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On the Matter of Bob Costas’ Hair
Yesterday NBC broadcast the first Sunday Night Football game of the 2014 season. Between Dan Patrick’s recap of the day’s earlier games and Carrie Underwood’s execrable theme song I was confronted by the darkest hair one can find outside of an Elvis impersonator convention in Armenia.
Bob Costas’ ebon shag was so black it absorbed the colors behind him, turning the Broncos’ stadium into a desaturated blur. Instead of the whitening found on most 62-year-olds, Costas’ hair gets darker each year. It’s blacker than a Spinal Tap album cover. Chimney sweeps gasp with envy. Shoeshine boys swoon. It’s the Coiffure of Dorian Gray.
And the color isn’t the only problem. Costas’ boyish hairstyle makes matters worse, accentuating his age rather than masking it. Some wonder if it’s a toupee, but I can’t imagine a rug bearing such an unnatural look. One would expect the Lilliputian pundit (or his handlers at NBC) to insist upon a higher quality makeover. Instead, week after week, Costas faces a high-def world wearing a stiff mop-top apparently dyed with a leaky Sharpie.
Costas isn’t the only man terrified of looking his age and at least he has the excuse of being on television. In certain image-based industries it’s nearly a sin to look over 30. But middle-agers in less public roles are more liable to dye these days. Comparing 1999 to 2010, men aged 50 to 64 are over three times more likely to color their hair.
Perhaps this reveals my backward mindset, but something seems… well… unmanly about a guy refusing to let his hair go gray. Is it just me?
As noted, there are obvious exceptions. Entertainers rely on their looks more than 99 percent of the workforce. (As Dennis Miller said about his hair transplants, “It’s not vanity; it’s commerce.”) Also, many fifty-something men rightfully fear missing out on a good job if they look too close to retirement age. We also must recognize the wise words of Hank Hill: “If Ron Reagan dyed his hair — and I’m not saying he did — it was only to show his strength to the communists.”
But youth-obsessed men are still too common for my tastes. In my early thirties I already was losing my natural color, but noticed that none of my company’s much older executives shared a single gray hair among them. That’s not commerce; that’s vanity.
Wondering if I was just a backwards masculinist, I asked women on Twitter to weigh in. Every single respondent insisted that guys should stop hiding their gray. Since men aren’t doing this for women, are they just caving to America’s dominant youth culture? In a world where Bill Murray and the Dos Equis guy are hipster icons, this hardly seems necessary. Is it simple insecurity? Is there a more likely answer?
A few years ago, a fellow aging family member asked if my graying hair bothered me. It does remind me I have another day less to enjoy this planet, which obviously bothers to some extent. But I’ve earned every one of these gray hairs and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some 23-year-old stylist steal them from me.
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This has always struck me as a similar phenomena to what Mrs. Schely was remarking on earlier, a refusal to embrace adulthood. The Cult of Youth, it has many followers.
But his stylist didn’t even get all the gray. Is it a sign of inborn masculine strength when the gray hair appears only in clean swatches along the temples?
I think Bob doesn’t look well, and at this point, I hope that vanity and a rejection of aging, not illness, is the influence on his hair color.
Somebody style mine from me. If you see the guy, grab him!
‘How much blacker could it be?’ – ‘None more black’.
Obama at Stonehenge.
It’s gonna be a good week, two Spinal Tap references in the same week.
I am in an industry where men do not bother even combing over. Which is good, because I would not respect myself if I stooped so low.
I already got the girl. So why do I still need the hair?
I was googling the guy, as I don’t watch sports, and came across this.
There’s an entire slide show of the problem.
As I tell Mr Rattler about his magnificent bald spot, it’s the wife’s job to have the hair.
Bob Costas looks ridiculous. Like he’s wearing a stocking cap. The thing is, when you’re, um, older, it shows in the face and around the eyes. You can’t hide it with Grecian Formula. You end up just looking older.
(Reagan got away with it — barely — because he wore his hair in such an old-timey style. No one could accuse a man in 1984, who wore a Brylcreem’ed pompadour, of trying to look youthful.)
Maybe it’s time I updated my profile picture. When it was taken a few years ago, you could barely see the grey around the temples. Now it’s pretty rampant, along with the lines and the creases.
There. Did it. Jon, you shamed me.
My picture is about five years old now… I might have shamed myself.
So no longer the youthful man about town but instead the “been there, done that” executive? About time. If there is shame in that game I suspect we’re all in the wrong place.
Jon
I think your presumption that women do not care if men are sporting grey in not universal. Mrs III is the same age as I, and has not a lick of grey. I, on the later side of my 50’s, sport about half grey of what is left at this point. While I feel perfectly comfortable with that, she does not since I guess I am viewed as a mobile accessory while in her visual vicinity. So the deal is I will sit still if she is willing to muck me with the browning chemicals. She does not want my grey making her look old.
On the plus side of her vanity on my grey elimination is that it offers a major surprise to most of the baby faced late 20 somethings grousing that I have to card them at my once a year volunteer bar tending gig at the local Renaissance Festival. I tell them the plus side of looking underage is when they get to my age you will still look a few decades younger, and tell them I am a few years shy of 60. They don’t believe till I show them my license. The grey would make it easier to guess.
Gray hair looks great on guys. Costas may be worried someone might refer to his as ‘gunmetal.’
The worst offender, though, in the ratio of hair age/skin age is Paul McCartney.
You mean this isn’t natural?
Grey hairs? Earned every last one of them.
I agree. I’ve earned all my gray hairs. I don’t get the painters, on tv or not.
I know this is about guys…but I’ve never colored my hair, ever. When I was young, it was blonde. Then I lived in California for 20 years and was outdoors enough to keep it blonde from the sun. Then we moved to the cloudy east coast and it really darkened. However…as I approached 50, my brownish started to turn silver and I’ve just let it go there. I’m waaaay over 50 now, but the silver looks decent. I’m just too lazy to color my hair. I think Men of a Certain Age should definitely NOT hide the gray. It’s bad enough on Women of a Certain Age, but fake color on older guys is really dreadful. Kind of sad, actually.
By the way, I have it on good authority that Bob Costas’ pinkeye was actually an infection from botox injections.
Oh, that’s nasty.
My wife certainly was not in that survey. I sleep with one eye open.
Botox would be a good name for Bo Jackson’s talk show.
Last weekend, I was talking to friends about how the term “middle-aged” doesn’t work for me. I’m 52 and don’t think it’s likely I’m at the mid point and going to live to be 104. They said, but what do you want to be called, not “old”. I said, “Sure, I’m okay with that. An adjective won’t keep me from doing anything I want to do, and can do.” They are older than I am and were horrified by that term being applied by them. But you know, old is cool.
I give Paul McCartney a pass, because he uses vegan hair dye.
Seriously, though, I don’t begrudge him his vanity, because he is still out there going strong at 72, entertaining his fans when he clearly doesn’t have to. Anyone who, at that age, sings “Helter Skelter” in the original key, gets my respect. Plus, his dye job is way better than Costas’s.
The rock musician Nick Lowe went prematurely gray and never his it. Now, his white hair and black-framed glasses constitute his signature look.
Johnny Dubya
The rock musician Nick Lowe went prematurely gray and never his it. Now, his white hair and black-framed glasses constitute his signature look.
Steve Martin has obviously made the grey look work for him.
Actually, His dye job is a trigger warning for His editorials.
If I still had hair, I’d aspire to be a Silver Fox. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), there’s no such thing as a Bald Fox.
So you can still clip on the kippa?
Actually, how do bald men handle that? Double sided tape?
To the point, my husband is blessed with beautiful dark hair, even if it is slowly retreating away from his eyebrows. (A good decision. They are attack eyebrows.)
I on the other hand inherited my mother’s propensity to turn grey at a very early age. I dye it, though that’s as much because I like my hair reddish. (Best part about the henna — it turns the greys bright scarlet.)
Er, as a matter of fact, some do use double-sided tape. But most just upgrade to a larger size, which doesn’t require clips.
Side note: Reportedly the makers of this product tried to market it to the Vatican. They received a polite reply that by the time most priests become bishops and cardinals, they don’t have enough hair to make the product useful.
Looks like you and Costas use the same polish.
Some wore them because the studios demanded it and others because their vanity did. Crosby was open it about it and so was John Wayne. And they each handled it with humor. On a radio broadcast where Bob Hope was playing Ludwig van Beethoven the dialog went something like this (in German accents):
Crosby: My name is Herr Bingle van Crosbein. I am a singer…
Hope: The Crosbein I believe. But where the HERR?
Wayne was asked if his hair was real. “Yes, it’s real. It’s not mine, but it’s real!”
The difference here is that these men were playing romantic leads. Their make-believe world demanded hair. Costas has no excuse other than vanity.