My take is basically if I go gray one day, I go gray. Great, I'm officially distinguished. If I go bald, I go bald. I'd rather not, but it's a fact of life. Even if I could afford it, I doubt I'd be one to go in for hair color and hair transplants and the like. And, look, I'm already overweight, so that won't be a tough transition. And my body is in pain every day due to health problems already, and I can't always do the things I'd like to do, so I've already got that part down as well.
One way to look at it is as a stage of life, you get to be young, you get to be middle-aged, you get to be old. One stage might be the best of the bunch to you and one stage might be the worst of the bunch to you, but, hey, you get to experience them all and see what they're like.
Granted, it'd probably be a bit easier for me because I don't have a whole lot of looks to lose and I already have some of the things people associate with getting older (like health problems).
Here's one suggestion:
Don't cut your hair short and if your hair is short, grow it longer. There is nothing that makes a woman look old and sexless like a short hair cut, and nothing that says attractive and viral like long hair. You know, I give that advice to all women, aged 18-118, because I think long hair universally is more attractive on women, but I think it's especially true through middle age and beyond. When someone is young, she may be able to overcome a short hair cut because of a supple body or whatever. When someone is older, though, it's even more important to emphasis her womanly features.
I've seen women with long hair occasionally even as old as in their 50s where I even in my 20s think "I could have sex with that person" or "she's hot". Short hair, people tend to look more manly than they could to begin with, and then to look increasingly manly as they get older and have fewer and fewer other womanly features to off-set their short hair.
The trend of people to hit the age of like 40 and then start cutting their hair short is exactly wrong. Personally, I'd prefer all women had long hair, but when one hits middle age or older is the *worst* possible time from the perspective of maintaining appearance to cut one's hair short if one is female. That's when one begins to need it the most because some of the other stuff is fading away.
A lot of appearance is beyond a woman's control, or requires a lot of work to control, but a choice of having long hair is one almost every woman can make and it doesn't require much effort. It's very egalitarian in that respect. Only those very few women who go bald have no choice in the matter (and there if attractiveness remains important in an individual, hair transplants might be an option) over the long run. Granted, chemotherapy patients also have no choice, but that's a temporary condition (Either you die or your cancer goes into remission and you can grow your hair back).