So from watching TV this week, I got mixed messages about aging and beauty. The first one was from Jamie Lee Curtis on the Oprah show. She has let her hair go gray and spends very little time shopping for clothes, which was evidenced by her white lace sweater over a black shift which paled in comparison to Oprah's bright-colored outfit. I'm not sure I like Jamie's new old look - after all, she is only 50 and 60 is supposedly the new 40. We don't have to look like a grandma even if we are one.

The second consisted of four women on the Charlie Rose show who have started a new website, www.wowowow.com, for women over 40 (even though they are obviously way over 50). I was struck how all of these women were blonde, which apparently is the best way to cover up gray these days. Lesley Stahl of CBS' 60 Minutes wears the new gray well as does gossip columnist Liz Smith.

But the other two ladies (whom I won't name here) appeared to be trying way too hard. For one thing, they were both wearing high-fashion "bling" - chains made up of large irregular circles - a sure sign of "don't look at my face." One's blonde bangs are so long you know she's hiding wrinkles, plus she wears light pink or white lipstick. Is she stuck in the 1960's? The other is simply too thin and fragile-looking to carry off the "I'm still sexy in my 60's." Not everyone is a Helen Mirren or Candice Bergen.

So why the pretense, ladies? How long will you keep this up? Where is the balance between Jamie Lee Curtis and botox and bleach? I myself color my hair, but only to brighten the color as I have very little gray, at least I did nine years ago when I started. When I really go gray, though, will I go blonde or go gently into that "aging with grace" stage? Or will I do the redhead thing like my father's mother since my hair tends towards that color now? At least everyone will know I'm dying my hair.

Of course, everyone knows the four ladies above are dying their hair. Almost everyone dyes their hair nowadays, even young girls. It's become the norm compared to the way I was raised that you just don't fool with Mother Nature. But my family has young genes. My other grandmother's hair has yet to go all white although she's 103! We women all tend to look at least 10 years younger than we are, which used to be a great advantage if one puts a lot of weight into youth and beauty.

Now, though, with all the anti-aging agents on our drugstore shelves, not to mention doctors specializing in making us look as if we'd carried a parasol around our whole lives and never given birth, my naturally youthful appearance has no advantage, except I spend a lot less money and time to achieve it. In fact, it has never been an advantage except maybe in landing jobs past my prime and people complimenting me now (not when I was a pimply-faced teenager well into my 30's).

When I was a young mother, it was assumed and gossiped about that I had been an unwed teenage mom. Later on, I wasn't taken seriously as a member of the high school PTA, never mind that my oldest daughter was in college. And now that I'm a grandmother, it is assumed that that daughter had to get married when in fact she adopted a baby girl from China in her 30's. That little girl, by the way, has no problem calling me "Grandma" - I guess she doesn't know what a real grandma should look like.

And neither does the baby boom generation, it seems, as evidenced by what we consider middle-age. I can get away with saying I'm middle-aged in my early 50's because I have a grandmother in her 100's. But most women will not live to that age, even with the help of medical science. And God forbid they try to look middle-aged when they are in their 70's, 80's, and 90's. I recall actress Jessica Tandy who was as beautiful at 80 as she had been at 60 and 40, because she was beautiful inside and didn't cover that up with blonde and bling.

Each of us needs to decide how to age. We have choices now. However, one choice we don't have, as long as we're still alive, is that we are getting older. And we will die. The sooner we face this reality, the sooner we can work on what's really important in life. That isn't our looks, as Jamie Lee Curtis is telling everyone who will listen, and it isn't our money or prestige, as the four women from Charlie Rose apparently still think from their conversation with him.

It is, rather, as Oprah has been telling the world this year with her class on Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, who we really are - the part of us that is not the physical form, including the mind. If we spend as much time tending to the spiritual beings we really are as we now tend to the body and mind, we will indeed create a new world, at least for ourselves since the battle against age will never be won. I, for one, need to stop fighting it. Next month, I think, maybe, I'll stop dying my hair.