Why 85-Year-Old Novelist Anne Bernays Rocks Punk Blue Hair
Novelist and Harvard writing instructor, Anne Bernays, started dyeing her hair last May. (Photo: Instagram)
When 85-year-old novelist Anne Bernays, a Cambridge, Massachusetts resident by way of New York City, became a great-grandmother (after becoming a grandmother of six), she decided it was time to dye her hair blue. But this blue was not the accentual powder blue that comes about when you leave your silver hair dye in for too long. This was not “a wussy ‘blue-rinse’ blue, but eye-stabbing, punk-kid blue,” she told NPR’s The Changing Lives of Women this week. The radio program, which has been exploring the topic of aging, asked the Harvard writing instructor to share her thoughts on the role of appearances as women age. “At the time, I didn’t do any soul-searching. I just thought, What the hell, why not?” she recalled.
Bernays, an author of three novels and the founder of the New England branch of the PEN American Center, admits that she was surprised by the positive response to her blue hair. “Grouchy people smiled at me. An older woman stopped me on the street to shake my hand,” she said. But Bernays soon realized her impulse decision was more than an act of spontaneity — it was a protestation of aging in a culture that equates youth to beauty. Throughout history, women have dreaded the process of aging — the late Nora Ephron wrote an entire essay about her aging neck, and screen siren Hedy Lamar turned to drastic plastic surgery and isolation from the outside world to combat her fear of aging. “Sadly, vanity and its companion, the compulsion to shave years off your age, do not go away as you get older,” Bernays noted.
Anne Bernays at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches writing at Harvard. (Photo: Getty Images)
Bernays proves that confidence can come with age. “Like almost everyone else, I hated my hair,” she tells Yahoo Beauty about her youth. “I wore it in braids until I was 11 — my father insisted I keep the braids until then.” She ended up becoming very self-conscious about what became of her hair growing up: “What was left on my scalp was thick and frizzy. I didn’t look like any of my schoolmates,” she said. Bernays says that her hair has been thinning for over 10 years — and her eyelashes and eyebrows are long gone. But she still puts on lipstick before she goes to the market, and she just bought her second jar of Jerome Russell Punky Colour Lagoon Blue just in time for the holiday season. “It washes out too quickly. I need a brand that has some staying power,” she admits.
How old would you be if you didn’t define yourself by your age? Bernays still considers herself “ahead of the game.” “While young people sparkle like diamonds, old folks are invisible — except, as I discovered, if you have bright blue hair,” she told NPR.
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