When I let my hair go grey, good things started to happen

Long before COVID-19 inspired women around the world to ditch the dye, I chose to go grey at the relatively young age of 48. I made the decision at Hyams Beach on the NSW South Coast, while holidaying with my husband and our two teenage sons.

Yes, I do look older than women who haven’t ditched the dye. But I’m not invisible.Credit: Merilyn Beretta

Walking the sugar-white sand, I was irritated at my hair whipping around my face in the wind. I scraped it back into a ponytail and mentioned to my husband that I was worn out by so many things, but it all seemed to centre – ridiculously – around my hair. I complained about how often I had to colour it to hide my grey roots. For 20 years, I’d been colouring every eight weeks, then six, now four.

“When’s it going to end?” I moaned. “Will I have to hide my roots every two weeks?”

“That’s 211 colours,” my husband said, doing a rather unhelpful, half-joking calculation. “Close to 650 hours in a salon. You’ve spent 80 workdays colouring your hair.”

I silently willed him not to do the maths on the cost. Then one teenage son kicked a soccer ball in our direction. “Is that your real colour?” he said, pointing at my roots. “Silver? It’s kinda pretty.”

I’m not sure how long I’d have taken to stop colouring my hair without that offhand compliment from my son. I liked being blonde and fitting in with the younger school mums. But slowly, I started to feel like I was impersonating my younger self. My face was growing older, but my hair was trying to be 30. I didn’t know what I looked like any more.

I’m not sure why I made the decision so early. All I knew is that I wanted to find myself: reveal those roots, somehow get to the bottom of myself externally to find the truth of myself internally. Paradoxically, I sought authenticity from the outside in.

At first, no one noticed my grey roots because we all have them, all the time. It’s a tacit agreement; I won’t comment on yours if you don’t comment on mine. But soon my friends asked what I was planning with my hair. When I told them I’d decided to go grey, no big deal, just tired of colouring, their eyes would fill with concern. “Don’t do it, Catherine!” they pleaded. “You’re going to make yourself look so much older.”

What surprised me most was their collective fear. My friends were loving and supportive, but they were worried something might happen to me if I appeared older. I’d love to do it, but I don’t want to look like a grandma in the office, they said. Even my own sisters, all older than I am and – in fact – all grandmothers, said, We can’t go grey because our partners aren’t grey. Dozens of women asked, Aren’t you worried about looking older? These intelligent, educated, powerful women were afraid for me. Maybe they were also a little afraid for themselves.

Dr Louise Mahler, an executive coach, says, “We very much judge people on their power. There’s a lot in culture and history that says an older woman is no longer powerful and therefore has nothing to offer.” This was the conversation I wanted to unravel in my new book.

At 50, I was regularly cast as the grey-haired mother of 40-year-old women who coloured their hair.

CATHERINE GREER

I was inspired one evening at a dinner party, when a glamorous, accomplished 60-year-old friend confided that she was tired of feeling invisible. I answered her quickly. “Invisible to whom? Your friends adore you. You’ve got an amazing career. Your family loves you.”

But she raised an eyebrow knowingly. “Society. At large.”

Her opinion is supported by research. A comprehensive 2018 UK study, Elastic Generation: The Female Edit, questioned women aged in their 50s, 60s and early 70s and found that more than half felt that their age “makes them invisible to society”. They also described advertising aimed at them
as “patronising” and “stereotyped”.

When my grey hair led me unexpectedly to casual modelling work on advertising campaigns, my experience confirmed this bias. The first time I landed a role, I was practically invisible on set. At 50, I was regularly cast as the grey-haired mother of 40-year-old women who coloured their hair.

But more recently, things seem to be changing to an anti-anti-ageing narrative that’s both refreshing and more realistic. Actor Andie MacDowell, in her grey-haired glory, is championing not just ageing but loving her age. In an interview with American journalist Katie Couric, MacDowell said, “I want to be old. I’m tired of trying to be young. I’ve already been young. Now I’m old, and that’s OK.”

Now that I’ve been grey for a decade, I agree with MacDowell. I’m The Woman Who Let Herself Go and Absolutely Nothing Happened. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that when I went grey, everything happened. Good things, like starting a career in midlife as a novelist. Like gaining back hours of time I used to spend in a salon. And perhaps the best good thing: learning to love my age.

I don’t fear my own ageing now because I’ve done a large chunk of it, and it’s all been OK. Yes, I do look older than women who haven’t ditched the dye. I know I do. But I’m not invisible. I’m here in midlife, grey-haired, productive and alive. Maybe it’s time to ditch the stereotypes of invisibility and start connecting.

The Bittersweet Bakery Café (Allen & Unwin) by Catherine Greer is out now.

Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.