Tragic hairstyles on older women

The old lady short hair cuts are like the kiss of Death.

They look a lot better. At least cut *some* of it off.

DL taught me years ago that women over 50 shouldn't wear their hair past their shoulders.

It’s her hair, her business. Why do you think you’re little Miss Glamour Cop?

You know what these old ladies think?

As with men, there's a huge variation in how women over 50 look.

Some look like haggard old ladies at 55 while others are still youthful, often helped along by personal trainers and plastic surgeons.

Margaret Thatcher ALWAYS had OLD LADY hairstyles.

Look, I try to advise women to look good

R4 One of the most enduring collective delusions of DL is that legions of women and straight men are waiting with bated breath for the fashion guidance of DL eldergays.

Dangling tendrils.

Streisand's sorority-girl long, straight, and parted in the middle. There is a happy medium between this and Mamie Eisenhower.

R4 1. It was just an example. The topic is not about her. It's "Tragic hairstyles on older women". If you don't want to participate, that's ok, I won't miss ya.

R4 2. This is a gossip forum, not about minding your own business.

Honey, I have a standing appointment at my beauty parlor for a rinse, set, and curl every week.

In addition, every two month I have a trim and a permanent.

Do you get the blue rinse or the purple?

"Touch o' Silver" by SenilTresse, r15

Here's what's weird to me. You'll see an older lady with a typical old-lady pouf or mancut. If she's 70 or so, that means she was born around 1950, which means she was a young or youngish adult in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and even 90s. How then do you wind up with that perennial dowdy hairdo? Is it just a default at a certain age?

A thread about hag hair? So daring! So fresh!

R18 Spice it up, then. Go!

A coworker of mine is late 50s early 60s, and she still has that layered, hot rolled, parted in the middle short hair girls wore like 1983 or so. If she likes it, fine, but I always wonder how she finds a stylist who will still do that hairstyle.

A snappy Italian Top never goes out of style.

Aging hair loss, thinning hair, effects women, too. It renders your hairstyle choices to almost non-existent.

Amy Goodman needs something better.

R17, that’s what I wonder! There are old ladies who wear the same hairstyle old ladies wore when I was a kid in the 70s. It’s remarkable. They even wear the same kind of sling back shoes and polyester fabrics. I don’t know where you can find these hairstyles and clothing nowadays. But I guess if you want it you can find it. There’s a blue polybag that arrives with our Sunday Washington Post and there are always delightfully kitschy advertisements for strange old-people paraphernalia included with the corny Parade “magazine”. Collectible coins and dolls, comfy undergarments, supportive footwear, eyewear, etc. It’s all hideous. I’m not the target demographic (just yet), but if you are, I’m sure the advertising finds you. And there’s advertising because people buy it.

Anyway, I don’t hate on old people who have white hair or old ladies with short butch haircuts. They’re facing brutal reality with pragmatism. Nobody thinks that crone with long black hair is 35.

The thing is there are old ladies with short "butch" (not really) haircuts who look really good IF they know what they're doing. If they have a sense of style. The ones who wear it without makeup and wear the crewneck pastel sweatshirt, athletic jacket, and baggy slacks look...they do look like old men. Speaking of old men, I was thinking along the same lines you were, why do some old guys look just like old guys looked a decade or two ago (or more, maybe), with the pants pulled up to the armpits, with suspenders, baggy trousers, loose short sleeve shirt with huge sleeves? How do they even find these styles?

[quote]R18 Spice it up, then. Go!

I guess you think you're being funny r19, but it's frankly kind of tragic that you'd act like a middle management dullard and try to order DLers around like they're employees.

R26 Seems you came to the thread just to make a remark about how unoriginal it is, so I think R18 was telling you that your remark was not contributing to make it any more "fresh" and that if you don't like it, you could contribute something to spice it up.

R26 If it was, in fact, you who make the remark.

R25, yes, I see some stylish old ladies here in NYC. I’ve got one neighbor who has long hair that she puts into a single white braid hanging down over a collarbone. She looks old, still, but fabulous. She is stick thin, wears jeans and Converse and preppy sweaters. She used to dye her hair gravy brown but let it go white and she gets compliments all the time now. It’s lovely. I’ve noticed more old people, male and female, giving up hair dye since the pandemic.

European women don’t seem to worry about having long hair, either. They don’t think short hair is dykey, apparently.

It’s all very interesting.

I've had the same hairstyle for more than 60 years, you bunch of tasteless and daft cunts.

R26 is very sensitive to teasing. Youngest child, probably.

Anyway, yes, grey and the mancut can look chic. I suppose for many women it’s a matter of thinning hair and convenience: “It’s so easy, I can just wash and go!“ But R24 nailed it, there are 2021 old people that look exactly like 1972 old people, with blue poufs and polyester. How?

R30 And sadly it never looked good on you!

OP, it sounds like maybe if she just put it up off her shoulders a little, it might help.

Interestingly, many younger American women seem afraid of short hair nowadays as well. It certainly wasn't this way in the seventies and eighties.

[quote]Seems you came to the thread just to make a remark about how unoriginal it is

So? Was it really that traumatic for you to be lightly teased?

It's not my job to make you interesting, so no, I'm not going to spice up your thread for you, and I still think it's sad that you asked me to.

R34 True, for younger women there is no longer such a thing as a hairstyle. It's all long, straight and parted in the middle. At least in the 70s and 80s girls sported all kinds of variations of Farrah wings, Dorothy Hamill cuts and curls. Even the Afro never really made a comeback. Nor did the pixie. The only variety seems to be about color.

R35 I know you are but what am I!

[quote]for younger women there is no longer such a thing as a hairstyle

There are literally millions of webpages that show that isn't even close to true.

R37, all right, well that's better. At least you're contributing. An illustration, or an example or two, would be even better. I command you to commence!

[quote]So? Was it really that traumatic for you to be lightly teased? It's not my job to make you interesting, so no, I'm not going to spice up your thread for you, and I still think it's sad that you asked me to.

R35 I didn't make the comment about spicing up the thread. That was R19. I'm not that poster. Now why don't you play nice?

R34 Or the 90s. So many young actresses at the time (Claire Danes, Cameron Diaz, Winona Ryder) had short hair.

There are several types of women who keep the same hairstyles forever: My favorite are the kick-ass intelligent broads who have new continents to explore or lives to save or scientific experiments to run, and who have better things to do with their time than fuss with their hair. Then there are the slobs who let themselves go or who just can't be arsed to learn a new style, and the silly fraus who think that if they keep the hairstyle they had when they were hot, they're still somehow hot.

But I like all of them more than I like the Republican blonde replicants, whose hair is always perfectly bleached and styled into the very latest helmet-hair style. Beware of those bitches!

I think the so called "Welfare Face Lift" hairstyle is worth noting. The chicks you see with the baggy sweatshirt and leggings, all the hair pulled back so tight in a pony tail, it gives you a face lift.

There was and old woman who worked in my school, she had a very 50s looking hairstyle. It looked exactly like Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas. She must have had it as a younger woman and decided to keep it forever.

41 comments and no suggestions? I have my pen ready.

I am serious. I am 50. The younger sort of 50.

Well he'll. I meant to says it's something between that look and this one

Am I misguided?

R42 in England, that’s a Croydon facelift

This to me, is tragic. Who does she think she's fooling? I wish more older women embraced gray hair. I think it's beautiful.

Longer hair (mid-neck to shoulder length) is more flattering on the vast majority of older women. Short hair can look edgy and cool on a younger girl with good bone structure, but once you pass 25 or so, it starts looking mumsy.

Isabelle Adjani and Julianne Moore look great with longer hair.

[quote] DL taught me years ago that women over 50 shouldn't wear their hair past their shoulders.

I would agree. Long hair on a woman past a certain age looks hippyish and witchy.

Gay men are literally the only people who care about older women's hairstyles, because after 50, we become unfuckably invisible to everyone else. It's honestly a relief to most of us.

My mom is in her 80s - she’s had that short, permed, all-over curls old lady hair since her early 60s. It is slightly different than my grandma who always had that 50’s Gracie Allen style - flat on the crown with a Christmas wreath of curls all around her head.

When she was in her early 70s mom got breast cancer and lost all her hair from chemo. Growing back in, it got to the point where she had a grey pixie cut, and she looked SO MUCH BETTER. We all told her to grow it slightly longer but keep it straight and shaggy like Shirley MacLaine. Nope. She got the granny perm again as soon as it was long enough.

Raine Spencer, Diana’s stepmother, for the win...

I caught a little of "The Sandpiper" on TCM the other night, and thirtysomething Liz looked gorgeous with loose, shoulder-length hair. But by the time she was 40, she'd settled on the big, aging pouf that she wore for the rest of her life.

Speak for yourself, R50!

-R44 & 45 (though you might be right, since I can't even seem to get gay men or anyone else to give me an opinion) (and no way am I going to go to a site for ladies of my certain age, because, well obviously)

I like Diane Baker's hair in Silence of the Lambs

I don't know where I read it, over 20 years ago, but someone pronounced, "Long hair is becoming only on the very young."

I worked with a woman who embraced retirement a few years back with the haircut she probably first got by taking a new Joni Mitchell album into the beauty shop in 1970.

My mom had very short hair, she had it colored light blonde, in ther 70s and 80s it just looked good, a lot of other women complemented her. It wasn't severe-looking. I think some older women can pull this off well, she had a pretty face so it worked I guess. Longer hair can also work, but not severely long and not that haggy, witch look. The Peggy Lipton hippie look is best left to young women.

And r55 proves my point at r22.

Ms. Baker is either wearing a wig, clever extensions, or she is that very rare woman who has not suffered thinning hair loss brought on by aging.

Here's Streisand way back in 1994. You can't convince me that she isn't wearing the very latest, for then, in hair extensions.

Older women look best in a modified bob, somewhere between just below chin length and shoulder length.

It’s universally flattering.

You can throw in some long layers or bangs for variety.

R59 Depends on the age. That style requires styling every day. When they get to the 80s, I don't think so. Unless they somehow have the perfect hair for it.

My mom wears her hair in a Bob about two inches below her chin. She does wash it every day, but she combs it out and lets it air dry. Pretty easy.

Nothing holds a tiara like long hair worn swept up.

Blackamoor brooches are also awesome.