{"id":70,"date":"2013-03-24T15:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/?p=70"},"modified":"2013-03-24T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T15:00:29","slug":"shades-of-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/shades-of-grey\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cActually mum we prefer your hair the way it used to be.\u201d\u00a0 No, this\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0in response to a perm gone wrong or a ropey cut; this was about me having grey hair.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been working in \u00a0PR for decades, so I know how important image is and I also understand and empathise with the pressures some women feel to look younger to hang on to their jobs, their men even. \u00a0 Apart from staying trim, dressing well and having a great cut, most women have been disguising their hair colour for decades. \u00a0And I was one of them. \u00a0In fact for many of those years, I didn\u2019t know what my true hair colour was, but I knew that one day I\u2019d have to face being grey and was dreading it.\u00a0 Well, getting breast cancer and having chemotherapy meant my decision to embrace the grey was sort of forced on me.\u00a0 I lost my hair and, when it started to grow again, steel grey in places, white in others, I decided NOT to reach for the hair dye.\u00a0 As much as I wanted to go back to the security of Medium Golden Brown (with-caramel-highlights), I thought I should take advantage of my situation and turn a potentially ageing hairstyle into a short, funky look.<\/p>\n

As I was getting used to the close crop and the new colour, which I thought looked good on me (despite the double-takes and instinctive kerb falling reactions from friends and acquaintances), my teenage kids admitted that they preferred my hair colour the way it used to be, and perhaps I\u2019d think about growing the hair a little longer too.\u00a0 Were they concerned that their friends might think I looked like a granny?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did they think I looked a lot older?\u00a0 Yes to that too.\u00a0\u00a0 Then my sister took me to one side and said that someone at the school fete thought I was her mother and my children\u2019s grandmother.\u00a0 All this could have made me fall off the wagon completely, but I held my nerve until I could get a more objective view.\u00a0 I confided in a friend who, sadly, agreed with the kids.\u00a0 Being grey was just plain ageing.\u00a0 To top it all I saw a picture of Jane Fonda at 72 looking fabulous, with the style and hair colour\u00a0I used to have.\u00a0 To say I was depressed would be an understatement.<\/p>\n

My confidence knocked,\u00a0I started studying grey-haired women in their 70s and 80s and wondered if that\u2019s how I looked; I even stopped doing SuDoku in public as if that might mark me out as being older than my years.\u00a0 Then I felt angry that the colour of my hair should become such an issue. \u00a0I’ve\u00a0always been used to people enjoying my company and taking my advice because of what was going on inside my head, not on it. \u00a0Clearly grey was more than just a colour, it was a sort of litmus paper that indicated I was, in some way, \u2018past it\u2019.<\/p>\n

Now I wear my greyness like a badge of pride. \u00a0I hope, despite the views of my nearest and dearest, that\u00a0I’m\u00a0making it a little easier for other women to follow my lead.\u00a0 Until they do though, I shall enjoy making an entrance and cutting a dash wherever I go, because, believe it or not, my greyness is making a statement and\u00a0I’m\u00a0enjoying it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cActually mum we prefer your hair the way it used to be.\u201d\u00a0 No, this\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0in response to a perm gone wrong or a ropey cut; this was about me having grey hair. I’ve been working in \u00a0PR for decades, so I know how important image is and I also understand and empathise with the pressures some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharonmorrison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}