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Aging women frequently use hair dye to disguise their age in order to avoid being stigmatized as "old". Recently, however, some have chosen naturally gray hair. Informed by Goffman's theory of stigma, we investigated why they would do so in the face of age-discrimination, and their experiences of the process. We identified two major, oppositional themes, competence and authenticity. Despite wanting to avoid perceptions of old-thus-incompetent, women risked gray hair in order to feel authentic. However, they employed other beauty practices to mitigate the effects of gray hair, indicating conflict between a (subjectively) authentic appearance and societal perceptions of competence.

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To gain entry to a PhD programme you will normally need to write a convincing research proposal. Before embarking on that task, it is a good idea to pitch the general idea to your prospective supervisor(s). This can help to foster their interest, or better still, enthusiasm, and they will often provide suggestions for developing the pitch into a full proposal. However, it can be difficult to channel your thoughts into a concise document that demonstrates clarity, motivation, methodology and that sells your research idea. After some false starts, I discovered, courtesy of a great blog, a structured way to approach this. The pitch is both a sales tool and an invaluable resource for writing the proposal to follow, whether for a PhD or a grant application; this article summarises the guidance I followed.