When Sarah Jessica Parker decided to do And Just Like That, she decided to let Carrie Bradshaw have gray hair. In photos, it looks more like gray-streaked white-blonde hair, which Allure calls “herringbone highlights.” This is the jumping off point for Allure’s interview with SJP – they’re talking about gray hair and how rocking your natural gray hair is not particularly “brave.” SJP has many thoughts about aging, bravery, beauty and self-acceptance. I even agree with some/most of what she’s saying here! Too bad she’s a complete a–hole on other subjects. Some highlights:

The conversations around her gray hair: “It became months and months of conversation about how brave I am for having gray hair. I was like, please please applaud someone else’s courage on something!”

Whether she would, in a dream scenario, like to look like she did 15 years ago: “So you’d have that moment and then you’d immediately start aging again and 15 years later you’re in the same place. What’s the point? I just… don’t care enough. When I walk out the door, I want to feel OK — according to my standards. I can’t even tell you what those standards are. But you know how you feel when you feel most like yourself, whatever that means. I’m not without vanity. I guess I just don’t care enough about everybody else’s opinion… I just don’t understand why I’m supposed to be spending that much time thinking about it. It’s not that I’m purposefully dismissive or delusional. But I don’t really ponder it. There’s been far more peripheral chatter about my time spent on earth than I’ve spent thinking about it myself.”

SJP on the positives of aging: “We spend so much time talking about the accumulation of time spent adding up in wrinkles, and it’s the weirdest thing that we don’t say it adds up to being better at your job, better as a friend, better as a daughter, better as a partner, better as a caregiver, better as a sister. Instead it’s: ‘How do we suspend the exterior? How do we apologize for it? How do we fix it?’ We never talk about that with the other sex. We don’t say to them: ‘Here’s a cream to pretend this didn’t happen.'”

On people’s vanity: “I don’t condemn those who have more vanity than I do, or those that have less. I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to have a relationship with aging, living, time spent on earth. But mine is that there are a million things I want to do with my free time, and none of them have to do with preserving [what I look like] now, or trying to get back to 15 years ago. All I think about is like, ‘Where am I going to eat? What books am I gonna bring with me? Can we get into that strange little restaurant? Will the water be warm enough where I wanna swim? Also, Wordle.”

She actually does have a skincare regimen: “It’s not that I don’t take a moment every night and wash my face and put on moisturizer. I do!” Parker says she’s now fully converted to RoC’s Hydrate and Plump Moisturizer: “I put it on every morning and then when I get to the theater… “I mix it with my base.” And from the neck down, the entire Parker-Broderick clan uses Neutrogena’s Light Sesame Formula Body Lotion — “I put it on my whole body, including my feet, every night.”

[From Allure]

She also says she gives herself pedicures using stuff she finds at the local drugstore, like a pumice stone and regular old lotion. Which makes me feel better, honestly, because that’s the kind of stuff I do. I care about aging but I’m also cheap! I use a drugstore night cream and eye cream and I use the good Vaseline-brand cocoa butter lotion for dry skin. But like SJP, I try not to judge other people for what they’re doing. Alright, I judge a little bit, especially when the work is really bad or an actor with a famous face looks completely f–king different. Now, all that being said… SJP actually does care that people are criticizing her looks these days. I’m sure it does hurt her feelings, especially because she was always praised for being such a quirky beauty back in the day.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instar.