Nora Ephron (pictured with actresses Meryl Streep and Amy Adams) struggled with the pressure of looking youthful

Still, at the end of the year, I’ve spent at least 80 hours just keeping my hair clean and pressed. That’s two work weeks. There’s no telling what I could be doing with all that time. I could be on eBay, for instance, buying something that will turn out to be worth much less than I bid for it. I could be reading good books.
Of course, I could be reading good books while having my hair done — but I don’t. I always mean to. I always take one with me when I go to the salon. But instead I end up reading the fashion magazines that are lying around, and I mostly concentrate on articles about cosmetic and surgical procedures.

Hollywood heavyweight: Nora Ephron (pictured with actresses Meryl Streep and Amy Adams) struggled with the pressure of looking youthful

Once I picked up a copy of Vogue while having my hair done, and it cost me $20,000. But you should see my teeth. Many years ago, when Gloria Steinem turned 40, someone complimented her on how remarkably young she looked, and she replied,
‘This is what 40 looks like.’ It was a great line, and I wish I’d said it.
‘This is what 40 looks like’ led, inevitably, to its most significant corollary, ‘40 is the new 30,’ which led to many other corollaries: ‘50 is the new 40,’ ‘60 is the new 50,’ and even ‘Restaurants are the new theatre,’ ‘Focaccia is the new quiche,’ et cetera.
Anyway, here’s the point: There’s a reason why 40, 50, and 60 don’t look the way they used to, and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye.
In the Fifties, only 7 per cent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no grey-haired women at all.
(Once, some years ago, I went to Le Cirque, a well-known New York restaurant, to a lunch in honour of a woman named Jean Harris, who had just that week been released from 12 years in prison for murdering her  diet-doctor boyfriend, and she was the only woman in the restaurant with grey hair.)
Hair dye has changed everything, but it almost never gets the credit. It’s the most powerful weapon older women have against the youth culture. I can make a case that it’s at least partly responsible for the number of women entering (and managing to stay in) the job market in middle and late-middle age, as well as for all sorts of fashion trends.