NYT: On not Looking like a ‘Witch’

Wear your gray hair long, ladies, says the New York Times, but be careful not to look like “a witch.”

The article is tied to a “march” that was clearly a staged publicity event. Still, it resonated with NYT readers, and one commenter even started a blog.

That choice [to wear one’s gray hair long]  however, flies in the face of a long-held assumption that a lavish head of snowy hair is somehow unseemly, a rude reminder that a woman, whatever her age, remains a sexual being.

Much of the 16th-17th century art of witches touches the “wrongness” of sexuality in post-menopausal women. Here is an article on witch hunts and gender, and i would also recommend art historian Linda Hults’ The Witch as Muse if you want to think more about artistic representation of witches, which were not made in any sort of journalistic way.

6 thoughts on “NYT: On not Looking like a ‘Witch’

  1. Long grey hair is better than the “bouffant cauliflower” that so many ol’ ladies think that _have to_ have. (And which I will never be getting, praise Aphrodite Ambologera!!!)

  2. The Times is not cautioning anyone against looking like a witch; they are merely quoting the organizer of the event who says that’s how some people view long, grey hair. Curious rejection of the crone, while claiming to be comfortable with age.

  3. This issue of the “wrongness” of sexuality in post-menopausal women must be becoming increasingly problematic as our population’s longevity increases. Many women will spend close to fifty percent of their lifetime in a menopausal/post-menopausal state. If the first eighteen years are also sexually verboten (a point I am not arguing), that leaves women living nearly eighty percent of their lives in a condition of being sexually unacceptable. I cannot understand how this is notion endures.

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