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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.
Published in General
So that’s where World of Warcraft stole that joke. Three races of women have variations on it:
Zombies: Yes, they’re real. They’re not mine, but they’re real!
Dwarves: No, they’re not real. But thanks for noticing!
Fauns: Yes, they’re real. And yes, they can cut glass. [referring of course to her horns]
One time on a late night show, Craig Ferguson I think, an actor with gray hair made fun of those with what he called “the black helmet”.
Sure enough, the next night an actor in his 50’s or maybe 60’s was on, and his hair was jet-black. It just looks wrong.
What I wonder is why so many at such an age choose red as their decorative accouterment (such as Chuck Norris, James Caan, Jackie Mason) when it wasn’t close to their original hue.
I’ve always been partial to the seafaring Man of Mystery. Although with a pirate’s waistcoat aboard a square-rigger would be da bomb.
Until now!
Craig Ferguson is awesome. I’m really sad he’s going.
But there’s something about the glasses…
Thanks, EJ. Perfection.
Earlier this year I was watching a panel discussion on the MLB Network about the baseball Hall of Fame and the boring argument about players suspected of using performance enhancing drugs and whether they should get in the hall or not.
Costas was yammering on, as usual, about the immorality of PED use. I started chuckling and my wife asked me what was so funny.
“That clown makes millions of dollars a year on multiple TV networks. He’s 62 years old… he’s obviously had repeated plastic surgery… colors his hair beyond recognition and wears it, whether it’s fake or real, in a Dondi hairstyle so he looks about 12. Plus he wears elevator shoes ’cause he’s about 5’2″… and he’s lecturing me about the evils of extending a high-paid career artificially?”
Mrs. Dart said, “That guy’s older than you?”
Mr. Dart –
“in a Dondi hairstyle so he looks about 12.”
Wow, awesome!
I was prepared to entertain doubt on this, until I read that an NBC spokescritter said “This has zero truth to this. Zero.” So it has to be true.
I have a deal with God that He gets to pick the color of whatever hair He leaves on my head.
Costas’s bizarre look started a few years ago when he showed up with what looked like an eye job. Age gracefully for crying out loud.
ha ha. me too, but know one but me needs to know my “net worth.”