The Silver Lining Script
I am going to declare right up-front that I have “borrowed” this title from a combination of two sources. There is the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook from David O. Russell, staring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. That told the story of a slightly mentally ill man who moves home with his parents and tries to get over a bad marriage by entering a dance competition with a young widow who is three degrees off top dead center herself. It is a fun movie that’s uplifting for anyone who isn’t perfectly adjusted at all times (pretty much like us all to some degree on some days). The other source is what really prompted this story and it was a New Yorker article called Silver Linings, which is about the way in which women of a certain age have had to deal with their graying hair now that the lockdown during the pandemic has revealed everyone’s true colors, so to speak. It’s an obvious play on words and both stories have to do with coping with a new reality, which is very thematic for this post-pandemic era we are entering.
I think it’s fair to say that the lack of barbering and hair salon services during the height of the pandemic has brought about a good deal of hair styling changes. Some let everything grow as it does naturally and have ended up with a more natural hippie look than they have ever sported. Others took the grooming tasks on themselves and either took a crash-course in clipper handling or hair dying or both. I have said all along that some of the changes wrought by the pandemic would more logically never go back as they were, while clearly others will bounce back exactly as they were. As we come out of the pandemic lifestyle, those observations are now available to be examined in real time.
I saw on the news today that with the announcement of the 559,000 new jobs added in May and unemployment ticking down to 5.8%, people are noticing that these new jobs are coming in at higher pay rate levels and they are coming in especially strong in the leisure and hospitality area as people ramp up their pent up vacation desires for the oncoming summer. I have believed that discretionary travel will forever be reduced as will office co-location workplaces. It’s too soon to tell if that will be the case for travel since we have to see where things settle out after the summer “make-up” travel takes place. As for the workplace, remote working has already come down to only 16.6% of the workforce, which is lower than I would have suspected. Some companies in the tech sector are telling employees that by September they will be expected to be in the office three days per week. This type of instruction seems less about COVID protection and more about the gradual readjustment between employers and employees to the less flexible environment of co-located versus remote working. The way I read that is that the pandemic impact will be real, but smaller than I expected and is more like an acceleration of the flexible work hours trend underway in business in any case. As labor shortages take greater hold on the economy (something we all knew was demographically going to take place faster than any automation workforce reduction we would see), I suspect that there will be more flexibility rather than less since we all know its possible (even if not preferable) for people to be performance-oriented and productive via remote tools like Zoom. For sure, people will use this to think harder about travel costs for some groups and treat travel more as a reward than a requirement of the job.
But the unanticipated things that come out of the pandemic are the most interesting changes. For instance, I don’t think I ever thought I would prefer to cut my own hair rather than go to a barber, but that is exactly where I find myself now. I’ve done it for fifteen months and see no reason to go back to a barber. I don’t need hair dye or other grooming products, so I feel I have evolved into a full DIY groomer at this point. Quite frankly, its easier and more to my liking than going to a salon. Kim is quite in a different place. She is specifically going to her old hair stylist in Manhattan when we go back there for a few days later in the month. She feels their ability to cut her hair is an important part of her feeling well groomed. The same is true for her waxings and manicures and pedicures. But the one thing she is not likely to do is to seek out her colorist. That ship seems to have sailed. Once she had no choice but to allow the gray to creep back in from the roots, she decided that it was time to change her look and embrace her age by letting her hair go to its natural color. At age sixty-three this summer, that color is gray/silver rather than the blonde she sported with the help of her hairdresser for as long as I have known her, which is sixteen years this year.
As she has gone gray/silver and in the absence of regular salon trips, she has also changed the basic cut of her hair. She and I both like it quite a bit this way and while I am sure she will be convinced to add this bob or that enhancement to the look every time she sees a stylist, we are both happy to see it stay this way. So, goodbye to the blonde bombshell I met and married and hello to the silver fox with whom I am madly in love.
The New Yorker article on this topic profiles a number of women (mostly from thirty-something to fifty-something) who have decided to let gray and silver be a permanent part of their style look. That is a bit different than the process for Kim, because while the initial instigation of the change is similar, the stage of life is different enough to suggest that the motivations are different. Kim is not an old lady, but she is simply at a more comfortable age to decide to use her mature silver head of hair as part of her persona. She is a board member and even President of a board, so looking wise and experienced is part of who she wants to be rather than being that gal singing and shuffling on stage. For the younger women, I sense it is more an affectation of style, using a streak of silver here or there to be avant garde.
I liken Kim’s choice to being about assuming a role she was ready to assume anyway. I have always (at least for all but a few years from 15-25 years old) preferred shorter hair. My hair is thick and decidedly low-brow, connecting ever so slightly between my temples and my eyebrows. The amount of hairline receding I have undergone is somewhere between zero and slightly negative. When I cut my hair with clippers I range from using a 3mm to a 9mm cut. That is pretty darn short at about a third of an inch at the longest points. Where Kim’s color change makes her look more mature, my short/short cut makes me look like a kid with a crew cut on his way to summer camp. It’s not a look I am going for since I also sport a white full beard (kept at 3mm). There is a distinction between silver and white I might add. Kim’s hair is silver. My beard is white. My hair ranges from white at the sideburns to silver at the temples to salt & pepper light brown for the rest.
I am 67 years old and have a full head of hair that still has some meaningful natural coloring to it. I should be proud of that I suppose, but I have had little or nothing to do with it. That is just the way it is. And there we have it. I just followed the script nature handed me. Kim and all these other pandemic-changed women are finally letting the script of nature take its course and, like balding men in the new millennium, style has come their way and given them a silver lining script.