Super Librarian

Amy Poehler 

NPR features an essay from an 85-year-old writer who recently decided to die her hair bright blue. Anne Bernays writes: 

Along about the time I became a great-grandmother I dyed my white hair blue. Not a wussy “blue-rinse” blue, but eye-stabbing, punk-kid blue. At the time, I didn’t do any soul-searching. I just thought, What the hell, why not?

I was surprised by how this turn went over; everyone seemed to approve it. Grouchy people smiled at me. An older woman stopped me on the street to shake my hand. 

Now, after some introspection, I realize that I was protesting the passage of my own time here, highlighted by the great-grandmother thing. In our peculiar culture, beauty does not, as Keats claimed, equal truth. It equals youth.

While young people sparkle like diamonds, old folks are invisible — except, as I discovered, if you have bright blue hair.

“And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.