Grace Warwick is very much a force to be reckoned with. An outspoken, positive and kind pro-age activist, you can’t help but fall in love with her bright outlook and thoughtful words of support. Here she tells InChief how she got her first 1,000 followers on Instagram before even really getting started.
So, Grace, you’ve got over 1,000 followers but only 3 posts on your grid. Did you recently delete and start again?
I’ve only ever posted three posts. The reason I came to social media in the first place was because of my pro-age activism. I wanted to be part of the community that we call ‘Silver Sisters’ and support all the women – well, mostly women but there are some men in the movement. So I spend time daily on Instagram connecting with and supporting other people through their grey-hair grow out. People will follow me because I’ve supported and connected with them.
My overarching purpose with social media is to support people, but it does happen that at every shoot I go on I’ll be asked for my Instagram rather than my phone number. A makeup artist once came to me and said, “Grace, if I’m going to recommend you to people as a model, you need to sort your Instagram out,” so I did!
You don’t seem to promote yourself much on there at all, though?
Well, not really yet. In marketing terms I would say my account is pre-launch at the moment. I model as part of being a pro-age activist so actually I’ve got loads of images that I could share, but my instinct is to support. I’m going to have to try and strike a balance; to show my pro age-activism on my own page as well as through comments and DMs on other people’s pages.
I need to start to change my behaviour, so part of joining InChief was to educate myself, you know, take a step back and read about all the flippin’ algorithm stuff, think about how it all works and what kind of images I want to use.
So your growth so far has been solely from interacting with and supporting other people on Instagram?
Absolutely! It’s from genuinely being interested in people’s process as they start the grey-hair grow out (letting their natural, grey hair grow out from their roots until it’s their whole hair length), genuinely helping them and not really looking at the numbers. People get a lot of criticism for being proud of their grey hair and it’s not an easy journey for everyone.
How did you find people to interact with then? Was it through hashtags?
Yes, exactly that, and the ‘suggested for you’ feature. The next platform I want to work on is TikTok, so I’m spending a lot of time there and using the same strategies.
You describe yourself as a “pro-age mischief maker” which sounds pretty interesting
I want this all to be fun. I basically just want positivity and to be a visible, happy elder. Visibility is important and I’m not distributing the images myself, but if you go onto The Bias Cut Boutique’s page there are hundreds of photos of me.
I love that when I go onto a shoot, the first five people at any shoot will ask me, “Why are you here? What are you doing today?” – nicely, you know, really, really nicely in a welcoming fashion, but nevertheless it doesn’t cross their mind that I might be one of the models. In the room, I’ll be the only person of my age. I just try and hold it all lightly because there are a lot of other problems in the world.
