Sarah Jessica Parker has urged fans to stop praising her as “brave” for having gray hair.
The Sex and the City star, 57, reflected on the phenomenon, which sees fans applaud her “courage” each time she is photographed with her natural hair colour, in an interview with Allure.
“It became months and months of conversation about how brave I am for having gray hair,” she said, referring, in part, to paparazzi photos such as those that showed her eating out with Andy Cohen while her gray hair was pulled back in a simple style, which went viral last summer. “I was like, please please applaud someone else’s courage on something!”
Parker then clarified that she still does colour her hair, but that she just doesn’t “spend time getting base color every two weeks,” as it is “too much”. Rather, the actor said that she is more focused on feeling “okay according to her standards”.
“I just… don’t care enough. When I walk out the door, I want to feel okay according to my standards. I can’t even tell you what those standards are. But you know how you feel when you feel most like yourself, whatever that means,” she explained. “I’m not without vanity. I guess I just don’t care enough about everybody else’s opinion.”
While reflecting on the process of ageing as a whole, the And Just Like That actor also acknowledged that wrinkles are a sign of much more than just years lived.
“We spend so much time talking about the accumulation of time spent adding up in wrinkles, and it’s the weirdest thing that we don’t say it adds up to being better at your job, better as a friend, better as a daughter, better as a partner, better as a caregiver, better as a sister,” she said. “Instead it’s: ‘How do we suspend the exterior? How do we apologise for it? How do we fix it?’”
The 57 year old also noted that the focus and questions about ageing aren’t directed at men, as she pointed out that “not a soul” said anything about Cohen’s “full head of beautiful gray hair,” even though he was sitting next to her. “I’m not angry, it’s just an observation,” she said.
While she doesn’t spend time thinking about how she is ageing, Parker acknowledged that there are moments when the headlines penetrate her “blackout,” which she said can be hurtful. “And some of it hurts for a minute, it smarts. And some of it confounds me because of the double standard that is so plainly illustrated. It’s just not a great use of time, of ink, of anybody’s attention,” she said.
The double standard aside, Parker said that she doesn’t think “there’s a right or a wrong way to have a relationship with ageing, living, time spent on earth,” and that she doesn’t condemn those who have more vanity than she does, or those who have less.
Rather, she said she prefers to focus on her own opinions about ageing, which, for her, mean a dedication to doing the things she wants to with her free time.
“Mine is that there are a million things I want to do with my free time, and none of them have to do with preserving [what I look like] now, or trying to get back to 15 years ago,” she said, adding that her attention is instead on restaurants she wants to try, books she is going to read, and Wordle.
Parker’s comments come after she recently criticised the “sexist” way that society views the ageing of women.
Speaking to InStyle, the actor said that she doesn’t think about ageing until she is forced “to think about it because of what I do for a living and because other people seem to want me to think about it or they’re thinking about my age”.
During the interview, Parker also spoke of the differences in how men are perceived by society, with the designer telling the outlet that she’s “confounded by the fact that we simply don’t talk about men that way”.
