White hair, don’t care: Why silver hair is in

Fashion’s fixation with frosty manes has made white locks desirable, says Sarah Manguso.

In the made world, white is plumbing fixtures and hospital wards, sterile and incorruptible; it is the chalk and paper and correction fluid of school, plain objects of pure utility.

In the Bible, Christ’s hair, in a vision, is described as “like white wool, like snow,” but human hair, no matter how aged the person, tends to be called gray. The implication: Truly white hair is not quite human or of this world.