Be visible

Gray hair is the first thing that we as women get shamed for. If we started to see gray equal vibrant and full of life, other things around aging would begin to be normalized

Stephanie O’Dell, founder of Celebrate The Gray, a modeling agency representing over seventy gray-haired models over 50 years old

It took me a school play to realize that hair hides a secret meaning. In my first year of primary school, the role of the Sleeping Beauty went to a school friend called Deborah. I, instead, was the narrator of the play - how fun. A bit hurt by the choice of the performing arts teacher, I ruminated on the matter within myself. Did Deborah get the part because her name ended with an “h,” something that in Italian gave her an exotic flair? Or was it instead because of her long brown hair? Wearing a white turtleneck and an uninspiring moss-colored skirt, I concluded that her hair tipped the balance needle. I had a short boy’s cut. In the semi darkness behind the scene, I pondered on my condition and began to connect the dots. When I asked my mum why she kept my hair short she was very blunt: she said she didn’t like my curly hair. My grandma had curly hair and the scissors were my mother’s solution to remove her mother-in-law’s resemblance from me. Waiting for my turn to go on stage, it was evident that somebody else held the key to the “meaning” of my hair. I guess that’s why, growing up, I was never too attached to my hair. Its restlessness amused me and I thought that its indomitable nature resembled my character. 

Fast forward a few years, I heard myself saying to my hair-stylist to cut all my hair off. It was a Saturday morning and from the shop windows I could see one of those gray days that herald the outbreak of spring. I was taken aback by my unplanned request, it felt exactly like diving into a cold pool. At every rhythmic chipping of his scissors, the hair fell on the floor without a sound. Some strands, a bit curly, didn’t lose their stubbornness even when they looked up at me from the floor. From the mirror in front of me, I saw my head emerging from the mane and an unexpected awareness rose from the depths of my mind. Never before had I felt so exposed and so strong at the same time. My hair, actually its absence, opened the doors to a new season. It was as if I told the onlookers, you don’t hold the key anymore. I reclaimed the power of my meaning.

Stephanie O’Dell and I have more than our names in common. As the founder of the modeling agency Celebrate The Gray, an agency that represents gray-haired women, we are both explorers of the subtle indoctrination on aging. However ephemeral, hair represents a universe of significance and it is the invisible thread that put us in contact in the first place. Talking with Stephanie I realized that hair is not a one-way road - what onlookers think of us - but the most powerful statement and a testament to what we stand for.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your story. 

In my late forties, my husband and I raised two amazing children. I worked full time before children, but then about three years into my second child’s life I realized I was not doing my job or my mothering very well and I became a full-time mum. I became very involved at their schools: volunteering, doing PTA president, fund-raising, marketing for the school. Then, when my kids were in high school, I started thinking what am I passionate about? What is the next phase of my life going to look like? I didn’t know. It was an overwhelming fear, to be honest of not knowing what I was even passionate about anymore. I got a part-time job at Athleta, an athleisure wear company. I helped women embrace, understand, and dress their shape. I worked for another company and I started my own business styling women. I calculated that I styled close to six thousand women. 

I found that women - no matter age, race, or economic situation - always try to hide the parts of their bodies they don't like. So they tended to dress in oversize clothes, because they thought if they hid that, nobody would see it. To throw on top of that menopause, your body - for many women - changes and women start to dress to hide their shape and then they start to dress as almost to disappear. They said to me, the fashion industry has forgotten us. I didn’t feel that that was true. I knew that most of the marketing and advertising was utilizing 20 and 30 year olds in their advertising. That’s how I decided to talk to one hundred women and how Celebrate The Gray, as a blog, was born. 

How did you recruit these women?

I asked friends and family for recommendations for women to speak to. I wanted to find out if there was a need for a fashion line specific for women over 50 with the goal that if I had found that that was true, I would have partnered with a designer to come up with a brand. What I found, instead, were these amazing, beautiful, vibrant women who were 60, 70, 80, 90, and I started to wonder why these are not the women I am seeing in advertising? Why are we not told these are the possibilities in aging? Why was I feeling bad about my body that was changing, my wrinkles, my gray hair that was coming? Why was I told to cover it all up versus looking at these women and saying “Oh, that’s what I have to look forward to.”

What was the a-ha moment when Celebrate The Gray as an agency was born?

I had more than one. I interviewed a 96-year-old and my, at that time, 85-year-old mother read the blog and said, “She’s so inspiring” and I realized that at 85 my mum was inspired to age differently. It’s never too late to be inspired to age differently. Then I met another woman in her 70s. We were hiking together and we hiked up. I asked her “How old are you?” and she said, “My hiking group thinks I’m in my 50s, and if they know I’m in my 70s they would put limitations on what I can do.” I thought we do that all the time. We do it to women with gray hair; we do it with women and their clothes. “Oh, you’re 50 and you can’t wear that anymore!” Or “You’re 70 and you can’t start a business, you’re too old.” 

These conversations started me thinking, where do these limitations come from? Who’s telling us what’s age appropriate, where are we getting these messages from and how can we change this messaging? I realized there were a lot of decision-makers that are male or younger who are putting up this messaging through the advertising and marketing that was telling us what we are supposed to look like at certain ages. We’re living longer and healthier and these age models are outdated. The 80-year-old of today is not the 80-year-old of twenty years ago. I knew there was this problem, but I didn’t know what the solution was. 

I asked six of the women I interviewed to do a fashion shoot. I did the styling, we hired a make-up and hair artist, a professional photographer, and took the pictures. The way these women started to see themselves was so powerful that I knew that it was something that other women needed to see too. I got some local and national press and I also got women reaching out to me saying: “My hair goes gray, I want to inspire other women to age naturally and take their power back in their aging. I want to be part of what you are doing.” That was almost six years ago and I thought: “I don’t even know what I am doing. Let me figure it out.” 

And then what happened?

I started to reach out to modeling agencies, because I had a conversation with a small brand that was interested in using gray models, real women, but could not find them. They said that if they found an agency that represents gray hair models, they are 6 feet tall, they are not real and we can’t afford them either. On the one hand, I had the women who wanted to be part of something and on the other hand, I had the brand saying we can’t find these women. So I set about figuring out how to open an agency, because no agency wanted to partner with me, to represent the 50+ woman; they didn’t feel like she was a lifetime consumer. They wanted to go after the millennials. I said, the baby-boomer, not only is getting heard, she’s buying for her daughter, she’s buying for her son, she’s buying for her mother. This woman is undervalued and underrepresented. The brands that are paying attention to her are going to have a lifetime customer. 

Over the last two years I became a licensed agency and now I represent over 70 gray-haired models and growing. I only represent women over 50 who are gray, because gray is really the first thing that as women we get shamed for and we get told you have to dye your hair or you’re gonna look old. I believe that if we start to see gray not equal old, if we start to see gray equal vibrant, full of life, just like another hair color, other things around aging would start to be more normalized. The Celebrate The Gray models are ambassadors of change. It’s like when you buy a new car and suddenly you start to see the same car everywhere you drive? You start to think about your gray hair, your wrinkles and “Why can’t I just accept myself here?” You cannot be what you don’t see. So if we don’t see it represented in a positive way, it becomes this negative thing that we’re trying not to have in our lives. 

What does gray stand for to you?

Gray to me can be gray hair; it can be your body has changed. It is the acceptance of your aging and celebrating your age. It can be a job transition, a relationship transition. The more we see those stories and those visuals of women taking power in their age and say, “I’m 58 and this is what 58 looks like” or “This is what 75 looks like.” The women who want to start a business and people say “You can’t start a business, you’re too old.” It’s this power of external forces of stories, external comments of family and friends, and the messages of the dominant culture that we’ve been served and that we’ve bought into. We bought into this cultural age denial that we have to be a certain way to be valuable.

Talking about representation and fashion, is the “weak link” in the offer or in the demand?

I think it is a lack of presentation. There are a lot of products, but the brands need to pay attention to what the 50+ woman needs and wants and how our bodies change as we age. It may be a matter of a neckline, sleeves, hemline to make the dress fit for an older body that maybe has more of a belly. We’ve just launched a campaign for SwimSpot, a swimwear line I’m working with. Jeans and swimsuits are the hardest things for women to buy, especially as we age. Because you’re putting yourself out there in very little clothing in a swimsuit, you can’t hide very much. So they have collaborated with Celebrate The Gray using four of our models (I’m the fifth) and they are showing real women in bathing suits. I spent two months with them and their designer talking about the suits, how it fits in your life, what you want from the suit, what doesn’t work for you. They are listening to the end user; they are valuing her.

How is the market reacting to Celebrate The Gray?

It is slow, but we’re getting incredible feedback for the big campaign we’re part of. Older women are saying “Finally! Thank you!” There’s a disconnection between decision makers who think they know who the consumer is and what she wants and the reality of her perspective instead.

I always find it peculiar that gray hair has different value for men and women. What is your take?

It is interesting. In the US, George Clooney who just turned 60, has been revered as a gorgeous 60-year-old, but you don’t hear that for women. Again,  you would start to hear it if women started to be truthful about how old they were and what they were doing. We have to be out there and be vocal and visible about who we are, what we are doing and how old we are so that people start to rewrite in their heads what age looks like. There’s a double standard for sure. Men are the silver foxes and women are old.

The good news is that women are joining forces against this cultural conditioning. If you look at #SilverSisterhood and the #SilverSisters on Instagram you see these amazing visuals of women with gray hair. They are literally starting to rewrite our story in our heads about what gray hair can look like. A number of them have joined Celebrate The Gray. 

Maybe for some women the problem is the transition between their color and the gray hair… 

These Instagram groups show the transition, you see people with gray hair and brown and you see the whole journey they go through. There is this very expensive treatment to transition you or there is the natural way, a lot of women talk about the big chop, they just keep their natural color and cut off the lower part of their hair.

Where do you see change coming from?

Nobody is going to make changes by themselves. It is important that women understand that working together and being visible about aging positively, aging with possibilities and not limitations is the way for other women to say: “Ok, I want to accept myself now and not to hang on to this person I was in my thirties or even forties” and celebrate that. Hair sends a powerful message. I have long hair. I’m a runner. I like to be able to pull it back. I always thought I had to cut my hair at a certain age, but now I wonder where do these messages come from, where do they initiate? Contrary to my mum, who is 90 and convinced that at such an age you can be forgotten, our generation is not willing to accept that. I don’t want to be irrelevant, I don’t want to be unseen, I’m so strong and powerful, I’m an entrepreneur, I want to be noticed. I think that society is changing because women are not willing to accept being told there are limitations. We want to age with possibilities. 

Are we beginning to be proud of our gray hair?

I think it is happening, I see it a lot because I am entrenched in the world of the 50+ women. All the speaking I do, all the interviews I do are all centered around that. I think that it’s kind of the norm, but this doesn’t apply when I step out of my circle. But people start speaking and brands start to be more age-inclusive and this will allow women to take their power back. It’s a very slow education. I’ve been on photo shoots when the team was made up of people in their twenties and thirties and the two models were 60 and 75. They were supposed to interview one of the models for ten minutes. After 45 minutes I said, “You need to pay her for another hour,” and the interviewer said, “Oh my God, she’s so interesting! I could talk to her the whole day.” I saw this intergenerational education happen. They came into that day with images in their heads of what 75 looked like and they left with their images rewritten. It is a slow process of education. That’s why it is so important to be visible about who we are and what we are doing. 

Covid has been very interesting for the gray hair movement. Many women have been in their homes for a year, they couldn’t go to a hairdresser, and they let their hair go gray. I can’t tell you the number of conversations and women reaching out to me who want to be part of Celebrate The Gray. They say: “I’m finally feeling like myself again. I haven’t felt like my authentic self for years and letting my hair go gray is giving me so much power back.” For sure they get friends and family saying you have to dye your hair again, but they also encounter people who say, “Your hair is so beautiful.”

Is the market truly embracing the change or are we running the risk of “gray washing?” 

There are companies doing that, for sure, but we are very smart consumers and we know when they are doing that. I was talking with a company and they said they put a gray-haired model on the cover of their catalogue a couple of years ago. That’s checking a box. You need to talk about your product: does your product work for women over 50, are your stories really representing and valuing her as a consumer? It’s pretty transparent when brands are gray washing. We have a problem with stock photography, especially with stock photography that represents older women in a positive light. A more realistic stock photography is not very lucrative and not many people want to take it on.

Because my mission is changing the face of aging for women, all the projects I’m involved with, all the persons I align myself with, I always ask myself, is this updating the face of aging for women? I feel the responsibility to these amazing women who have reached out to me and wanted to be part of Celebrate The Gray. Their stories are as powerful as their visuals. I want their stories to be told and I want other women to take back the power of their aging. 

From top left: Stephanie O’Dell and some of the models of her agency and the home page of SwimSpot, a swimline that partnered with the agency

Credits: Amy Carr Photography (photo #1) and Tracey Pettis (photo #3)