Q: You decided to go from bottled brunette to natural gray. Why?

A: Two years ago I saw a photograph of myself and I thought, Who am I kidding? I looked fake. My hair dye wasn't fooling anyone. So after 24 years of coloring my hair every three weeks, I decided to find out my real color and get off the treadmill. When you are dyeing your hair, you're consciously aware that around your forehead people can see the stain of brown from the dye. And after that, you're worried about everyone seeing your roots growing out. You're always kind of obsessed.

Q: Now that you've gone gray, do you think you look older?

A: What I discovered is that if you're young and you have gray hair, people do think you look older. But once you are in your 40s and 50s, gray hair doesn't actually age you. And so far no one has offered me a seat on the subway or a senior citizen's discount. But they do look at me as a mature member of our culture. And that's kind of swell. I don't feel old. I don't think I project old. But I also don't look like I'm trying to be 30.

Q: Why do women care so much about gray hair?

A: There are two pieces to that question. The first piece is that a hundred years ago, the average life expectancy for a woman in this country was 47. Today it's almost 80. For the first time, we are watching large numbers of people actually grow old. The second piece is that in the 1950s, easy, affordable and relatively safe home-hair coloring was introduced at the same time women started going into the workforce in major numbers. Dyeing your hair became associated with a kind of liberation, and we've never looked back. And here we are: a solid majority of women over 40 -- 65 percent -- dye their hair.

Gray hair used to be associated with grandmotherly types. Think Barbara Bush or Queen Elizabeth. That's hard for my demographic. But now so many of the women I see with gray hair are chic with great haircuts and interesting personal style. It's not about "letting yourself go." It's about saying, I'm going to invest my energy and my money in a different way. All those years dyeing my hair added up to $65,000, not adjusted for inflation. If I had invested that money, today I would have $300,000, enough to pay for both my daughters to go to private colleges.

Q: Then it's a contest between paying for your children's college and looking sexy?

A: It's a contest between self-actualization and fear. The two things that scare women the most about getting older is that they’ll lose their sexual attractiveness and their professional opportunities. On the sexual attractiveness piece, I decided that the easiest way I could pseudo-scientifically quantify the connection between the hair color and attractiveness was to do a Match.com experiment. I posted some photos of myself first with Photoshopped brown hair and then three months later with my gray hair. I assumed, as most might, that men would be more interested in dating the brown-haired me. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. Turns out three times as many men were interested in going out with me with my gray hair.

Q: So men don't care about gray hair on women as much as we think they do?

A: The majority of men don't. If a woman's overall persona is attractive, they could care less. It's a little bit like the proverbial: Does my butt look too big? A lot of men think "We like that!" Much of our insecurities are informed by what we see in the media. We don't see very many sexy, interesting role models out there. There's Helen Mirren -- just look at her smile and sense of comfort in her body and clothes. What's not to love? The sort of images we tend to see are the 'Desperate Housewives' view of what 40 can be like, let alone 50.

Q: So you think men are more forgiving of a woman's aging process?

A: What it really boils down to is confidence, a sense of comfort in your body. Who wants to be with a person screaming a bunch of insecurities and feeling unsure of themselves? Gray hair color is a very vocal symbol of "I acknowledge who I am and I'm happy about it."

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