A Woman, Her Hair, and the Liberation of Growing Older
It all started when I decided to let my hair go grey. A few years ago, standing in front of my bathroom mirror - dye in one hand and a sinking feeling in my chest. For years, I’d been fighting a battle against my roots—every six weeks, like clockwork. But that day, something shifted. I looked at the box of dye and thought, What if I just... stopped?
And so, I did.
Letting my hair go grey wasn’t impulsive, though it felt like it at the time. It was more like a quiet refusal to keep pretending I was someone younger than I was. The reactions were mixed. Some friends, women mostly, gasped when they saw my white roots. Some called me “brave,” which felt more condescending than complimentary. True, I got a few compliments, mostly from strangers. Yet, for the first time in years, when I looked in the mirror it was like showing my real self —and I liked her.
Being an older woman in the 21st century is complicated. We’re bombarded with mixed messages. On the one hand, we are surrounded by images of supermodels and glamorous movie stars photoshopped to inhuman perfection. On the other, the number of ads featuring women who epitomise power and strength has been increased. All of them tell us how we should look and what we should do to maintain our youth, radiance and beauty. We are conditioned to feel that ageing is a bad thing. We’re told to “embrace our age” but not to look it. We’re expected to be wise but invisible, experienced but unthreatening. And frankly? I’m done playing along.
We’re a generation of women unlike any before us—experienced, smart, and unapologetically present. We’ve worked all the way through our lives, we control spending in most categories of consumer goods. Women now drive the world economy. And yet, too many businesses behave as if we had no say over purchasing decisions. Companies continue to offer us poorly conceived products and services and outdated marketing narratives that reduce us to female stereotypes. Big mistake. Huge!
Here’s the thing. The tide is turning. It’s certainly true that fashion has woken up to the power of using women of substance whose beauty doesn’t conform to some age barrier. We’re rewriting the story of what it means to grow older. We are openly discussing the issues that matter to us and affect our lives, such as raising teenagers, ageing parents, menopause… and we’re making sure we get the help and support that our mothers’ generation did not.
If grey hair used to be something women avoided as it was seen as a mere symbol of age and a sign of “letting yourself go,” now it’s a statement of confidence and intent. At 63, I’ve never felt fitter, happier, or more confident. With age comes wisdom and a sense of freedom because you just stop caring what people think. After all going grey isn’t about hair; it’s about reclaiming space, embracing visibility, and refusing to apologise for either. What could be more liberating than that?”
Perhaps we should all be looking to older female icons from the outset like Sophie Fontanel suggested “ I love to channel less gender-focused style icons like Bowie, or Jagger. Or, even elegant older British women heading out for a country jaunt, who throw on their wellies and hats and just don’t give a damn.”
My personal heroine is the singer Patti Smith-with her white, untamed hair, remarkable both for its colour and its freedom, she goes on practicing her art without the least concern for looking pretty, restrained or delicate, as it is generally expected of women. In 2008, the New York Times magazine could not help asking this living legend of rock music why she never uses conditioner – a question, perhaps, intended to domesticate the defiant spirit of her unrestrained hair.
At this stage of life, I’ve stopped chasing external validation. Getting older - wrinkles, silver streaks, and all – is something that I’m owning. In some ways I wish I had ‘aged’ earlier. By that, I mean I wish I knew that my new best friends Comfort and Confidence would arrive to help me realise that aging isn’t a fight to be won. It’s a freedom to be claimed.
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