The grey world

03/08/2024 Nilson Lattari

In Canada, journalist and news anchor Lisa LaFlamme was fired up because she dared to appear on TV with white hair. This attitude messed up the show business and a debate took over the internet. In the end, can someone, especially a woman, shows themselves to the public with white hair or, simply, grey hair? Would it be a sin… of marketing or only a prejudice?
For men, it is commonplace to have grey hair and for women, this possibility doesn’t work well. Two genders facing the future and we have questions about it. The female fight is hard and long and victories are slow. And if we talk about the older age, for women this fight goes on hard and long.
More than a behaviour, an old person has to fight against a prejudiced world, and for women, in particular, this battle is double. The behaviour of old people is showing to society that they can do many things and they are important as citizens as well. And there isn’t a special place for them because their places are everywhere. They have to reject the expression “you are nice for your age” and have to stay well with themselves, to live their lives on their own terms.
Maybe grey hair means wisdom and maturity. These expressions don’t belong to one side of the protagonists. Women try to disguise their ages colouring their hair but we have to understand that natural hair doesn’t belong to them in the face of what society proposes. Natural beauty doesn’t belong to them according to society. Grey hair, whether natural or not, is beautiful as well. So, do people colour their hair to feel good or to hide something to satisfy society’s expectations? In the end, people colour their hair to follow what society wants or the propaganda asks.
The old practice among women of adopting short hairstyles as the age progresses is not a behaviour that they have to follow. Both women and men, have to decide what they want to be.
Old people, nowadays, have to demonstrate that there isn’t an era, a period to be hidden. There is a way to demonstrate that age is not a limit to do what they want to do. No one should be retired from life. Old people are retired from their jobs and not from life.
Grey world is not another world and it doesn’t mean that old people have life experience for all. Old people mustn’t be those who are hidden in their homes but people who want to go outdoors and stay in the streets to alert young people that everything is possible to achieve.
If they use grey or white hair they want to be protagonists and not supporting actors.
Inter-generational mixing doesn’t mean old people teaching life experiences to others. Because we encounter young people with old-fashioned thoughts and old people with progressive thoughts. Progressive thoughts must come from the ones who enjoy change in a democratic environment.
The behaviour of old people, nowadays, is a contribution, a way to change our society. So, the response of young people is showing their revolutions through their hair and clothes to shake the world. And now, young people have become old people and they have to demonstrate that they have control of their lives through their hair and clothes as well.
Ultimately our behaviour is showing that we don’t have to abandon life and we have to stay alive to show that there is life to be lived and experienced. The behaviour of old people in this century and the next demonstrates that there is life in the future full of life and possibility.