A growing acceptance of gray hair

In the afterglow of his win, the newest American Idol, 29-year-old Taylor Hicks, took questions after the show. Inevitably, the subject of his radically unusual hair color was broached: "I didn't have any idea that America would embrace gray hair as much as they have," he told reporters.

Gee, where on Earth would he have gotten the idea that America doesn't embrace gray hair? Could it have crossed his mind when he was told early on by Simon Cowell that he was too gray to be the American Idol? Or maybe because the culture is anaphylactically allergic to the concept of aging gracefully?

An idol for the aged

For baby boomers, whose fights against gravity, graying hair and growing waistlines have been chronicled relentlessly, it must be refreshing to see an older-looking guy conquer the aggressively youthful "American Idol" stage.

"I strongly feel that Taylor's hair was part of his charm and individuality, and I am very happy that he kept it after rumors that he was going to dye it," said Alexandra Seuthe, who lives in Las Vegas and writes an enjoyably catty blog about celebrity hair don'ts (at www.badhairday.typepad.com. "His hair and his talents are authentic — and I think that is why he won."

The prematurely gray-haired man seems to cycle in and out of fashion (although the distressingly high percentage of gray-haired men who insist on being called "Silver Fox" has remained stable).

"Gray is gravitas"

While the evolution of Richard Gere from brunet hunk to silver-haired hunk sometime in the past decade may have started the trend — and certainly no story about graying hotties is complete without a mention of George Clooney — it is cable newsman Anderson Cooper who must shoulder the mantle of poster boy of this particular mini-trend.

The 38-year-old CNN anchor, whose steely blue eyes and even steelier hair are featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine this month (he is promoting a memoir), has a fine sense of humor about his hair, which has been graying since he was a teenager.

In 2003, in Details magazine, Cooper wrote that he had trouble accepting that his hair is gray, and for a long time thought of it as salt-and-pepper before realizing, alas, that it's all salt. But there really isn't a downside here. "In the TV news business," he writes, "gray equals gravitas. In fact, in just about any line of work being prematurely gray is an advantage."

Unless, of course, as Cooper points out in his essay, you're a woman. "When was the last time you saw a sexy gray-haired woman in a movie?" he asks.

Women shine, too

How about the unfairly toothsome Halle Berry of "X-Men: The Last Stand," whose character, Storm, has shaggy gray hair. (Even her co-star Anna Paquin has a Susan Sontag-ish waterfall of gray in her long dark mane.) And what about the hotly anticipated movie "The Devil Wears Prada" starring a gorgeously gray-coiffed Meryl Streep as a satanic fashion editrix? Or Jonathan Demme's Neil Young concert flick, "Heart of Gold," featuring Emmylou Harris, 59, who has been gray for years and is the best-looking backup singer you ever saw.

"If it encourages other women to say, 'I can do that, too,' that's great," Harris once said about her decision not to dye her hair. "We earned those gray hairs!"

(Small, possibly depressing, thought: If you look like Emmylou Harris or Richard Gere, perhaps letting your hair turn gray is an easier step to take than if you look like, well, you.)

Carmine Hogan, who owns Salon Vox in Santa Monica, Calif., said it's not uncommon for men in their mid-30s or early 40s to ask her to add a little something gray around the temples. "You know how you go to a young doctor, and you say, 'Oh, my God, how old are you?' These guys want to have a mature look so people feel, 'OK, this guy has a little experience under his belt.' "

However, in her quarter-century of experience, said Hogan, not a single woman has ever asked for grayer hair.