What kind of Grey Girl are you?

My old clothes look wrong.

What I mean is that the things I used to wear for work were picked with black hair in mind. Not only to complement the colour but to "collude" with the colour. I had a particular image of myself and the black hair was part of it. The clothes I wore were part of the same image.

But now my hair is grey. It's a different image. It says something. Yup. My hair is speaking for me.

So I realised that I needed to change my style to reflect what my hair is saying. (If you think this is weird, just imagine giving yourself a radically different style hair or, more one for the guys, growing a wacky style of facial hair, and then imagine continuing to wear the same clothes as now...Your hair and your clothes would conflict. You might like that contrast but it would be a contrast that did not exist before you radically changed your coiffure. It would be new. Your hair would have spoken for you).

Granny Hair

Granny Hair
One look you can go for is the "I've let myself go, I wear bed jackets now and shuffle about in slippers all day complaining about the young people". When I originally told people I was going to let my colour grow out I think some of them thought this is what I had in mind. But while I don't judge those who've decided to go this route, it was never on my list of options.

Devil Wears Grey

Devil Wears Grey
A far more popular option is to go sharp and slick, like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. It's a lot of black, a touch of animal print, great shoes and bags and a sharp hair style. Curly hair is never going to be sharp. So The Devil Wears Grey look isn't for me.

Grey Hippy

Grey Hippy
A contender is the hippy look. Take a lot of hemp-based fabric, a tonne of beads and bangles, something a bit weird like a waistcoat or those trousers where the gusset hangs lower than your knees and zero makeup and you've got the basis of A Look. This is cool for me at festivals but won't work for work so it's never going to be my uniform.

Glamour Grey

Glamour Grey

This is a fab look. Similar to the Devil Wears Grey but less severe, this is a classic look - great slacks,  perfect make-up, big hair. It's rich and timeless and chic. So nothing like me then. Moving on...

Wild Grey

Wild Grey

Love this look. It says "I'm grey and I don't give a flying fig what you think about me. I will wear hot pink, I will wear statement t-shirts, I will wear massive orange glasses, I will add mohair and head-dresses and a massive ring made of green glass and I will buy it all from vintage shops, Oxfam and flea markets". As an emerging clothing upcycler, there are bits of this look I'm incorporating - upcycled denim jacket adorned with lace and gems, headscarves, bits of costume jewellery. But you won't catch me in pink mohair much as I admire those who are bold enough to adopt this style. 

Mirren Grey

Mirren Grey

Now we're getting close. Helen Mirren is such a cool dude. She can be glam one day and a punk the next. She wears what she fancies but always seems to stay true to who she is. Increasingly I'm looking to people like Mirren for my fashion inspiration - a bit of leather, a broken down t-shirt, a big coat and a "don't even think about it" look in my eye. The Mirren Grey isn't old or ageing, it's maturing like a great cheese or a fancy bottle of red. It just gets better and better...and it knows it!

Rocker Grey

Rocker Grey

This is my number one choice. Grey hair and the rock chick look are a natural combination. There's something inherently rock and roll for me about grey hair - it is counter-culture, individual, jump on your Harley and drive very slowly through some dusty town. Denim looks great with grey as do t-shirts especially rock band and tour t-shirts a la Mirren). The rocker look is strident and confident. Nothing "little old lady" about it. And it is authentic. In my teens and 20s I sang in rock bands, I'm a massive music fan and I still turn the volume right up on the radio and rock out when Blondie comes on. The great thing about this look is you can turn the volume up or down on it too - t-shirt and blazer for work, t-shirt and leather for after work; natural make-up for day, heavy eyeliner for night; your best jeans for meetings, your ripped jeans for the pub. 

Of course, you don't have to choose a look. You can wear what you've always worn. You can mix and match between the styles here and any others you like. And that's what's happening to me - I have hippy days and rock days and nondescript days where I wouldn't even want to give my "look" a name.

But Grey Hair is liberating. It's telling the world something about what's important to you, who you really are inside. Rather than your hair being a mask, your hair becomes a true expression of your self. Might as well enjoy wearing clothes that do the same thing.

Going grey isn't about going grey

Turns out, going grey isn't terribly interesting. I mean, it might be if you're in to hair products and beauty regimes. But, frankly, one reason for letting the grey come through is that I don't actually enjoy spending my waking hours fussing over my hair.

It is true that I take more interest in the products I use now than I used to but that's because grey hair can easily look rubbish. The wrong cut, dry or brittle random hairs sprouting out of your head at weird angles, or just a bad case of bedhead can give the impression that you have lost it. So there is some work to do. But it's a balancing act. It's important not to let your grey hair rule your life. 

So the actual process of my hair coming out of my head a different colour than I'm used to isn't fascinating. But there is a lot of inner debate going on for me and others doing this that is more important.

Obviously, there's our society's attitude to ageing. A big concern for women going grey is "will it make me look old?"  I get that concern of course. So, on forums and in comments, we reassure each other that it doesn't make us look old. But there's also a bigger question - why are we so worried about looking old (or older)?  Who says that being 20 or 30 is prime and anything else is the upward or downward slope? What if it's all an upward slope towards wisdom, hagdom, the proud ending of our story? After all, novels don't have the key scenes in the first third of the book and the rest is a sorry, slippery slope? They build. Why not apply the same logic to life? In which case, grey hair and ageing is a sign of progress and fulfilment of potential.

Next, there is the inner dialogue about what others will think of us. I recently cut off quite a lot of the black colour remaining so, to me, I look much greyer this week than last week. No one else has noticed because, frankly, no one else cares. Not in a bad way. It's just that my hair isn't as important to them as it is to me. They don't know every curl like I do. Anyway, since chopping off more black, I feel people will see me differently than they would have a week ago. Will strangers in the street think "she'd look a lot better if she dyed her hair?" or will they think "what a brave decision" or "what a pretty colour" or "I hope I look like that when I'm old"...?

At one level I clearly care otherwise I wouldn't having these little conversations with myself. On the other hand it's to good to know I don't care all that much. If I did I would have carried on dying it. And if I don't care that much what people think about my hair I probably don't care that much what people think of me generally. This strikes me as a good thing. Yes, I want to be considerate and respectful and kind and to empathise. But I don't want to pretzel myself in to weird shapes for other people. Turns out I'm not as pretzely as I thought I was. 

And the third little conversation is about how commonly we look but don't see he person we are looking at. So many of my "Silver Sisters" have been asked whether they want to senior discount, whether they are their child's grandparent, whether they would like a seat on the bus despite being in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. No one really looked at them. They saw grey. They saw elderly. We do this all the time. We don't really see people. We glance, we assume, we judge. By the way, this is particularly unacceptable if you work in a customer facing role. You aren't just there to take the money and put it in the til. You're there to make shopping, or travelling or providing information to the public a more human experience. That should mean eye contact, a smile and a bit of good manners when it comes to how you relate to those you are serving. 

Whenever you make a change, or a change happens to you, you become super-aware of that quality in others. One of your false nails fallen off? You're obsessed with other people's nails. Got a spot? You search other people's faces for blemishes better or worse than yours. And what you notice is that everyone is different, everyone has their own stuff going on. And none of it seems as bad to you as it does to them. The lesson - go easy on yourself, go easy on other people. We are all in this together! 

Walking in to rooms with transitioning hair...

Hi folks!

I'm 4 months in to the transition now so I'm getting used to the fact that I look like a tabby cat - a bit grey, a bit brown, a bit black. But while I've had a chance to get used to it, many people have not.

In my job I have to walk in to a lot of rooms filled with people I don't know or people I haven't seen in a long time.

And this presents me with a dilemma. Do I explain what's going on with my hair or don't I?

Here's what I'm doing so far -

With a new crowd e.g. the audience at one of my speeches, or a team I'm working with for the first time, I say nothing. Of course, in my head I've got a lot of chatter going on. "Do they think I'm weird? Do they think I've let myself go? Do they think I look terrible? Do they think I somehow don't realise what's going on up there, that I have somehow failed to notice?"

But aloud I say nothing.

With people I do know but haven't seen for a while, I ask them what they think. This has been interesting. One girl said "Why? Have you done something different?". One guy told me he liked it but he'd need to get used to me looking so different. Another told me he liked the grey but the style made me look like a teacher. I told him to stay behind after and see me.

And occasionally people will be upfront and ask me about it before I've decided whether to say something or not. My neighbour asked me if I was letting it grow out and then confided that maybe she would as well as she loved the way it looked on me so much that it was giving her ideas!

I also have the issue with "false advertising". My photos are all over the internet. You can check if you like. Google me.

And in all of them I have dark hair.

Then I turn up to an event and I look like this -

Me this morning with my hair in a side "bun"

I feel like one of those people who post a photo of themselves 20 years younger on a dating website and when they turn up on the date are unrecognisable. It's not that I'm ashamed, I just haven't got around to having new photos done. But that's about to change. A photographer has been booked so I'm going to be out of the closet very soon ONLINE! Meanwhile though, I will have to try to avoid the searching looks people give me when they cross-reference my biog photo with what stands before them.

There is an upside though. Many people worry about looking older with grey hair. And that crosses my mind too. Is it weird to wear my hair as I am today in a bun on the side of my head like a kooky kid? Should I go more "Judy Dench"? Well, I have no plans to do that. But at the same time, I wonder if my hair colour gives me gravitas? As a short person (5'1" or 5'2" on a good day with heels!) I often feel colleagues and clients towering above me and wonder if, somehow, this undermines what I have to say.

But the grey hair seems to balance that out. I'm not a little girl speaking, I'm a little woman. Over the last few months I've felt even braver about being direct and straight-speaking (and I was pretty brave before!). There are no excuses not to now.

I mean, if you don't feel self-confident about having your voice heard by the time you are going grey, when are you going to? 

It shouldn't require going grey to create this kind of confidence, of course. There's no reason not to be confident in yourself when you are young, and there's no reason to lack confidence just because you are short...or tall...or a woman...or [insert your own insecurity here]...

But sometimes our bodies remind us that none of us is getting younger. We can see that as a tragedy or we can see it as a gift. It's easy to forget how far you've come, how much you've been through, how much you've learned. But if a few grey hairs (or a head full of grey hairs) remind you and give you the strength to go out in to a room believing you have something to offer, then you might as well use it to your advantage.

I know I am!