In Praise of Color

Deanna Raybourn’s terrific novel Killers of a Certain Age starts with the retirement cruise of a trio of crone assassins. As a special surprise, their erstwhile boss has hired a younger killer to bump them off mid-cruise. Once the women overcome their hitman and safely land, they get away with murdering their heavily guarded former boss. How? By wearing gray wigs and beige clothes. Nobody notices them—which proves once and for all that invisibility has its uses.

But when we’re not plotting murder, when we’re telling our vibrant stories or just living our lives, visibility can be a marvelous thing. And here I want to praise the value of color. Whether it’s painting your walls burnt orange, wearing a bright green jacket or trying out red lipstick, how we play with color defines us to ourselves and the world.

Let’s start with hair. I have the utmost respect for older women who embrace the graying of their locks, but doubt I’ll ever reach that point. I like being blonde. It’s a badge of having grown up on the beach in San Diego (though if I’d grown up in Idaho I’d probably find some other reason).

At the same time, I cannot be bothered with the trouble or expense of dyeing my hair. So I just use colorizing conditioner, which is available online or from whoever cuts your hair. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it works. And as I wrote in an earlier essay (When I’m an Old Woman I Shall Dye My Hair Purple), we Crones have just as much right to whatever hair color we want as any thirty-year-old.

Whether or not you decide to play with hair color, consider your choice of jewelry. As my fashion idol Iris Apfel once said, Why wear one bracelet when five will do? (You could find many adjectives to describe Ms. Apfel, but “invisible” would never make the list.) After all, it costs no more to put on half the stuff in your jewelry box than to carefully select one thing. We’re not talking big ticket items; some of my favorite earrings cost a couple bucks at a thrift shop.

And speaking of thrift shops…

In my pantheon of sheroes, Lyn Slater is right up there with Iris Apfel. Lyn shopped for treasures in New York City thrift stores all her life, mixing unique color choices with cowboy boots and exaggerated silhouettes. She was discovered by fashion journalists in her sixties and wrote, “I’ve shown people that you can start a whole new career and have a big, bad-ass attitude even at 65.” Her fashion Instagram was massively successful right up until Lyn decided to close it down, move upstate, and lead a more contemplative life. Her journey reminds us that embracing color need not be expensive; a red shirt seldom costs any more than a beige one.

And what about makeup? My family is light-skinned and the women become paler with age. As a young woman I decided I’d start wearing makeup when I turned sixty—which may be about when a lot of women stop. I keep things simple (and cheap): I use a tinted moisturizer (so no foundation). I use a concealer stick on age spots instead of bothering with all that bleaching rigamarole at the dermatologist’s office. And lipstick doubles as blush, because why not?

But don’t take my word for any of this; you know your face, you know your body, and we’ve all lived long enough to know what suits us. The key thing is to play with everything, because who knows? Maybe you will discover a new favorite color in your sixties. Maybe you will decide to show off your legs in short skirts in your seventies (And for more on that, see my essay, “The Legs are the Last to Go”).

And just to be clear: I do what I do to please myself. Whether it’s choosing a purple shirt over a gray one, or putting on tinted moisturizer instead of the plain stuff, I do it because I like being vivid. I like being visible. I grew up in the fifties when children were supposed to be seen and not heard. As an old woman, if I’m ready to voice an unpopular opinion, I want to be seen AND heard. But if I ever take up a life of crime, I’ll be sure to tone it down.

There are lots of other ways to be visible, of course. Pick up a megaphone at a protest march. Wear too much perfume. Write the most outrageous essay you can think of and then turn it up a notch (or two). But do consider color, which designers have long known influences perceptions, emotions, and even behavior. Color draws our attention, which after all is the essence of visibility.

Now that we are lucky enough to live this long, our crone phase gives us the freedom to play with how we show up in the world. We can blend into the woodwork when it suits us, and the next day be as vibrant as we choose. To be old means to realize, at long last, that we make ourselves up as we go along.