Grey pride

Ageist stereotypes be damned! CATHERINE CLEARYdecides to go grey gracefully, escaping the
tyranny – and cost – of being a blonde. MARY RUSSELLrefuses to give up the dye job, thank you, and MIRIAM LORDponders the follicular follies of people in high places

LIKE ANY HABIT, it had its rituals. It started in my school days when the first grey hairs appeared. There were small bottles of sharp-smelling brown liquid, latex gloves, stiff black brushes, a swirl of home-dye down the sink. Voila, a brighter, glossier look. Then came Body Shop henna mixes, dark green paste with a grassy smell and cowpat consistency, leaving seaweed-green tide marks on the skin. Next, the hairdressers took over. The bottle brunette became a bottle blonde. There were hours spent in salon chairs, scalp tingling with peroxide, brain congealing with boredom.

And then, after 25 years and a rainbow of colours, from copper and plum to caramel and honey, I stopped. I decided to simply let my hair go grey.

Except there is nothing simple about grey hair when you are a woman. From early girlhood, our identity is intrinsically linked to our hair. Then a youth-obsessed culture takes over, propping up a beauty industry encouraging us to dye away the drabness of life. We see grey-haired men as dishy, grey-haired women as dishwater. The American film director Norah Ephron (owner of a sleek conker bob) famously said that it was hair dye “not feminism or aerobics” that has transformed women’s lives by keeping them in the workplace.

We “colour” our hair (note the gentle word, like a child with a crayon) to feel better about ourselves. We leave the hairdresser’s chair with a lighter step. Roots banished for another few weeks, we are more vibrant and glossy. It is simply how women are supposed to look, super-saturated and visible, because we’re worth it. Our faces get older but our hair stays permanently youthful as we rage against the fading of the follicle.

I stopped out of curiosity, boredom and a desire to be different, to resist what is expected of a woman turning the corner into 40. My bleached hair had become yellow. At that stage, between shampoo and conditioner, the hair felt rough, like packing straw. I was fooling no-one into thinking I was a 20-year-old blonde Gap model.

But by leaving the comfort of the crowd would I be transformed into an eccentric old biddy? The only alternative to looking like Peig seemed to be the uber-groomed approach. To compensate for my grey hair, apparently, I might never be able to leave the house without a full face of make-up for fear of being mistaken for my baby son’s grandmother. Would I be trading one tyranny for many?

I have neither the olive skin nor flawless bone structure that the beauty industry tells us we need to pull off premature greyness. Taking such a step would be committing the ultimate sin of modern womanhood – letting yourself go.

After 18 months, a long winter spent in hats, and several bad hair days along the way, the experiment is complete. It has not been a dramatic leap. In kind light I still look blonde. “Scandinavian?” a very drunk man in a dimly-lit bar asked me recently. My new old hair is softer and shinier than the yellow bleached head. It is shot through with darts of silver and still the old dark of my younger hair in places. It is cheaper and lower-maintenance than before. For the moment, my hair is older than my face. It looks different and it feels right.

American author and feminist Anne Kreamer examined the cultural politics of female greyness after deciding, aged 49, to stop dyeing her hair. Her book Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity and Everything Else that Matters, looked at how politically-charged a personal decision about hair colour can be.

Her epiphany came when she saw a photograph of herself (with dark brown dyed hair), her daughter, and a grey-haired female friend. Her transformation to grey hair saw her lose weight, change her wardrobe and examine attitudes to hair dye and female ageing in the US. In the 1950s, 7 per cent of women dyed their hair, she said. Now the figure is between 40 and 75 per cent.

An experiment with a dating website showed a positive reaction from men. But the feedback from recruitment experts was that corporate America was not ready to embrace grey-haired women. So how do Irish women feel about fading follicles?

Make-up artist and event manager Ciara Martin (37) started going grey when she was 16. She allowed her hairdresser cousin to experiment on her a few times and bleached herself blonde for a couple of years, but has been mainly happy to be grey. Some women are positive about her choice not to dye but some, both friends and strangers, try to encourage her back into the world of coloured hair. “When I started to go grey I was in school and people used to come up and tell me I had grey hair. They’d say things on the school bus like, ‘do you know that you have grey hair.’ My friends got quite defensive on my behalf and would say things back like, ‘do you know you have a brace?’. Women say to me, ‘you’d be lovely with such and such a colour’. ” Men, on the other hand, tend to compliment her grey hair.

Martin says she didn’t find it hard to resist the pressure to conform because she simply didn’t care about going grey. “I met someone recently who said that models in Paris were dyeing their hair grey. People in the past have asked me if I actually dye my hair grey.”

Occasionally she is commended by women for being “so brave” as to let her hair go grey. “I think that’s gas, too, purely because the main reason I don’t dye my hair is because I couldn’t care less about it.”

Women in their 50s and older now have role models such as Anne Kreamer, France's finance minister Christine Lagarde, and actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Meryl Streep, who went silver to play The Devil Wear's Prada'sMiranda Priestly.

Younger women have fewer role models. Novelist and actor Mia Gallagher (43) was 11 when she found the first grey strands in her mid-brown hair. She went through the range of colours from red to dark brown to blonde streaks. “After I got married I decided just to let it grow out.”

Recently she had a woman tell her that her hair had inspired this woman to go grey. Gallagher’s mother was grey from an early age. “She is very striking with a very classically beautiful face.” Now aged 70, Gallagher’s mother wears dramatic purple eyeshadows and jewel colours to contrast with her silver hair.

Gallagher believes our fear of mortality is behind the fear of ageing and treating ageing as a disease that can be cured with potions. “If ageing is a disease then life is a disease.” She also thinks that women fear invisibility. “The culture we live in is very visual and there is that need to be seen, to be recognised and visible and acknowledged. Being looked at is part of that and if those looks stop coming then people can go through an identity crisis.”

Women’s hair is often the shortcut to an identity transformation. “It’s a really quick way of changing something very dramatically without altering yourself too much.” Gallagher, who once shaved her head, sees her landmark hair-dos as “trying out new identities”. When she let her hair go grey she started writing fiction again, performing her own work and “maybe going into a new phase”. And there was a sense of relief that all that striving and effort could be put to one side, she says. “It’s also really cheap and I prefer the texture of my hair without colour in it.”

Hairdresser Kevin Bodenham of Moyo Hairdressers in Dublin has had many clients consider it, “for a variety of reasons. There’s the frequency of having to get the colour done and latterly the cost. But very few take the plunge.”

It is the “fear of looking old” that stops most people. Bodenham stopped dyeing his own hair about five years ago as the regrowth is so fast. “I decided I would rather have a really sharp cut. And that’s the secret. Your cut needs to be absolutely sharp and you have to keep it.”

He recommends gentle damage-remedy shampoos to keep the dryer grey hairs looking sleek. “Whenever I’ve spoken to people who’ve gone through this change the reaction has been generally 50/50. Very few people are ambivalent about it. They either love it or hate it. It does help to be young-looking. You’re more comfortable letting your hair go grey.”

Another Irish woman, who didn’t want her name used, said she made the decision to go grey after seeing a photograph of herself. “My son was getting married and in this photograph was someone who didn’t look like me. I had very, very dark brown hair and I just didn’t look like myself. I decided to do something about it.”

She said the process of growing it out was “torture”. “I didn’t want to get the ‘man cut’. I was used to having long hair.” But when she managed it, she says she “felt much more comfortable in my own skin. It does make me look older. I just turned 50 last year. I suit my age. Sometimes I look down supermarket queues and think it’s so obvious that all these women are dyeing their hair. Who are we trying to fool? It’s so expensive and time-consuming. I do get people trying to tell me to dye it. It’s like smokers or drinkers who want you to join them. I don’t feel smug about it. My mother never dyed her hair and I think that’s a huge part of it. When I think of her I can hear her voice saying, ‘please stop dyeing your hair’.” Mia Gallagher follows some simple style rules because of her grey hair. No beige, taupe or mushroom colours, and no cardigans: “They might look great on a 19-year-old blonde with a heart-shaped face, but not on me.” Others say that black can be too harsh. Yet she breaks other cardinal rules by wearing her hair long and having a fair-skinned Irish complexion. She is positive about the energy that comes from letting go of constantly fretting about appearances. “Viva Las Greyas,” she says in a follow-up email. It’s a motto that may take a while to catch on.

Mia Gallagher is leading a writing workshop called Writing with Drama in Spain on July 7th to 11th. Package includes accommodation, massage, relaxation, tuition, meals, walks and conversation. For details, tel 00-34-616-712534 or inthewritelight.com

ELEGANT EUROPEAN CLASSY SMART SELF-POSSESSED CONFIDENT BRAVE NATURAL ECONOMICAL CHIC ADORABLE FOXY HANDSOME SLEEK SEXY FORMIDABLE IMPECCABLE WELL-GROOMED SHARP SVELTE DISTINGUISHED DESIRABLE

"Sure that's the equivalent of not wearing a bra"

It's not the women with the dodgy dye jobs in the Dáil, writes Miriam Lord

A few years ago a Fianna Fáil senator returned to Leinster House after the summer break proudly sporting a collapsed soufflé on his head.

It was still his own hair, but due to injudicious use of chemicals it was grey around the sides with multi-coloured tufty bits on top. Over time, the mad patchwork of burgundy and plum, ginger and orange faded. Until then, eyes were averted, sniggers stifled and nobody said a word. In politics, the male of the species, like a good smoked haddock, is best enjoyed undyed.

For the ambitious newcomer, there's nothing like a hint of steel at the temples to add that touch of gravitas, while silver is the undisputed choice of statesmen.

In the noughties, we witnessed Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair – rather like the economies over which they presided – gradually going grey before us.

It's a leadership thing.

Dipping the fleece is follicular folly for men in politics.

This holds true here. Hair that glows pinky-purple in the sunlight and stains the scalp maroon doesn't do a lot for legislators who want to be taken seriously.

"With the men, they won't go to a professional so they do these dodgy home-dye jobs and end up looking like somebody strained a teabag over their head," says Titian-haired Labour TD Kathleen Lynch. "You try not to stare because they believe everyone thinks it's the hair they were born with."

In 2002, then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder famously went to court to stop a news agency claiming he coloured his sideburns. "Anyone who insinuates that I dye my hair insinuates that I always lie," he argued.

There is sporadic speculation over whether the Brians Cowen and Lenihan dip the fleece. Neither, we are assured.

It's a different story for our female politicians; most happily admit to having their crowning glories chemically enhanced on a regular basis.

"I couldn't go through life without dyeing my hair," says deputy Lynch, who represents Cork North Central. "Sure that's the equivalent of not wearing a bra. "I used to tell my daughters that I would stop dyeing my hair when I became a grandmother, but I didn't. I never had any intention of going grey."

It's an expensive, high-maintenance business, but women in politics know that the public all too often judge them on how they look as much as on what they say.

"I thought I made a very useful contribution in a debate last week and the only response I got was from somebody posting on Twitter that my necklace was fabulous," sighs Lynch.

Her hair was fabulous, too.

Dye Hard

Mary Russellprefers any colour but grey

I used to be a model. No, really. I offered myself to a hairdressing establishment that needed guinea pigs for a competition – which is how I appeared briefly, in the Mansion House, in a silvery purple concoction with the consistency of white wool. I didn't win, but it was a way of getting your hair done for nothing while pretending to be a serious student whose mind was set on far higher things.

The thing is, I liked trying different hair colours – running through the spectrum of blonde to lilac, the latter the colour of my hair when I got married and no, we didn't take photos. Luckily.

At present, the colour is a DIY potion called Caribbean Sunset – although, sunsets being a bit too close to the knuckle, I would prefer Caribbean Sunrise. Still, what with the bus pass and the latest grandchild's arrival, I've decided it's time to tackle the white bits that grace the front of my face like an inverted halo. "I've done my hair again," I tell people, "and I'll leave it to you to guess which part of me is in denial".

Having bottle red hair is great. Little children point and make loud, appreciative remarks; their poor mothers smiling brightly while kicking said children in the shins. The worst part is, whatever colour my hair, I still have my father's white eyebrows. I've tried dyeing them but I come out looking like a clown. Once, in a true act of desperation, I even shaved them.

Some might say bottle red hair is an act of desperation, but when I wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see all this flaming red stuff, I just have to smile – and that's a great way to start the day. Join me.

How to go grey without pulling your hair out

NOW THAT you've stopped dyeing your grey hair, how about giving up the daily conditioner after every wash? Although it might sound like a step towards life in a yurt and nettle-dyeing your own wool, it is a possibility, once you stop processing your hair, according to Dublin hairdresser Derek Milner. Since Meryl Streep slinked across screens as the icy Miranda Priestly, clients have been coming to his salon, Cezanne in Dublin, looking for the silver look. "What that look emphasised more than anything was the importance of impeccable grooming. A good grey cut needs to be sharp and shaped," he says.

"Long hair is another matter. If you want to wear it long, it depends on the person – on their face, their body and their look. Swept-up hair can look marvellous with a twist at the top, but not on everyone."

To help in the painful growing-out stage, he recommends gradually highlighting the tide-mark of roots: "When people start seeing that white line on top of the head they usually give up because no matter what make-up you're wearing, it's hard." People also fear that their grey hair will look yellow. "That used to happen from pollution, or smoking, or turf fires, but they've developed shampoos to brighten grey hair." He recommends spending money on a good shampoo designed to boost grey hair. "Grey hair is like a polythene bag with no colour in it. So in terms of reflecting the light, there's nothing there. To get a shine, you need clean, shiny hair. Because it's not being processed, unless you have frizzy, curly hair, there's no need for conditioner to seal the cuticle. It's just like children's hair. They don't need conditioner. They just need a cleansing shampoo."

The final sell is the ability to stand out in a room of women, he believes. "If you see a woman walk into a room who is well-groomed, well-glam-ed and grey, with a beautiful haircut, she's really going to stand out. She can look really sexy."

Derek Milner is at Cezanne, 34 Drury Street, Dublin 2, 01-6794215.