Episode 85 - With Tina Boden

In this week's episode I'm chatting with Tina Boden, who went grey in Lockdown, and feels very at home with the grey hair.

Tina is all about making midlife matter. And has done everything from entering Mrs Galaxy UK (and posting about it on LinkedIn), to creating AWWA accepting who we are, with her friend Rachel Peru.

Transcript

Helen: Hello, and thanks for joining me, Helen Johnson for the Happier Grey Podcast. I'm pro-ageing and love my grey hair, but I know it can be quite intimidating to take the plunge. So, each week I'll be chatting to other women who've chosen to embrace the grey in the hope of inspiring and supporting you, whether you already have silver hair, in the process of going grey, or just considering ditching the dye.

Today I'm joined by Tina Boden. She's a 57-year-old business woman based on the Yorkshire coast in the UK. She's third generation and 36 years self-employed, having brought her first business with her Mum at the age of 21. She now helps midlife women grow their business, life, and body confidence through coaching, connecting, and community building.

Hello, Tina. How are you?

Tina: I am good, Helen. Hello, and thank you for having me.

Helen: I'm gonna start by asking you what your hair was like when you were a child?

Tina: It was brown, and I always had a short haircut. My mum made me have short hair. I never had long hair, and I always wanted it. 

I think probably 'cause of my age, 57, I've got all those lovely school photographs of me with some sort of square fringe and like a Box cut. Yeah. The ones that you don't necessarily want to display.

Helen: Why did your Mum want you to keep your hair short?

Tina: I dunno. She was a ballet dancer as well, and she was a ballet teacher. I don't know. I really don't know, but I always had short hair, and maybe I got to the stage of just getting used to it. But I did grow it as soon as I could, and I have naturally curly hair.

This morning before I came to do this recording with you, I've washed it, and I blow dry the curls out now, 'cause it just goes frizz if I leave it. And I think that's got worse, A, with going through the menopause and B once I've got grey, but it's how I tame it now to look like it does. 

Unless I'm doing some glam shoot and then I usually have big hair. Or when I did the pageant earlier, big hair, big, big grey hair.

Helen: So how old were you when you grew it then?

Tina: Probably 16, well, maybe a bit earlier. 15, 16? Do you know what? I can't really remember, but I think that's when it was.

Helen: Did you experiment with colouring your hair in your teens?

Tina: Yeah, well, maybe not in my teens, but definitely as I got older, I started to have highlights. Then I had it all cut short. There's a beautiful picture, when one of my best friends got married and I had very, very short hair then, and I did love that cut, but I wouldn't go back to that now.

I do think as we go through certain stages of our lives, we do certain things. But yeah. I coloured it highlights. I didn't ever do home colouring. I never bought a kit and dyed it green or anything like that. Always had it professionally done, until I decided to go grey in COVID.

Helen: When did you find your first grey hair? Can you remember?

Tina: I can't remember, but I know they would come through between the highlights, and they'd appear. I never pulled them out though. My sister-in-law and my daughter-in-law are both hairdressers, so, yeah. But no, I never pulled them out.

Maybe about in my forties, early forties, late thirties was my first grey hair. Didn't really affect me though. I didn't have some sort of, you know, complete freak out 'cause I found a grey hair or anything like that. It didn't bother me. 

My mum's grey, naturally grey, and I actually always remember her being grey. My grandma was grey. I'm surrounded by people who have gone naturally grey. My Mum and Dad ran pubs abd hotels, and my Mum was in the kitchen. She went from being a ballet dancer to a chef, as you do. She didn't have her hair dyed, or coloured, or have those treatments. 

So, for me, it was just something that didn't bother me. It didn't impact me. 'cause I'd seen my Mum do it ,and I was quite happy to follow in her footsteps.

Helen: How many years did you have it highlighted for?

Tina: Well probably between the ages of 16, 17 and what was I? 52? yeah. And what happened with the grey, was in COVID, my daughter-in-law did my hair. As we all know, hairdressers were seriously impacted in COVID and there was people absolutely doing all sorts of strange things to try and get hair appointments when they reopened.

My sister-in-law and daughter-in-law work out the same salon. And I just said to them, you just get on. Because I support independent businesses as well, and I was campaigning for micro businesses, said, you just get on and sort you're paying customers. 

And as that was happening, my roots were getting larger and larger, and then I thought, you know what? I may as well just go grey. 

And because of the work that I do, and the people that I'm surrounded by, I have a lot of people who, my friend Rachel, that I launched AWWA with this year. She was naturally grey. She'd gone naturally grey. So, I had a lot of people that were in my circle that I thought, well, they look great with grey hair, I'll just go for it. Never regretted it.

Helen: How did you feel during the actual grow out itself, when you had the line growing down?

Tina: I think because of the colour, the highlights that I had, it was probably wasn't as noticeable. And I'm quite lucky because my hair seems to change, it's not gone white. It's got that salt and pepper grey. 

And actually, it seems to change shade as well. My daughter-in-law says this to this day, she says this to me quite often. She's like, oh my God, it's gone a different colour again. And it does. It's got dark, and it's got some really silvery bits underneath. So, I think because of how it's gone, it wasn't as noticeable. 

And also, because I wasn't a full head of colour before. And it was COVID. we weren't really seeing a great deal of anybody where we? Or going places or doing things. I didn't feel I had that stage where I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, oh my goodness. 

But it's funny, people are like, oh, you're going grey. Don't do it? Have the highlights. And I'm like, well, no, I'm fine, thanks. I'll just carry on. 

I am impacted sometimes by what other people think and how they perceive. But things like my hair colour, or whether I wear makeup, or naturally ageing, or any of those things, I'm not impacted. 

And I mean, that's one of the reasons that Rachel and I founded AWWA accepting who we are. To help women forty and over, to do just that, accept who we are. Promote self-acceptance, help improve body confidence, and challenge ageism. Which includes that whole going grey. More and more people are doing it, are they? And are probably happier for it.

Helen: Yeah. I think so. I'm gonna take you back to the grow out, just for one more question. How long was your hair as you were growing it out?

Tina: It was shoulder length, just below shoulder length, a bit like it is now. And then it got longer. But yeah, it was about shoulder length. So, it wasn't really, really long but it wasn't very short either. So, it was apparent, but not as apparent maybe?

Helen: But you didn't have it cut short as part of the grow out?

Tina: No, just stuck with being me, and the hair growing out as it was. 

I gave over drinking alcohol in March, 2024, and I had the same response with that as I did with growing out. What have you done that for? Oh, well, why? Well, do you want a drink? No. 

You know, like, do you wanna dye your hair? No. All of those things where you expect certain people to be supportive. They weren't really.

Helen: I was gonna ask you that. How did your friends and family react when you decided that you were gonna go grey?

Tina: My daughter-in-law questioned whether I really wanted to do it. Not in a negative way. But you know, 'cause obviously she's a hairdresser, and she's seen the impact of people that have gone grey. And my thinking was, well, if I go grey and I don't like it, I'll just have some more highlights put in. You know, that's how it was.

But as I've said, I think because of the colour that it is, and how it is, and the different shades it's got. There's an element of it not looking much different on occasion than when I had the highlights in. 

Although the highlights were probably a bit blonde. I've just actually been looking at a picture this morning, and I realized how quite blonde I was. But this picture was taken in a summer of, I think, probably 2019, and I was quite blonde then, blonder than I realized. 

But now I don't really think about it. I just look at myself, and think this is me, and this is who I am. And yeah. but people are, they're funny, aren't they? People when you do things like go grey or give over alcohol, or, you know, decide that you are gonna champion natural ageing as I do, people are really funny about it.

And I think some of that is potentially their confidence, or how confidence is perceived over my own confidence. I'm more than happy to be grey.

Helen: One of the things that stereotypically people would say was, you would go grey, have your hair cut short, wear beige, and kind of fade into the background. You've not done that, have you?

Tina: No. I've gone grey, taken up modelling, entered a pageant for the first time, launched a campaign that's all about challenging ageism in swimwear and lingerie promotion. And now, I'm seen alot in bright and colourful swimwear, even lingerie on Instagram, also LinkedIn. And I've probably done the reverse.

I have certainly not disappeared into beige-dom, let's put it that way. No, and actually, interestingly, when I entered Mrs. Galaxy UK last year, and also, I became Mrs. North Yorkshire Galaxy 24/25, and the final was in March this year. And I was the only grey head woman on the stage. 

Didn't bother me. I think I was actually, maybe there was one other lady as well. But you know, it was, quite apparent. But yeah, the brighter, the spanglier, the clothes, the better for me.

Helen: Why have you chosen to be so visible?

Tina: Well, I think some of it has come from, from 2012 to 2022, I campaigned nationally, with a guy called Tony Robinson. Not the Baldrick chap, another Tony Robinson. And he and I campaigned to make life in micro business better. 

Because Tony had worked for a long time with government and civil servants, around the importance of small business. And we realized that micro businesses, those that employ nought to nine, had different requirements. 

So, for a decade we campaigned for micro business, as well as running my own businesses as well. Tony and I co-founded and co-funded that. And I think what became very apparent was the fact that I am very much about championing the minority, you know, the people that maybe don't have the voice the same.

So, Rachel Peru, who I founded AWWA with, she's very much around challenging body confidence. I got to know Rachel through, social media, through Twitter when it was a lovely place to be, before it became X. And she had inspired me to do some modelling. I was all for the campaigning, going down to the Houses of Parliament, and challenging, you know, MPs and stuff like that. 

But then my friend Jane, who has a lingerie shop, in Knaserborough, who we’re actually gonna be live mannequins for this weekend in her shop window. She said to me, oh, this was in 2019. I'd been 50 in 2018. And the year after she'd said, oh, why don't you come, and walk for me in a fashion show I'm doing in November?

And I said, I can't think of anything worse. That's so out of my comfort zone. And she said, Tina, you stand on stages and talk to auditoriums of hundreds of people, and you campaign. I went, yeah, but walking around the Hotel du Vin my bra and knickers, or her bra and knickers, is way out of my comfort zone.

And then she told me she was raising money for the Robert Ogden Cancer Centre. And I have helped set up legacy funds. I was a trustee of Ellies fund Brain Tumour Trust at the time. So, I'd done a lot of work with different, cancer charities. 

So, when she told me this, I thought, oh, well, you know what? I'm gonna do it. And I did. And it was well out of my comfort zone, but I loved it. And then I thought, I'm gonna do this again. I said to Jane, right, can't be in for next year, it's fine. And then of course we had COVID. 

So in the meantime I went grey, but then last in 2024, I walked for Rachel in a runway show that she did, it was part of York Fashion Week, and she wanted all the models to be over 40. 

Because she is a curve model, and she has done so much swimwear and lingerie, and she knows that that age range is underrepresented in the fashion, beauty industry. Beauty's getting a little bit better, but it's definitely the fashion swimwear, lingerie, it's very much tokenism. 

And when she'd done that, I decided that I wanted to do more. But I'm only five foot three. 

Helen: Okay.

Tina: So, it doesn't matter that I'm grey, it matters that I'm not five foot six, or five foot seven, or five foot eight, because most model agencies don't want you. You're too short. So, I am represented by an agency.

But I had some photographs done for my portfolio at a destination shoot in Majorca. A friend of a lady that I coach in business who's a pageant director. And when I was having the photograph taken, Charlotte said to me, oh, you should enter a pageant. And I was coaching Holly, the Pageant Director, and she said, yes, you should. 

By this time, I'd had a lot of midlife women come to me, and I brought some groups together, and there was a lot going on. A lot of midlife women who I'd supported maybe when we were doing the micro business campaigning had come to me, and they were struggling because of menopause, and trying to run a business. 

I'd been through surgically enforced menopause, which had far more impact than anything else. So, I'd started bringing these groups of women together, and what I realized was if I wanted to help them make midlife matter, I had to go out there, and champion some of the stuff that they were impacted by.

Became the voice, the things that maybe they wanted to see, which is exactly what Tony and I had done with the campaigning for micro business. And so, I did, and I entered a pageant. 

And then after the pageant there was a swimwear section, and I put a picture of me on LinkedIn in a swimsuit, and challenged brands and businesses in the fashion industry. To why there wasn't more representation like the picture that people could see on LinkedIn.

And it had 134,000 impressions. It had 2000 reactions, and 500 comments. And most of those comments were women 50 and above who felt invisible, undervalued, you know, all of those things that a lot of people did. And women that were in you know, really high positioned in their careers and were doing really well. 

And, I rang Rachel and said, we've gotta do something about this. And I know that she's been championing, and campaigning for body confidence for a long time. And we chatted and we said, right, we're gonna launch. well, it's become a movement AWWA accepting who we are.

And you know what? I'd say 70% of the ladies in it are grey haired.

Helen: Cool.

Tina: And they are now wearing swimming costumes when they wouldn't have done before. Don't get me wrong, they're not doing what I'm doing, and strutting around on Instagram, or at fashion shows, or whatever else in. But they are coming together in a safe space where they know there are groups of women.

We did a paddle and picnic, as well as the launch we had on the 20th of June for AWWA. We did a paddle and picnic in July in Filey, on the beach in Filey. And then we had an event, at Crommuck Water, in September. 

And we currently have six photographs hanging in an exhibition in London, Beyond, which has been curated by Olive Collective. And they are all women over 40, in swimwear. Or clothes that they feel confident in at the beach. And as I say, the majority of those women are grey, but actually, together in that safe space.

Like you are doing, you're giving the women people to listen to, people to feel that they're not on their own. 'cause you know, people that can turn away from the negative comments, because they've actually got people who want to support them, and they're going through the same thing.

Helen: My background is in marketing. And I always find it crazy that the age group that we're talking about, are the age group with the money, and brands don't feel the need to target them in their promotional activity. So, I am curious to know whether you had any reaction from brands from your LinkedIn post?

Tina: No, nothing. And you have to bear in mind that I work supporting people in business, not just women, but people in business, and I have done for a long time. And that's from all my knowledge and experience. So, I've been doing business support, since 2011. 

That was how the campaigning came about really, because it was some of the things that people experienced. My Making Midlife Matter method that I've written, the program that I've written a lot of people that take part in that are women in business, who look at the business growth and how they can you know improve their work-life blend. 

And one of those things, Element Three is money matters. So, we have a whole spreadsheet, and we look at the money and the business, and how we do our best sales. 

And then Element Four is build your crowd wisely. So, it's looking at how we get more of those best sales. Hello, as you've just said, Helen, why are those brands not actually doing that? Why are they not reaching out?

We have shared on our Instagram, social media, we have shared pictures. We've tagged the brands in. There is not one brand who has shared those pictures. And those pictures have been shared with the permission of the women. They've deliberately given us the brands that you know of, the swimwear that they're wearing. There is not one brand that has shared to their Story. 

Sorry, there is Bettylicious Retro. Fiona from Bettylicious. Because she is a midlife woman running an independent swimwear brand business she has, and she supported us. 

Jane who has Sheer Bliss, has this very problem. Not all, but the majority of her customers are midlife, menopausal women. But she gets pictures from brands that are women younger than 40. They've got the body shape and you know, diversity in that way. But they haven't got the age thing right. 

So one of the key things that we're doing over the winter, Rachel and I, we've got some amazing pictures from the launch that a photographer, midlife confidence photographer, Mary Davis took for us.

And we're gonna be creating posters to be used in lingerie, swimwear, wherever. That says, this is us. Where people can look and see a group of women. 34 women on a beach in Scarborough, majority of them in swimwear, all laughing, all coming together. 

And that was the impact of the launch of the exhibition. That was the power. The people that were at that exhibition, and talking about the picture, they're like, look at that. Look at all those women. And yeah, look at the age of them. And look at the fact that the majority of them are grey haired. Look at how happy they are together. So, you tell me why brands aren't doing it?

Even my own Instagram, where I've got the professional shots that have been done that are exactly like any image you would see in any brand promotion, and some. Even there they're tagged, they're used all tagged, ignored. It's like tumbleweed.

Helen: Well, marketing is a very young career.

Tina: And this is the problem, isn't it? And this is the problem. And knowing what I know about business, because I know a lot about business, as you say. Knowing what I know, I mean, aren't they just missing a trick?

Helen: Yeah, completely. If women felt comfortable to be seen in swimwear, they would sell a lot more of it.

Tina: And that is exactly why Rachel and I will be in the windows of Sheer Bliss on Saturday as life mannequins in swimwear and lingerie. And itt's all part of the campaign that we're doing for Autumn winter, 'cause we're fair-weather swimmers, wild swimmers, cold water swimmers, whatever you want to call it.

Unlike the lovely ambassador for the Lake District, Sarah Barnes, who has got the most gorgeous, long grey hair. She's amazing. She'd make a perfect guest if you haven't spoken to her already. 

But we're fair weather, so we wanted to do things that are indoors. So, our new campaign for the autumn winter is called Hour Some Fit, and it's encouraging women to have their brass fitted professionally. Because actually, that makes a huge difference to our body confidence, and it's really important to our posture, and all sorts of aspects. 

But as part of what we're doing in helping Jane, we're launching our campaign. Jane's launching her Autumn and Winter Collection. So, Rachel and I are being live models, live mannequins in the shop, and in the shop window on Saturday. 

It's the first of five. And we hope to reach a hundred women who have all gone and got their bras measured professionally, and yeah, feel more confident having done so.

Helen: I'm gonna ask you one last question. If somebody came to you and said, I'm thinking about going grey, what advice or tips would you have for them?

Tina: Well, my advice would be it is got to be your choice. 'cause I'm very much about personal choice and there is so much influence, so much influence from media. So, it's got to be your choice.

And if you really want to do it, surround yourself, Element four of my program, Build You Crowd wisely. Surround yourself with women who will encourage you, and inspire you, and support you to do it.

And just go for it. You won't regret it. Well, I haven't.

Helen: Me neither. There's no going back. Okay. I'm gonna say thanks so much for joining me then. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Tina: Thank you, Helen. Thank you for having me.

Helen: Thanks so much for joining me for this week's show. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I'll be back again next week, but in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram at happier.grey. Have a great week.