SILVER LINING

model in this decade. "The hairdressers
of America might be a little annoyed
with her, but she is demonstrating to
women that a shock of white hair is a
fine thing indeed!" Dr. Brown says
emphatically.
The Jewish News decided to do its
own investigating — entering this
shadowy area.
Esther Shapiro's gray hair predates
the Barbara Bush phenomenon. At age
71, Shapiro is the State's Number One
consumer advocate, the head of the
Detroit Office of Consumer Affairs, who
also does a weekly newspaper column
and a radio phone-in show on WXYT.
Following in her mother's footsteps, she
found her first gray hairs during her
mid-20s and was fully gray by age 40.
Shapiro's daughter started to turn gray
in her early 30s.
"I feel I've earned every one," says
Shapiro who heads a department of 20
staff people and 10 additional
volunteers. "Low maintenance" is the
operative buzz word in her life. She
does not have time to keep up with
salon tints, though she experimented
with hair dyes to approximate her
natural brunette for a time. "My skin is
very pale and I hated the harsh con-
trast," she says.
Shapiro remembers the sight of those
first few glistening snowy hairs as
"crushing." Now, however, she feels
that gray has given her an extra aura of
authority.
"There are a lot of confrontations in
this office; that is the nature of this
work. My gray hair helps, just as it
seemed to help Barbara Stanwyck in all
of those 'assertive women' roles that
she played in the movies in the 40s and
early 50s.
"It can be a mixed bag," Shapiro
continues. She notes that four-letter ex-
pletives coming from the mouth of a
gray haired woman have extra shock
value, and that men in the work place
are a bit more reluctant to challenge a
gray haired woman. "Maybe she
reminds them of their mothers, or even
their grandmothers," she says.
Another woman, who decided to join
the trend-in-the making and preferred
to remain nameless, noted that when
she decided to let her natural hair color
"show through," she received com-
pliments on her gray hair — and senior
citizen's discounts at the movies and
restaurants!
Shapiro recognizes that she was

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