Terri HolleyRecently in the Wall Street Journal, comic writer Rob LaZebnik detailed his wife’s desire to grow out her natural (silver) hair, and his terror that he will find himself suddenly “married to the Queen of England” if she does. He then described how he manipulates his wife into continuing to dye her hair against her will…and relishes his own “cleverness” with obvious delight.
Here’s a response to this piece worth posting, a letter written to LaZebnik by Sara Davis Eisenman:
“As a woman in the prime of life who embraces my natural silver hair, I have a thing or two to teach LaZebnik. I see his primitive fear of silver hair, as well as the ‘clever’ way he coerced his wife to keep coloring, as an open invitation to prove every single one of his negative assumptions about silver hair and beauty absolutely false.
In fact, I want to blow these ridiculous ideas out of the water with my own embodiment of their opposite. I want to show that women who embrace their truth in full—including their natural hair color—are some of the smartest, sexiest, most creative, most vital, and yes, most beautiful people on the planet. For your review, I have attached a photograph of myself, and I would like to ask the writer to consider how much I resemble the frumpy dried-up old granny that seems to so haunt his overactive imagination.
Yes, Rob Lazebnik, I love a challenge; so I personally thank you for writing this piece. Your whole ‘gray-haired lady = frumpy Queen of England’ equation simply adds fuel to my quest to be a straight-up silver siren. Consider it game ON! And if one day we happen to meet, I’ll tell your wife how beautiful she is, inside and out. Then, maybe I’ll give *you* the chance to kiss my sweet, silver, Queen-of-England…ring.”
Thank you, Sara.