Annie Forsyth is a greyhare with grey hair. Annie considers the benefits or otherwise and concludes that visibility is in the eye of the beholder. Meanwhile, the greyhares editor uses a feeble excuse to feature grey-haired George Clooney on the site.
I deliberately chose to let my hair grow grey and have never dyed it. I am proud of its texture and colour. I loved it when it started going grey and I had two grey stripes above each ear, then it became ‘pepper and salt’ and looked really great. Now it is uniformly grey. I already look forward to it becoming ‘snow white’. I have marvelled at the effect grey hair has on people. For example, there are definite advantages on buses, trains and the tube: I notice time and time again how people will offer me their seat (not always of course) and leave other old people standing. Usually these are women with dyed hair and from the back you would not know what age they are. Whereas from the back people see my grey hair and tap me on the shoulder offering their seat. It makes me feel smug to know that not only do I not have to bother with colouring, grey roots appearing and so on, but also that I get seats offered to me!! On the other hand however, I have stood in queues at my local swimming pool and been ignored in favour of a younger person behind me. This seems particularly to happen when the person at the desk is male and the person behind me a pretty young woman.
Having grey hair can therefore make you very visible or completely invisible….
Visiting contributor Annie Forsyth is recently retired and lives in South West London. She worked in the public sector all her working life,. She has three children who are grown up, a husband who isn’t, and a mother who has entered her second childhood and lives in a nursing home in London.
