In my early 40s, it hit me that I was ageing. At first, the physical signs really bothered me. Solving the grey-hair part was easy: I embraced hair dye, rejoicing that I could cheat the grey grim reaper for ever. Next came the wrinkles and saggy bits on my body. I fought them with an array of costly, time-consuming and mostly ineffectual rituals. Seduced by a barrage of ads playing on my fears of growing older, I diligently bought and applied a cupboard full of allegedly age-defying serums and moisturisers to my face and body. But it began to take so much effort, especially the hair. Those darned roots required a fortnightly touchup. I planned my life around the emergence of that badger stripe.
One day in my late 40s, I had an epiphany. What if I just … went grey? It really shouldn’t be a big deal, but for many women it is. No silver-fox badge of honour awaits us: we are likely to be pilloried for “letting ourselves go”. I feared not only being grey, but going grey; facing not so much a bad hair day as a bad hair year. Grey hair would unequivocally position me as old, heralding to everyone that my inevitable downward slide towards invisibility, senility and death had begun. Nonetheless, I decided to try it.
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