Get your hair cut

As you may have noticed, hair fascists tend to go one of two ways with hair over 40. The first suggestion (presumably written by 20-year-olds) is that you cover all the bits of your face that don't measure up to some invisible standard - crows' feet, forehead wrinkles, steadily growing ears, etc. If you follow this prescription, of course, you might as well wear a yashmak.

The other suggestion is that you should have it short, so that it doesn't suffer from weakness and breakage and is easy to maintain in your busy schedule of being a worker, wife and mother.

Personally, though, I can't help feeling that very short hair doesn't favour most mature women either. It's hard enough to get away with it in your 20s. Short cuts leave your features very exposed, which is fine if you're very thin or very cute, or have very strong features, but those aren't descriptions readily applicable to most of us, especially once we hit the big 4-0. On a striking woman, a short cut can look great, but on a heavy woman, as seen at right, a short style can look butch, especially if it shows the ears (which is a characteristic of men's cuts). Short styles also lack movement at a time in your life when you might very much want to accentuate your femininity rather than detract from it. This woman's heavy jaw and neck are fully exposed in this style - something a tad longer would be infinitely more flattering.

Longer hair can usefully draw attention away from areas you're not happy with, and add length or width to your face, depending on how it's cut. It's also more versatile to style and accessorise than short hair and you can really ring the differences between day and night. By longER, of course, I really mean somewhere between chin length and shoulder length as in this golden zone there is a length that suits most women.

The most flattering style for a mature face is generally a layered cut that ends either at chin level or just above the collarbones. The layers give your hair more body - important if your hair is starting to thin out - while the length gives movement and casts shadows on a jawline or neckline that is starting to soften. This choppier, layered, more casual look can take years off you.

Blunt cuts, even if you've worn one all your life, are best avoided. Like very plain clothing, blunt cuts create hard lines, which benefit from perfect skin and teeth to set them off. A formal blunt cut can be really ageing, as if you're wearing a hair helmet (ALL formality is ageing, which is why your look benefits from becoming more casual as you get older) - you can see this clearly in this before and after shot of Anne Kreamer, author of Going Gray (and more on grey hair tomorrow).

When you're looking for inspiration for a new hair style, don't look in hair magazines, with their extreme trends aimed at teenagers, look instead at what the women you admire are doing with their hair. This might include newsreaders, actresses and television presenters, or just people you know, or see in the street. These don't need to be women the same age as you, or even women who look like you, though that helps - you just need to identify what it is about their hair style that you like.

The change can be very liberating. A few months ago I moved from a blunt-cut bob with a fringe (left) to a more assymmetric, off-the-face look (right), partly inspired by that of CNN news presenter Sasha Herriman (below). Although Herriman is blonder, taller, thinner and 35 to my 44, we share similar attributes, such as a long nose and thin top lip, so I had an idea that this might suit me. I found, to my surprise, that the new cut not only opened my face out, it also balanced the marked assymmetry of my features, which I'd spent most of my life trying to correct with centre partings and heavy fringes. I'd clearly been barking up the wrong tree for years, and despite my husband's love of my former jet-black Louise-Brooks-style bob, he agrees that this current style is the best haircut I've ever had in terms of it actually suiting me.

Tomorrow - hair colour for the over-40s