The bankers were waiting for the cars to take them to luncheon or a conference, perhaps both. The junior men crowded the sidewalks, while the older men stayed inside the shelter of the lobby, hats in their hands, their heads, with their closely brushed hair, an array of shining helmets.
-Helen Maclnnes, The SalzburgConnection
In Northeast Africa there is a species of baboons known as Hamadryas. Hans Kummer, who has studied them extensively, found that the young are born black and remain in that pelage for the first six months. While they are in this special fur, they have virtually free rein over the group; they can even climb on the snouts of grouchy old males and are generally beloved by all. But at their moult of around six months of age, they turn a dirty brown color, and it is as if a social door had slammed shut. They become social competitors. Similarly, a human grandfather's attitude towards a toddler who spills his best tobacco is mild and protective, but a pimpled adolescent who steals it can expect a much harsher reprimand. The human adolescent no longer carries the baby protection; like the brown baboon, he is entering the world of the adult.
Both male and female juvenile and adolescent Hamadryas baboons are brown. Females tend to lighten slightly with age but remain brown. Males on the other hand continue to lighten so that the old male Hamadryas baboons are almost pure white. Mature males are grizzled gray, and as they age the cheek whiskers lighten first, then the mantle, until finally the only brown remaining is a spot on the lower back, and in very old males even that disappears. The skin of the face and anogenital region remains contrastingly colored (vermilion in the East and gray in the West). The amount of hair-graying is highly correlated with rank. A quick glance gives one a ready estimate of his fellow's position in the age spectrum and hence his social rank.
George Schaller found a similar phenomenon among the mountain gorillas. He categorized mature males into two main social classes: blackbacks and silverbacks. Silverbacks, as the name implies, were so gray that from a distance their bodies appeared silver. Among the gorillas the silverbacks were dominant over blackbacks. The graying process follows a definite pattern. It begins in an area corresponding to the human sideburns. Schaller stated, "With advancing age the flanks, sides, neck, head, and abdomen lighten, until old animals are almost entirely gray, except for the arms which remain black." Like the caribou's white mane, the arms may remain contrastingly colored because of their part in the display arsenal. Female gorillas gray in a slightly different pattern, and like the baboons, tend to be generally browner than the males.
Graying occurs in many mammals besides primates, as most dog owners know. Silvering with age is also prominent in the European badger. That's the frosty hair used in shaving brushes and men's hat decorations.
We can speculate on how graying became connected up with signals of social status. It is in many species a deterioration which accompanies senility. That being so, in situations where either (1) age had definite status connotations, or (2) the graying produced an emphasis of contour which exaggerated the threat-display zones, patterns once senescent in character were pulled into an earlier part of the lifespan. Judging from the uses of graying among the primate species just discussed and its occurrence and location, we can conclude that both of these forces have been at work.
Chimps offer an interesting medium to study the evolution of status graying. Many primates have contrastingly colored snouts, beards, and cheek whiskers. Among some they are white. Some chimps have white hair on the snout from birth and others gray around the mouth with age. So one can witness the results of pressures (though probably not very potent) on a genetic shift of senescent graying back into earlier age groups.
Though we all pretty much know qualitatively the age sequence of graying and the patterns in which it occurs, let's map a little more precisely the various parameters of the graying process.
Humans do not gray randomly, but in a specific pattern. There are three main sites of graying: 1) the lateral tips of the chin; 2) the angle of the jaws; and 3) the temple area around the front and top of the ear. These can occur singly or in combination. People possessing all of these have an alternating variegated swirl of contrasting lines.
Like gorillas, chimps, and baboons, we have a characteristic graying pattern. This pattern can best be seen among males in the beard and side-burn area. There are three major centers of graying, which vary somewhat in sequence and chronology. These are (1) the chin tip, (2) the angle of the jaw, and (3) the temple area of the sideburns on a level with the top of the ear. One submodification, the most common one, is for the chin-tip white patch to be bifurcated into two patches, one at each corner of the beard, separated by a streak of beard color. This leaves an alternating variegated pattern. The moustache among virtually all races with well-developed whiskers is the last to gray. The dark (or colored, as it may be) patch between the white patches of the chin and jaw form a Fu-Manchu extension of the moustache color down onto the sides of the face, like a gigantic down turned mouth.
Some people gray mainly in one of the three zones, others in only two. And even among those who gray in all three, one may begin with the temple patch, another with the chin, and still another with the jaw angle patch. The temple and chin patches are most prominent and common, though I have seen one person with only the jaw-angle white patch. No matter what the pattern, these patches continue to expand until the entire beard is white, and eventually the moustache. Finally, the eyebrows whiten, almost always last.
Once the facial hair is far along in graying, the back, shoulder, and chest hair begins to gray. Leg and arm hair, as in the gorilla, usually remains colored, but often there is a tendency to fleck gray.
Why these particular patterns? As I mentioned earlier, chin graying and temple graying are rather typical ape (and, to some extent, general primate) patterns, presumably to emphasize the jaw (the weapon) and to ring the facial rim in white. Gibbons are the best example of the latter. The entire face is white-rimmed. But why the jaw-angle patch? I believe that if contrast is selected for there is a tendency to stripe one line upon another as in the striped tail of the ring-tailed lemur. Once a dark line is contrasted against light, it is easy to make the light color look even sharper by adding another dark line on its other side and so on. That jaw angle spot added to the temple and chin spots by giving contrast to the color in between, and at the same time artificially extended the moustache line across the cheek. This latter phenomenon can be seen in the horn contours of some antelope, being broadcast down upon the face by a black line passing through the eye, for example, in the oryx antelope and roan antelope.
The bifurcation of the chin white spot into two parts seems to be also a result of increased contrast. Having the colored line down the middle gives the white spots added zing. I've been talking about spots because this is how we customarily see them on trimmed beards. But on an untrimmed adult beard they are streamers, ribbons of white separated by contrasting ribbons of color.
In the illustration on pages 147-148, 1 consolidated the age change in body signals of women and men for simplicity's sake. But now we can see that as in the baboons and gorillas, human sexes have different patterns. Women's status-signaling, viewed by a mature male, changes little until they are in their 30's. Even the signs at puberty are not striking. The body changes at puberty are mainly the addition of copulatory lures -- sexual attractants. The man at puberty, like the baboon, is switching over from social protective devices to threat paraphernalia, while the woman continues with much of the "fawn's" attractive protection signals. In the later thirties, her social posture begins to change as well as her social paraphernalia. Skin texture becomes coarse and scalp hair frosty along with the male, for she now has shifted her optimal social strategy away from attracting new sexual partners and immediate care for the family, into extra-familial relationships which reflect back on the family's welfare. Her struggle for stature becomes more intense, because her stature has a direct effect on her offspring's future.
Women probably more than men have borne the tragic social by-products of civilization. A man still carries out the ancient tribal duties, though they are given different names and guises. The male has financial, artistic, professional avenues of self-expression and means of excelling, under some guise of social worth. But the conveniences of the home and baby-sitters have eliminated the traditional full-time "doe's" duties; she must go into the buck's world to find her social, cultural, or economic worth. This is, of course, what the Women's Liberation movement is basically about.
Later the trauma is even more severe; she has only a slight role in rearing her children, if she has children, and the energy devoted to PTA, the League of Women Voters, or socializing is a much more transparent means of marking time than the husband's. His devotion to getting the final draft of the blueprints for the new bowling alley finished has more apparent worth - though it is probably just a more elaborate time-marker in the final analysis. The post-doe's stature has gained her little and lost her much in the modern world; better she were the less serious, giddy flirt of earlier times, it seems, when things like dates and looks had real meaning. This is the world she retreats into with hair dyes, facelifts, makeup, and rigorous diets. The male does the same thing, but to a lesser degree, because his stature from gray hair and high scalp line is more direct. Yet it, too, is but a shadow of the social regard through which they must have been selected for, generations and generations ago.
The pre-World War II generation in Western societies is essentially beardless, because of cultural vagaries with which we're all familiar. One cannot judge age and stature in this group nearly so easily from the mouth and chin as was the case with our unshaven ancestors. The only gray left exposed is in the temple area, so one can classify "bulls" of that generation into three basic social classes based on graying patterns. In chronological succession these are: (1) salt and pepper, (2) whitewalls, and (3) silver crowns. We react to these three patterns differently, just as we do to the age-class breakdowns outlined earlier. It is easier for a buck to discuss one's illnesses, family life, etc., with a silver crown, for the latter are not his direct competitors and probably have quite a bit of savvy about life. Moreover, they are generally static socially.
I would wager that the bedside manner of older physicians and psychoanalysts could be improved considerably by bleaching their hair pure white. A salt-and-pepper is still up-and-coming; a whitewall is old enough to have made it to some extent.
We can look at our present and historical values about gray hair and see many biological status elements emerging. In Marie Antoinette's time, women wore three feet of hair piled high upon their heads. White wigs done in baroque styles became the fashion of the aristocracy and their associates. The status value of white wigs became traditionalized in positions where an authoritarian demeanor was desired, for example, in court, among parliamentarians, and in jurisprudence. White horsetail hair was the most desirable because the hair was coarse as well as a brilliant white, giving the judge a more masculine image than the fine tendrils of angora hair wigs desired at the time by socialites. Wigs were kept white with powder, and the natural hair as well was powdered white.
The discovery of the uses of hydrogen peroxide in 1867 allowed millions of people to become a beautiful baby blond, but it also allowed people to artificially add stature by graying their hair totally or in streaks or splashes. How many people who depend on their looks professionally have accentuated their sidewalls at the beautician's? Though the usual trend is to dye away gray, it was fashionable several years ago for women to bleach streaks in their hair. A young girl with her hair bleached very white transmits a complex signal. In a way she has the best of two extremes. She has the appeal of the yellow-white-gold human fawn, while at the same time she has the steel-gray-white of the dominant. But in another way this pure platinum has a harsh falseness to it, like the situation when the plastic surgeon overdoes the silicone insertion in breast reformation. The victim of a "supersignal" has a mixed blessing.
Sometimes people are born with a mosaic albinistic patch of skin which produces no pigment in the hair. A high frequency of these patches are near or include the "widow's peak" area. They are generally regarded as attractive and many similar patterns are produced artificially by cosmeticians. I believe our values regarding these white blazes are derived from the basic pattern of whitewalls and white patches elsewhere, as on the chin of a bearded man. Actually, there may have been mild selection pressures in the past to establish this middle streak to complement the whitewalls, for there are other graying patterns in other species in which a similar splotch occurs.