and she would listen to the entire plot with interrupting to tell you about hers.  She knows which tea is good for what ailment and she always has cigarettes just in case.

2. Olivia Tracey

Olivia Tracey was Miss Ireland in 1984 and Top Ten in Miss World and Miss Universe 1985 and is now an actress in her early 50s.  She let her hair go white in her forties which made look even more glamorous and launched her career.  She’s in an episode of the Gilmore Girls where she is at a cocktail party and everyone around her looks dumpy, frumpy and tired while she glows like Glinda the Good Witch.  It’s a Celtic thing, all that rain and Guinness that makes the silvers magical.

2. Deborah Harry

Debbie Harry is a portrait of a lady badass.  This is how aspire to be when the silvers run rampant.  The key here is to never let go of the rock and roll.  Note to future self:  Do not walk dog in a K-Way windbreaker and corduroy pants.  Wear a black leather Gauthier jacket and Vivienne Westwood shoes and carry poop bags in a Chanel wallet along with nude photos taken of myself in younger days.  Put pink tips in hair and wear lipstick at all times.  Marry Jack White.

4. Carmen Dell’Orefice

Even when Carmen Dell’Orefice was 15, she looked 80.  She’s been modelling since she was a malnourished child at the end World War II.  She proves that elegance is timeless and poise commands more attention than chicken cutlets stuffed into a bra.  It is an attitude that gives an inner strength.  She looks like she could take the cinnamon challenge without making her mascara run.  She will probably always smell of gardenias even if she dies alone in her Park Avenue apartment and they don’t find her for a week.

5. Iris Apfel

Iris Apfel is a design icon who is the embodiment of groovy.  Last year at the age of 90, she launched a line of wildly coloured lipsticks and nail polish for MAC.  Once you get over 90, you can never be too eccentric.  And basically you can say what you want, whenever you want and become a Twitter superstar:  Shit the Old Bat Says.

It’s going to be awesome.

what up?