Esther's blog: Shades of grey

Ok I’m going to deal with an extremely taboo subject today.  No not anything to do with a certain book and film.  Instead, I want to deal with the subject of ‘keeping up appearances’ in the office and, in particular, attitudes to grey hair.

About six years ago, when I was still a partner at a large law firm in Canary Wharf, I was having my roots done.  I told my hairdresser I was tired of the vigilante approach felt I had to take, of aggressively quelling first sign of natural hair regrowth with chemicals.  It was expensive, time consuming, bad for my skin and the environment and a feminist issue since men didn’t seem to feel the same compulsion. He seemed shocked and asked how I could ‘wilfully want to look old’, as if what was wilful was leaving my hair to its own devices rather than colouring it.

I have noticed that things have changed somewhat in recent years.  Some men cover up their grey hair, some young women dye their hair grey.  In the mean time, having escaped from my full-time role in the City, I have given up the bottle (at least of hair dye).  As a result, I have saved money and time--and have discovered after 15 years of covering up any stray hair that wasn’t brown that I’m not that grey anyway.

If I thought mine was an unusual case, I wouldn’t bother to mention it to a readership largely in its 30s and 40s.  But my hairdresser says that many people go grey in your age group, and many people (more women) immediately cover it up.   Everyone is under pressure to remain thin, beautiful, wrinkle free--and not grey.  Perhaps in certain jobs, including many City ones, the pressure is greater than elsewhere.  In the case of the law, as the years rolled by I ended up having a lot of clients younger than me.  Maybe it was my own insecurities which lead me to feel that they would not relate so well to me, and I would get fewer deals in as a consequence, if I looked older.

So my next reflection, now I’ve largely let go of the sharp-suited, stick thin, high-heeled, chemically-improved City-lawyer me, in favour of a much less sartorially prescribed world of musicians, coaching and unofficial éminence grise (even the name demands it!) to WorkLife Central, is how much that earlier world demanded these things of me, rather than me demanding them of myself, and does it matter.

I do accept of course that many worlds have ‘uniforms’ and that it would be pretty daft to turn up to an M&A kick off meeting in a onesie.  The coach in me would say, though, that a better test of how important it is to toe the line is to ask oneself how much it costs personally to do so.   That involves considering a whole variety of factors, including personal values, tastes, how to pay the mortgage if you don’t play the game you’re currently playing, topics far too big to ponder whilst eating your porridge and getting the children out of the house today, but ones maybe not to ignore forever, relating to liminal space and transitions, and who and how we choose to be.

Esther is a member of the WorkLife Central Network Committee and runs the WorkLife Central mentoring scheme. She trained and first made her living as a musician and then worked for over two decades in the City, becoming a partner in her law firm. She now combines legal consultancy, executive coaching, performing the piano, teaching and two non-executive Board positions in what seems to have turned into a third, portfolio career.