When is old enough?

I was talking to a friend, whose identity will remain anonymous, this morning just after she stepped out of the shower. She expressed great concern to me over the fact she thought she was losing her hair and had the beginning a little bald spot on the back of her head. Although more uncommon in women than men, I guess female pattern baldness is not unheard of. Although I think she may have been exaggerating and having what I call a premature stessulation, we began discussing various options for her 'problem'. We first discussed combing over. That's always a good option but we decided that would be a 2 person job. She would meticulously arrange her surrounding hair to either subtlety fill in her thin spot, or I thought she could do it in a more decorative manner, while her partner whips out a fresh bottle of Final Net from her handy hairspray holster and proceeds to spray the comb over in place. We thought this first option would take too much time in the morning and take away from her precious REM sleep. On to option two. We both liked the thought of that hair in a can stuff that you spray on but neither of us could think of the name to order it. Option three, ratting. It seems every older woman eventually starts ratting their hair. My aunt does, my grandmother does, and my mom does. I imagine part of the reason older women do this is to make it appear that they have more hair than they actually do. Maybe it's also to make their faces look smaller? If you've got big, ratted hair, in comparison, your face will look smaller. Also, if the focus and attention is on the marvelous job you did ratting that morning, people won't notice your new wrinkles. Sounds to me like a win, win, win situation. Now my question though is, at what age does one start ratting? Ann is 44. Is that old enough? Should she get her hair cut short and a perm first? It seems it's much easier to rat when you have short hair and a perm. Am I old enough now? I'm 36 but I will be 37 in 17 days. By the time I'm supposedly 'old enough', will I miss out because ratting has gone out of style or will ratting remain forever the classic, distinguished, older woman hairstyle of choice?