That is the question.

I went gray fairly early, which makes sense, my Dad did (although he fought it briefly with Grecian Formula – holy crap – the head full of shoe polish look); and my Mom probably did (she dyed her hair into her 60s, but her younger brother had pure white hair before he turned 50). And my maternal Grandma had the most beautiful white hair.

It looked like I was destined for the all-white hair, but then it stopped. So I have chunks of pure white and chunks of dark gray, and strands of my (natural) brown. It’s okay, but it’s not gorgeous.

Still, it doesn’t bother me – too much.

You see, the thing about being a fat old lady is, except for my hair, I look pretty young. You can’t put a wrinkle in a bubble.

But if I dye my hair then I’m dealing with all the upkeep – which is something I’m not very good at; and I’m not a big fan of the gray roots look. And if I want to go back to gray, I’ll have that lovely growing out period – think Madeline Kahn at the end of Cheap Detective. Again, not a look I aspire to.

So why go through it? Well, I want to audition for some shows; and I want the directors to understand that I look young enough to play 40 or so (I put on my resume for age – “somewhere between 30 and death” – with kudos to the show Mame).

So to dye or not to dye, that is the question.

Right now I’m leaning toward using hair chalk for the auditions. I can always dye my hair whatever they want if I get the part. But if I start sweating, does that mean I’ll be auditioning with my hair doing a Tammy Baker mascara on my face? It hasn’t happened on the other occasions I’ve used hair chalk, so it should be okay.

Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll go with hair chalk. And if I have a Tammy Baker face – at least I’ll have something interesting to blog about, right?