AS RESEARCH FOR MY BOOK, 500 people responded to a survey I designed to probe people’s concerns about aging.  In the photo section of the survey I wanted to answer the $64,000 question:  exactly how much older does gray hair make people look, and is it regarded as inherently unattractive?  I asked two 30somethings, two 40 somethings and two 50 somethings, two with naturally brown hair, one who’s gray, three who use artificial color – to pose for pictures.  I posed too.  Then I had the images digitally manipulated, using Photoshop software, to produce 14 images:  all seven of us brown-haired and all seven of us gray.  Each survey contained randomly selected versions of each of us.  In other words, a given survey respondent only saw each of our faces once, either as a brown-haired person or gray-haired.  I asked the survey respondents about each of the seven people pictured on their surveys:  Would you fix this person up with a friend?  And How old do you think this person is?

 

My assumption going in was that people with gray hair would be deemed less attractive – that is, less likely to be chosen as a fix-up for a friend.  And in a section of the survey where I simply asked women if they thought men find women with gray hair less attractive, by a two to one margin the respondents said yes.  But the results of the almost-identical-twin photo-test went the other way, completely surprising me.  For Barbara, who has a lot of dark hair, the Photo shopped-very-gray hair did indeed maker her perceived as less fix-uppable, and for the fake-gray, 38-year old Emily T., there was a tiny disadvantage.  But for the rest of us, four out of six women, there was a modest but consistent advantage in fix-up-ability for the gray-hired versions of ourselves.

 

And gray hair made only the youngest of the women and the one man – Alison, Emily T. and Tom – appear older than they actually were. 

To me the data indicates that when gray hair is age-appropriate (from our 40s onward) we don’t actually fool people about our age when we dye it.

 

Allison Emily O.

AnneBarbara

Emily T. Tom

Click thumbnails to enlarge and see the real and the guessed ages.

Bonnie