Anderson Cooper gets candid on being labeled a silver fox & why he hates to look at himself in the mirror

I don’t know how I got that [silver fox]. I think somewhere it was written down and then other people started writing it down.

I liked when I had salt and pepper hair. I started going gray my senior year of college. I was on the crew team and I was starving myself to get down to race-weight of 125 pounds. I would drop 20 pounds for races and my hair by senior year started to go gray, which I think has something to do with my poor diet and starving myself.

It’s definitely genetic. Both my mom and dad started going gray early. Salt and pepper I didn’t mind, and in my mind I still have that, but I try to avoid looking in mirrors now because I look in the mirror and I’m like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I’m just completely white. If I took off my glasses you couldn’t see me at all.

What I realized is that with my hair really short you can just see my pink rat-like scalp. It’s not that the hair itself is thinning, it’s just that you can see my little pink scalp.

I think I see myself quite honestly. But who sees themselves in a real way. We all have these incredibly warped perceptions of ourselves and constantly being on television doesn’t help because we are constantly seeing ourselves on a monitor in high definition, which no one should see.
Anderson Cooper speaking to Kelly Ripa on her Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast about going gray in college and why he doesn’t consider himself to be a “silver fox.”