BLOG 104: BRING IT ON!!!!

“Men get distinguished with age – women get extinguished with age” My grandmother (born 1914)

Oh hell, stop the rejoicing about being fabulous for your age… my Granny’s statement is as true as it ever was. Women still don’t age well. There are still landmark birthdays that say... GAME OVER!

Forty used to be the big one… the one where nature wins… where you are frankly too exhausted to hold in your belly, where gravity takes it toll, where jowls develop and bingo wings magically appear every time you put on a bra. Forty meant that your days of sleeveless frocks were over.

Forty used to mean a sweet tooth would develop just as your libido shrivels and the delights of chocolate seem more certain than the delights of a roll in the hay.

Forty used to mean elasticated waists on trousers – that sweet tooth meaning that lurid indentations would print across your now plus size belly should you attempt to squash yourselves into jeans.

Forty used to mean big. It was the Big Four Ohno. What ever life was left would bear no relation to what had past… everything would now be big…big knickers, big wrinkles, big fat grey hairs.

If life began at forty for most women… it was a very different life from what they had enjoyed up to 39.

Then it changed.

Suddenly forty bumped into the word fabulous… and thought that they’d hang out for a while.

In 1997 the girl who not yet 20 when she married David Bailey turned 40. The world went into shock… she was 40… but wait for it… she was a fox! Sure she didn’t look like her 20 year old self… but she sure didn’t look like what we’d all been lead to believe forty unequivocally had to look like. In fact Marie Helvin looked so good she put girls half her age to shame.

Forty something women sat up took note. For most women it seems that one minute you are impatiently wondering if your teens will ever end and the next you are counting down to the end of your twenties. Your thirties (which really should be the best decade of self awareness) gets completely nuked by your off-spring and it is just a HUGE surprise that suddenly you are forty… you quite literally were so busy living your life… you kind of missed it. It was a wonderful thing that thanks to Ms Helvin et al every woman got thrown an extra decade.

This time, women were gonna do it for themselves. They were going to be forty. Not much they could do about that. But thanks to Ms Helvin …they were going to be fabulous.

By the Noughties they were EVERYWHERE.

Suddenly you could move without being confronted with another hot forty something…. Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, Madonna , Jamie Lee Curtis, Siobhan Fahey, Andi MacDowell, Sade Adu, Holly Hunter… the list went on… and on. None of these women still looked twenty, but they had redefined the big four ohno into something else. They looked beautiful, confident, complete and absolutely enjoying the sexiness that only comes with knowing. Suddenly it was Big and clever to be Four-OH!

Well that was then and this is now… some 13 years on since the world woke up to the fact that looking hot, being hot and living hot was still open to women who previously were only getting hot if the menopause was kicking in.

But wait Jax… didn’t you say STOP the rejoicing? What on earth is up with women looking and feeling fabulous in their middle years? Why on earth should they STOP rejoicing that it’s no longer ‘game over’ at 39 years 365 days?

Glad you asked……I shall you for why.

Years pass too quickly. (Any one who has kids will tell you that… one minute you are wondering if they’ll ever get out the crawling stage and walk… and it seems twenty minutes later they are crawling hands and knees up the stairs at 3am after walking home from a night club.) And yes I get it that forty comes a little too soon for most of us. And yes it was wonderful to not be evicted from the mainstream just because time moved on.

But.

Remember that honour role of the original fabulous forties?

Well each and every one of them is now in her fifties.

And you know what?

They STILL look fabulous. And each is chanting “50 is the new 30”.

And you know what… speaking as one who is soon to join them at that landmark… I’m vaguely disappointed.

Because frankly. I’m done with being thirty. Twenty years after that landmark, half a century after being born… wouldn’t it be nice to move on to a new stage now?

I’m done with worrying about my midriff. Just because one of today’s teenagers actually used to live there doesn’t mean you can’t still have the belly of a teenager. No one needs to be stretched and distended through child bearing anymore! BUT what about the fact we are PROUD of having done this? Actually… what is so wrong with having a body that reveals a little of its history?

I’m done with worrying about grey hairs. Andi MacDowell seems to be permanently on my TV screen informing me that the product she endorses covers all greys. No need to have iron grey hair anymore! BUT what about the fact that I’m rather annoyed with the whole chemical process (read Blog 34 on the bad things that happened when I dyed my hair). Actually… what is so wrong with distinguished trails of silver anyway?

I’m done with worrying about the structural changes to my face. The only changes one can embrace are the ones that take you through from baby to teen, teen to young adult, and young adult to grown up. BUT what about the fact I’m not alarmed that my face will change again? Actually… what is so wrong with embracing the fact that your grown-up face will morph into your elderly face?

I’m done with worrying about the tops of my arms. Oh this one is aimed at YOU Mrs Obama! There is no need to slip into an age appropriate sleeve now -we all can be toned to the pit. Strappy tops for all!!! Actually… what is wrong about bowing out graceful after allowing the world four decades of staring into your armpits?

I’m not saying that I want to become an old hag. What I am saying is that I am rather disappointed that the fabulous forties role models didn’t choose to embrace the next stage. They look as if they rather got stuck. If you take a look at the male equivalents, they seem to have become almost regal as they wear their years with pride.

I realise that men by and large do not have the same issues with ageing. “They get distinguished with age – women get extinguished with age”, or so my grandmother said. But I have come to believe that whilst that was true of my grandmothers generation (no disrespect but she looked like a crone in her 60’s whereas my mother looked lovely)…times have changed. Women can now look beautiful when they embrace their age. (If you doubt me check out Helen Mirren… now THAT is how you do age embrace).

To be hot in your thirties is thrilling. To be still thought of as hot in forties is…quite rightly fabulous.

But I’m not sure I’m looking forward to my fifties being my ‘new thirties’.

Because if truth be told….Thing is I’m done with being hot.

I’ve done hot.

I’m ready for something else now.

And whilst I’m writing this from the comfort of my fabulous forties, I feel sure that when fifty does come a knocking I’ll be ready.

I’m proud to have been born in the sixties, to have seen that amazing decade through the eyes of a child. I’m ecstatic to have been affected by punk in the summer of 1977 and seen my suburban teen world rocked on its axis. I’m so honoured to have spent a large chunk of my early adult years in the 80’s, it was a singular capsule of time the like of which we will never see again. I can’t celebrate the Cool Britannia vibe of the 1990’s enough, it was the perfect end to an amazing century. To have been experienced with life as a new century dawned gave me unique vantage point in the Noughties. This current still unnamed decade never fails to surprise, infuriate and delight me and again I genuinely feel that I would like to be at no other point in my life to experience it.

I do not wish to be taken for someone who missed out on one moment of any of that. I have no need of a “new thirty”.

When fifty comes a knocking - I’d have had half a century of doing amazing stuff. And I’ll have stories to tell. I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and I’ve stared in the DVD and I’d like to look like the person who should get full credit for it!

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