AS research reveals ageing happens suddenly at the ages of 44 and 60, writer Julie Burchill, 65, says . . .
LYING on the beach in my 60th year, I looked at my newly-minted bingo wings and reflected that though I’d always been a fan of the batwing sleeve, I’d never actually expected to grow them.
And how on earth was it possible for a face to look both bloated and haggard at the same time — an occurrence that surely contradicted all the known rules of geometry?
So I’m really not surprised that although we’ve generally seen ageing as a gradual process, new research by Stanford Medicine, in the US, claims it really can happen overnight, specifically at the ages of 44 and 60.
It’s thought that this is the reason why major health issues affecting the heart and bones tend to turn up as unwanted gifts on specific birthdays after we hit 40.
At first, the decline at 44 (coincidentally the bingo call for which is “droopy drawers”) was thought to have occurred because of the menopause — until the data showed that men too were hitting the buffers at this age.
Nevertheless I can’t help thinking that women will read about the 44/60 fall-off points with more gloom than men.
While men are used to being evaluated as the sum of their parts, women are used to being judged on some of their parts — specifically, their t*ts, teeth and tresses — and these do tend to degrade with age
I’ve been a striking woman since I was a youngster — not pretty-pretty, but tall, dark and handsome, with bright green eyes and a splendid rack.
I can’t remember my forties — they were a blur of hedonism which made an Oasis tour look like a Saga tour of spa towns — but I do recall very much how I woke up on my 60th birthday in the summer of 2019 and appeared to have gone from Snow White’s Evil Queen to her disguise as Old Crone overnight.
There are photographs of me in my mid-fifties in which I look like a girl — but by 60, the game was up.
It was as if overnight I’d gone from being a much-married man-magnet to only being useful to the opposite sex because I was tall enough — 5ft 9in — to reach down stuff from the top shelf of the supermarket for old geezers in mobility carts.
“You’re a lovely big girl!” doesn’t have the same erotic charge when all a man has on his mind is the last Fruit Corner hiding at the back of the chiller cabinet.
Then the stiffness — also of a less interesting kind — sets in.
I’m lucky in that I’m quite robust for my age, but “wear and tear” is a reality that no sexagenarian can dodge.
I would point out smugly here that my contemporaries who have pursued fitness all their lives are actually in a worse state than me, lots of them with knees and hips shooting around like Jumping Jacks on Bonfire Night.
I’ve always favoured the saying “Don’t run if you can walk.
“Don’t stand if you can sit. Don’t sit if you can lie down” and thus, at 65, find myself relatively untouched by the rigours of life after a lifetime of “resting up”.
Yes, it takes me a while to get going in the morning, but I’m philosophical — whereas I was once like a perfect three-minute pop song, now I’m like one of those great Eighties dance tracks with a really long intro.
When I was 57, aware that I was young-looking for my age (after I’d lost a lot of weight which I accumulated in my 40s — one magazine printed a photograph of Jabba The Hutt and said it was me) I was more than happy to be sent by a newspaper to the famous cosmetician Dr Michael Prager for a feature on first-time first-time Botox use.
When he laughed urbanely and spoke the magic words — ‘Where do you suggest I inject you? You have no frown lines’ — I was, contrarily, hooked.
Ignoring the fact I got to 57 with unwrinkled skin through a strict regime of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, I went mad for “tweakments” — I can barely bear to type the horribly coy word now — and spent thousands on facial fillers pursuing what I already had.
Then came lockdown — and I came to my senses.
I looked in the mirror, saw a 60-year-old woman — and was glad to see her, alive and kicking when friends younger than me had died during the pandemic.
Five years on, I’ve relaxed into my dotage.
The falling away of vanity is a wonderful thing but impossible to avoid.
Meeting new people when I was in my 50s, I’d mention my age casually and they’d usually say with genuine surprise, “No, you’re not!”
When I say I’m 65 now, no one’s shocked.
But seeing other women of my age attempt to hold on to their looks makes me feel like a boxer who has willingly climbed down from the ring.
I don’t care to reach for those trophies any more.
When I hear how many women — even middle-aged ones, let alone old ones like me — gripe about being “invisible”, I reflect that they mean invisible to strangers.
So what?
Who’s so desperate for validation that they need their attention fix from some passing random in a bar?
There’s a reason that “invisibility” is such an enduringly popular superpower.
I find it relaxing, as like most women I’ve been pestered from adolescence by strange men in the street.
By the time they lose their youthful looks, females will have had all the sex they wanted and perhaps some they didn’t.
It’s not the same for men, unless they’re some combination of gorgeous, famous or rich, so maybe this is why they perceive the process of women getting old as being far more harrowing than it is.
Imagine, getting too old to be some perv’s masturbation inspiration.
How will we ever cope!
I can’t help thinking that when beautiful women in their 60s, such as Andie MacDowell and Sharon Stone, have embraced the “age burst” by letting their hair grow out grey and/or adopting a more sedate style of dress, it’s like putting up a sign: NO LONGER YOUR FANTASY.
Previous research indicates another spike in ageing, bringing with it another collapse in perkiness, may take place at 78, though as the oldest participants in this study were 75, this couldn’t be confirmed.
That’s handy.
It sounds to me very much like a conveniently vague way to try and scare old people out of throwing caution to the winds when they truly are better off planning for a good time than a long time.
Indeed, the authors of this survey believe that the findings could help with interventions such as stepping up exercise in years when oldsters can expect rapid muscle loss.
Well, they know what they can do with that malarkey.
So I won’t be crying into my cocoa about this survey, but rather sniggering into my Long Island iced tea that I’ve got the hang of this Wicked Old Lady thing, with my big bad 60th birthday half a decade behind me.
Bring it on!
