I recently read an article written by Sarah Bliss about journalist Anne Kreamer and what she learned when she decided to go gray.

The Good News

When she showed strangers two pictures of herself, one with gray hair and one with brown. On average, they guessed her age at 47 with the gray hair and 46 with the brown.  What she found surprising was if gray hair is supposed to make you look older, why was there only a year difference between the two?   When she set up Match.com profiles, both with gray hair and with brown, three times as many men wanted to date her with gray hair.

The Bad News
However, the only area in which gray hair was not a positive was the job market. “[Headhunters] said I needed to project a persona of a young and vital person without gray hair,” explains Kreamer. “It will take some women in positions of power to break that false myth.”

Isn’t that ironic?  The gray hair only ages you by a year, you may be considered three times more desirable by men, but we are not very marketable for employment!  What do the headhunters mean by young and vital?  What about wise and distinguished?  What about experience?  It will not only take some women in power to change things….it is going to take women who are ‘grayced with gray’.