After a weekend with her friends and daughters, elegant 49-year-old New Yorker Anne Kreamer sees herself in a photo, and the hair color that she had always believed made her look younger suddenly seems terribly fake. From that moment on she tries to find the courage to “stop” dyeing her hair, a bit like trying to stop smoking or drinking. The commonplace has it that graying men have a wise and protective air, while a woman with gray hair is dowdy and oldish. Anne Kreamer succeeded in belying it, discovering that, instead of the costly tricks we use to seem younger, the natural and instinctive response wins even more authenticity. In the era of eternal youth and rampant plastic surgery, she went against the current, discovering that it is not so simple to stop dyeing one’s hair, but that the satisfactions can be surprising. She searched through statistics, did experiments in the field, and asked herself two crucial questions: can a middle-aged woman with gray hair be sexually attractive? Will she be discriminated against in the world of work because of her age? And she found unexpected answers. With the help of friends like director Nora Ephron, writer Akiko Busch, and New Yorker illustrator Maira Kalman, Kreamer abandoned years of crazy expenses at the beauty salon and did some sums for American and European women; she investigated the charm of women who had already chosen to let their hair go gray and discovered that stylish dressing, self-esteem and a well-cared body are much more rejuvenating than coloring one’s hair.After Susan Sontag’s white streak, the Dove advertising campaign on real women’s bodies, Nora Ephron’s book, My Neck Drives Me Crazy, and Judith Levine’s I Do Not Buy, here is a fundamental chapter in the new research for authenticity that women have undertaken.