Judge Judy: My $30 clip-on ponytail gives me a lot of free time and freedom

The New York Times

Judy Sheindlin created an internet frenzy in March when she debuted a new hairstyle with a ponytail. Turns out the ponytail is a $29.95 clip-on that was intended to give her hair rest from the constant styling, as she reveals in a New York Times Magazine profile. The ponytail also gives her more free time each morning away from the hairstylist -- free time to watch CNBC, walk the dogs and read the paper. “Freedom that I haven’t had in 40 years,” she exclaimed. Sheindlin, whose round pixie bob remained unchanged since the Clinton administration, also felt she needed the adventure of a new hairstyle. “I get up in the morning, and I look in the mirror, and I say, When did my young person start to inhabit this old person’s body?” she said. As The New York Times Magazine's Jazmine Hughes writes: "The shift was meant to match how she felt inside. In the last two decades, “Judge Judy” has won three Emmys and become the highest-rated daytime TV show in syndication. It accomplished all this without changing much of anything since its debut — it has the same talent, the same set, the same spectrum of human emotions — mostly because there has been no need, so completely has it dominated. But it made sense, after all these years, to finally take a gamble, because what did she have to lose?" ALSO: Judge Judy doesn't negotiate her salary: Every three years, she writes down the salary she wants, seals it in an envelope and presents it to the head of CBS Television Distribution, telling him: "This isn't a negotiation."