Women of a certain age...

Should really just give up on the blue hair dye, I think.

I went to Mass this morning, and while it was a lovely (if monotone) service, I was highly distracted by the hair of the woman in front of me. This woman was approximately 60 years old and accompanied by two teenage boys that I took to be her grandsons. She had the typical old-lady haircut: short and curly. However, it was not the typical old-lady color. Underneath, at the nape of her neck and near her skull, it was a steel grey. Fine. But then there was a layer of platinum, a little dulled by time, I assume.

And then there were the random swipes of turquoise, punk-rock blue over that. I was mesmerized.

And this is not atypical of women in Austria. Evidently it's some sort of law that when you reach 50, you have to dye your hair some sort of outrageous, clearly unnatural color. The most popular choice seems to be maroon. I can't tell you how many 70-year-old women with maroon hair I've seen in the past week alone. Nobody's hair is maroon! This is not a hair color that occurs in nature! At least with black you have a chance of convincing the very young or the very naive. With maroon, you're pretty much wearing your post-midlife crisis on your sleeve. Er, head.

The whole thing became a kind of running joke when my family was here. We kept encouraging my mother?who is very cool, but possible the most conservative woman on the planet?to get flaming purple hair. Every woman that we saw with appropriately horrific hair was suggested as inspiration.

I have to go with platinum and turqouise. It's just that classy.