What's So Wrong With Older Women Having Long Hair?

Dominique Browning's mother hates her hair. Another friend told her it chips away at her professional credibility. What's so wrong with it? It's long. And not "being a couple of weeks late to the hairdresser long." Long. And it's turning gray, to boot, because Browning is 55. "No one seems to have any problems when a woman of a certain age cuts her hair off. It is considered the appropriate thing to do, as if being shorn is a way of releasing oneself from the locks of the past. So why do people judge middle-aged long hair so harshly?" she writes for the New York Times.

Browning runs down the most common complaints people seem to have: That she's acting out (Hillary Clinton's hair is that of a grown-up; Browning's screams rebellion); that she's trapped in the '70s (there are still no better role models than Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, she argues); that it's so high maintenance (which means ... she can't forget her hairbrush when she travels?); and men like long hair (how is this a complaint?). Such points addressed, the fact remains, "I feel great about my hair." Click here to read the humorous piece in its entirety. (More hair stories.)