'I refuse to regret waking up a day older': Ashton Applewhite's fight for age pride

The activist on her manifesto to empower older people, how to challenge age prejudice - and why she dyes her hair grey

When Ashton Applewhite hit 55 years old, she dyed her hair. So what? That's what women the world over do, you might think: dye grey hair to hide their age. But what Applewhite did was different: she dyed her hair grey. Not Kim Kardashian-platinum grey, but defiantly uncool, bog-standard grey.

"I went to a matinee, so it was all old people," she says, grinning widely as she absentmindedly tousles her hair, the brown roots showing. "When it finished, everyone left via an escalator. I looked down and there was not a grey head to be spotted. I suddenly thought: 'This is one way we collude, en masse, in making ourselves invisible as older women - and that's a real problem, because when people are invisible, so are the issues that affect them'."