Like most of the nation, I couldn’t help but be shocked and saddened when the now former CTV News Anchor Lisa LaFlamme showed up on Twitter this week to talk about how she’d been unceremoniously sacked from her job and then asked to keep quiet about it for several months.
As the days wore on, and opinions were spouted and columns were penned, it started to become clear that sexism and ageism were likely at play here, and when it was admitted that her natural hair colour might have been part o the decision making process, women (and men) around the country howled in outrage.
When I began my career, my then-husband and I joked that he actually needed a little more grey to be taken seriously in his industry. But somehow I assumed that I would colour my hair if silver strands started to take over. And in fact, for many years, starting in my 40s, I did. It was tiresome, and while I never had enough white to have the dreaded skunk stripe, I hate how quickly I could see the undyed hair growing in.
Going Grey
While Lisa LaFlamme and I share little – okay, almost nothing – in common, we did both go grey during the pandemic (although I was perhaps a trend setter, last colouring my hair at Christmas 2019!). I blogged about it four months in, and although it took far longer than I thought it would, 18 months later, the last of the dye was cut off. I would hate to think that my employer might one day decide I “looked” too old for the job, instead of looking at my accomplishments and ability to contribute.
Social media was a great place to get support, when we couldn’t see people in the flesh. I followed several “silver sisters” and saw all kinds of transformations. Women like me, who went “cold turkey” and just let it grow, women who grew a few inches of grey and then visited specialty stylists who coloured the rest to match, and others who chopped inches off their hair to finish the transition as quickly as possible. One woman started her journey almost exactly when I did, and seeing her pictures helped me realize my hair was actually growing too. She has long tresses, and continues her transition to this day.
Making Silver Special
An old classmate, later to the gray game, is making a real name for herself on Instagram as the The Silver Canuck, proving that silver can be glamourous, flirty and fun. Certainly not old and over the hill.
And that, of course, leads me back to Lisa LaFlamme. Now I understand that demographics change and that media is entitled to change out anchors at will, to match their plans, but it seems just a little too convenient to change out a greying female anchor with no send-off, compared to older men who’ve held that job – and similar ones.
I’m glad to hear the outrage – and to add to it. As far as we’ve come, we have a very long way still to go. I hope that when my daughter is my age, these are just stories of the past, and that she is treated absolutely equally. That when there are an equal number of women as men around a boardroom table, it isn’t a novelty. That women aren’t talked over, and that their opinions aren’t seen as “less than”. The world is changing, but it isn’t changing quickly enough.
