Am I good for my age? This question goes right to the heart of the modern
midlifer’s identity crisis — because the answer has to be, erm: that depends
on where you are standing (and who’s next to you). If you are at a ladies’
keep-fit class in Skegness, that’s one thing. If you are waiting at the
gates of an exclusive prep school in Chelsea, then that is another.
There used to be a universal Good For Your Age (GFYA) standard, back when GFYA
meant well preserved considering how many years you had been walking the
planet. Now, how you rate on the GFYA scale depends on which micro-planet
you inhabit, and what the women in your world consider to be appropriate
anti-ageing maintenance. Is it regular exercise and plenty of fresh fruit
and vegetables, or more like regular Botox, plus the occasional bit of lipo?
You might be one of the lucky few who looks naturally GFYA, but, lined up
next to your smart friends with the dermatologists and personal trainers, it
could be a different story.
PLASTICS V NATURALS
Let me tell you where I am to get you started. I am sitting in Tom’s Deli &
Cafe in Notting Hill, where I used to live and still work. The Notting Hill
depicted in the Richard Curtis film was a kind of spangly village inhabited
by quirky characters. Now, it’s more like a first-class lounge at Geneva
airport — the temporary resting place of the international financial elite
and their expensively bought wives. Here, GFYA begins and ends at 36. Before
36, that’s what you are. After 36, that’s what you stay. In this
environment, if you look 46 in the conventional sense — a few grey roots, a
tiny bit of a tummy, fine lines around your eyes, one or two age spots — it
means you are either visiting the area to drop something off, or working for
one of the 36-year-olds.
This is not just a high-maintenance postcode, it is one of those postcodes
that makes you look like a bag lady if you don’t play by their rules. Every
night I head south on the bus to Battersea, which is in an entirely
different GFYA postcode. In my local cafe on Battersea Park Road, the
definition of GFYA is having your own teeth and two separate eyebrows. You
can roll out of bed, slop along there in your pyjamas and still get the
once-over from the chef just because you don’t have a moustache and
nicotine-stained blonde hair.
So, back to Tom’s and the table of women sitting to my left. These lunching
ladies are the women who are raising the GFYA bar for each and every one of
us. I am not one of them. I have not had a teeny breast boost or a bit of
Botox. I am a member of a gym, though I hardly ever get there. I once paid
for the moulds to whiten my teeth, only I couldn’t get to sleep with them
in, so that went out the window. I do get my hair dyed and my eyelashes
tinted, I still buy clothes in Topshop and I am sometimes seduced by beauty
products that promise to lift, tone and rejuvenate. I am as age-conscious as
the next person, and I would like to stay looking as youthful as possible
for as long as possible. I just don’t want to undergo surgery or get my face
syringed every couple of months in an effort to achieve that.
The women in Tom’s would consider my attitude to be somewhere between social
suicide and sluttishness. Meanwhile, there are plenty of women in my world
who are even less anti-ageing-conscious than me — albeit not as many as
there used to be. We are the Naturals (that’s how we like to think of
ourselves, anyway). They are the Plastics.
Ageing used to be an accepted part of life — something women faced together
with a shrug and a rich tea biscuit. Now it is one long bush-tucker trial,
in which these two tribes are pitted against each other in a struggle to
determine the ultimate winner. Naturals have common sense on their side
(potential health risks, the futility of trying to hold back the years).
Plastics have an arsenal of lizard spleen and caviar extract and the whole
nip/tuck repertoire, plus the time and money to see us and raise us. It is
war.
THE PLASTICS: WHO ARE THEY?
There are degrees of Plastics, ranging from the serious pros (Cher) to your
friend who has had Botox, but, honestly, only in her forehead, and she’s
never going to do anything else.
They have given the Academy Awards a new lease of life, though. You used to
sit in front of the TV checking out the dresses and the on-loan Bulgari —
now you’re spotting the latest casualties: “Oh . . . she’s gone. She’s gone. Is that . . . God, it is . . . she’s gone.” That’s if you’re a Natural, of
course. If you’re a Plastic, you’re taking notes.
THE PROCEDURE PRINCESS Depending on when she started, the PP is either
a dead ringer for Pete Burns — half boiled egg, half cat — or she’s like
Demi Moore, an airbrushed, rejigged, streamlined and reconditioned version
of her former self. You can’t deny that the new army of PPs coming off the
conveyor belt looks good, but you also can’t help straining to see the
joins.
THE PINCUSHION So far, she is steering clear of actual surgery in
favour of anything and everything that doesn’t require W an overnight stay.
The Pincushion looks decidedly spongy and puffy on certain days of the
month, and shiny and taut the rest, but, like all Plastics, she appears to
be unaware of these drawbacks.
THE PLASTIC NATURAL Often she’s married to someone older who gets off
on her barefoot and braless aesthetic, and the deal is that she is the
breath of fresh air in their otherwise high-maintenance existence.
Naturally, the PN cannot rely on nature alone to give her that youthful,
fresh-faced edge, so she has a secret maintenance regime that involves
plenty of Botox, teeth whitening and, lately, some smart lipo. She is as
high maintenance as the rest, she just deliberately messes up her hair after
her £60 blow-dry.
DOWNSIDES Looking very weird. Or totally unrecognisable. Apparently
Plastics do not mind this, but their children and pets are suffering the
effects. There is now a book (My Beautiful Mommy), written by an American
plastic surgeon, to help children deal with the trauma of waking up to find
their mother has traded bodies with someone else.
HOW DO THEY DO IT? How much time have you got? There are so many
anti-ageing procedures, you could give up the day job and still have trouble
fitting them all in. But even a half-hearted Plastic has weekly commitments
that will include Botox injections, Restylane or hyaluronic-acid injections,
face peels, carboxytherapy (for stretch marks and bums), laser hair removal,
maybe some Smartlipo for saddlebags. And you know what they say: the more
you top up one area, the more the others look like they’re in need of work.
THE NATURALS: WHO ARE THEY?
Naturals are realists, purists, sceptics, refuseniks, women who don’t think
about their looks much and women (moi included) who think there has to be
more to life than obsessing about marionette lines (and who, more to the
point, recognise that if they have to add line-plumping to the list of
things they need to do in order to compete, they might well combust).
Naturals are also quite confused. Sometimes they assume the moral high ground;
at other times they feel like those women who are still using sanitary
towels more than 70 years after the invention of tampons.
ANTI-MAINTENANCE WOMAN Hardline AMs shave rather than wax and don’t
bother with pedicures or manicures. Their only anti-ageing strategy is a
hair dye once in a while. A lot of people assume that fresh-faced types with
unbrushed hair are AMs, but that’s like assuming that because Kate Moss
scruffs around in Minnetonka moccasins, she’s low maintenance. It’s
hard work looking naturally undone past the age of 30, and AM woman tends to
look more frazzled than fetching (though, 10 years ago, she would have
looked absolutely normal). AM woman gets away with it if she is: a) skinny,
b) glamorous, in terms of her job or connections, or c) attractive.
OLD-FASHIONED GIRL She looks after herself, eats well, loves a beauty
treatment, can’t resist an anti-ageing product, lives to get her hair done,
but she’s not going to fall for the serum that restricts body-hair growth or
the eyelash-elongating formula. Also she’s a firm believer in dressing to
disguise the parts of your figure that you don’t want to advertise, rather
than paying someone to vacuum them away. You wouldn’t have any trouble
guessing her age, but you might think she was doing okay.
EVERYTHING-BUT-THE-SYRINGE GIRL That’s me! Well, not quite everything
(hate facials, hate eyebrow threading, and I have definitely grown out of
charlatans with inflatable pressure boots and magnetised water), but that
leaves plenty of options to play with. I’ve been hosed down and wrapped in
seaweed and buried in clay and colonically irrigated and Hollywood waxed and
walked on by Thai ladies and presented with a special washcloth by Eve Lom.
For the money I’ve spent over the years, I could have bought a small chateau
in the Loire, but that’s fine by me. Part of being a Natural is accepting
that although this stuff can make your day, it just doesn’t stop you getting
older.
HOW DO THEY DO IT? The sensible Natural, who has no agenda and an
average amount of vanity, says no to the white coats, scalpels and syringes,
and really pulls out the stops in every other department. Ultimately, the
secret of being a successful Natural is knowing what not to do.
THE BIG ONE: ARE YOU TOO FAT TO BE GOOD FOR YOUR AGE?
We are all obsessed with size: not because we think it’s gross to be
voluptuous or because we believe that the female body looks better smaller,
but because we want to look good in clothes. And the reason we want to look
good in clothes is because we want to look like contenders.
We want to be considered for the jobs that younger women are considered for.
We want to be attractive to the men that younger women are attractive to. We
don’t, in other words, want to be thought of as getting any older. And so,
by extension, we have reached the point where we now actually believe that
narrow hips, a pert bum, a flat stomach and arms with definition are the
first defence against ageing. (And they are the first. Even the Plastics
worry about their figures before they worry about their faces. If you asked
them to choose between getting fat and having Botox, or taking a year off
Botox and staying skinny, they would take the lines and the pert body every
time.)
ARE YOU TOO FAT OR TOO THIN? Who knows? Yesterday I felt really fat.
Today I feel sort of normal. It has also come to my attention that I am
several pounds thinner than I was when I met The One (a certain pair of
jeans that were tight on me then are almost baggy), and yet I haven’t really
noticed losing the weight. This tells you just enough, I think, because it’s
the same story for all of us. You are only as fat or as thin as you feel,
and if you feel good, you actually forget about your size. (Something else
that says it all: when I met The One, everyone told me how thin I looked.
What they meant was I looked radiant/happy/glowing/ whatever and — because
all the comments came from women, they naturally equated that with weight
loss.)
HOW TO LOOK JUST THIN ENOUGH There is something called your perceived
fat level (PFL), which goes right down provided you show off a bit of a
waist and dress to complement your curves, rather than disguising them. For
example, Charlotte Church is large by modern standards, but is generally
regarded as nicely voluptuous because she favours an hourglass frock with
lots of cleavage. However, were she to dabble in tight designer jeans and
skinny-girl gear, the fat police would be onto her like a shot.
Other ways of reducing your PFL include:
- Not wearing long jackets or voluminous tops and cardigans that cover your
bum. The reality is always preferable.
- Show forearms, calves and ankles and a bit of cleavage. Too much coverage
creates the illusion of bulk.
- Avoid scoop necks. Sharp Vs or round necks are better.
- Steer clear of tight trousers and focus on figure-hugging dresses (see the
Nigella uniform: a gypsy-style hourglass dress that advertises all her best
assets).
- Black always works (if it’s quality black).
- Forget belted coats, full skirts, cap sleeves, leather, sheepskin, bulky
woollen cardis and sweaters, frills and froth and tiers. And beware wearing
knee boots with dresses, if there is no gap between the top of the boot and
the hem.
- Avoid a bob.
- Stick to heels.
- Never fall for on-show fastenings, such as laces or hooks and eyes.
- Avoid masculine clothes, big linen shirts and pleat-front pants unless you
are super tall.
- Watch those big prints. They can work, but only if they’re more Missoni than
flower power.
AND NOW FOR THE IMPORTANT ANTI-AGEING STUFF
At a recent party, I saw a magazine editor who I have known on and off over
the years and remarked to a friend how lovely she was looking:
“She definitely hasn’t had anything done,” I said.
“Hmm.”
“Maybe she has grown into her looks.”
“Hmm.”
“I wonder if she has given up drinking . . . She has definitely given up
smoking. That could be it.”
“Maybe she’s just happy.”
“What?”
“Maybe she’s happy, and that’s why she looks good.”
“Oh.”
In our efforts to do everything right and eat enough tomatoes and drink enough
water and restrict our caffeine intake and get enough sleep, it is easy to
forget that nothing makes you look quite so youthful as feeling good about
life.
And there you have it. How you get your youthful glow depends entirely on what
makes you tick. Also, you will notice, neither of us suggested the magazine
editor might have been seeing an electromagnetic therapist, or eating only
celery and almonds, or borrowing Gwyneth’s personal trainer. When it comes
down to it, everyone knows that it takes more than diet, treatments and
exercise to look good for your age.
ANTI-AGEING TIPS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR APPEARANCE
- Don’t move to the country. You’ll be cold and damp all the time. You’ll
forget about exfoliating. You’ll grow toenails like Howard Hughes, and then
one day a hair will grow on your chin and you won’t even notice it.
- Do not go to the serious side. There is a dangerous assumption that growing
up means rejecting silliness. Not long ago, I went to a dinner at which
there were brains and beauty on every side. All the conversations were
clever and important and worthy of noting down and delivering as
mini-lectures, but nobody was having any actual fun. At that dinner, for the
first time ever, I felt really old.
- Force yourself to be spontaneous. Of course you can get ready in half an
hour. Of course you can go to Spain for a long weekend. What’s stopping you
from having a party? Nothing.
- Never stand in front of mirrors with brutal overhead lighting (okay, this
one is appearance-related). The former model who co-owns the Soneva chain of
hotels once told me that she insists all the mirrors in their properties are
lit to flatter women (ie, badly) because feeling good in your bikini/skimpy
dress is what makes the difference between a happy holiday and a week of
self-flagellation. You risk injuring yourself in those bathrooms, but what
the heck: you go out to the restaurant wearing practically nothing, and you
feel great.
- Don’t worry so much about the pointless stuff. That’s what is giving you
that clumpy nobble between your eyebrows.
You know all this. And, remember, you could be dead tomorrow! So stop beating
yourself up. Who cares!
THINGS YOU SHOULD DITCH BEFORE YOU ARE 40
- Glitter make-up
- High-street jewellery
- Plaits
- Dungarees
- Tiered skirts
- Hairbands and bandanas
- Ankle bracelets
- Rock-band T-shirts
- Tattoos
- Leggings
THINGS YOU SHOULD GET INTO BY THE TIME YOU ARE 40
Grooming Now it’s not so much grooming as survival: a single stray hair
on your lower leg will look like decay.
Waxing your moustache Unless it really is a downy bit of blonde, for
God’s sake do it. Bleaching only advertises the lady tache.
Pedicures Even if you are hairy as a bear under your clothes, a
pedicure suggests that all is shipshape and tidy.
Proper specs Boots’ £3 jobs make everyone look like Great Uncle
Bulgaria.
Big sunglasses These should be worn whenever possible. Not only do they
do wonders for disguising fine lines, but in a pair of Oliver Peoples, you,
too, can be an A-list star hunted by paparazzi.
Colour You can’t get away with a plain white T-shirt any more.
Feminine Even the poster girls for utility dressing soften up in their
mid-thirties and add a bit of detail — you could start with some earrings.
Make-up Go easy, but the days of getting an eyelash tint and leaving it
at that are numbered.
Ironing You need to be totally crease-free yourself to get away with
crumpled clothes.
Exercise You really should. I fully intend to.
SO ARE YOU GOOD FOR YOUR AGE?
Yes, if you can say:
- I can touch my toes.
- I draw the line at leggings.
- I have my own teeth.
- I have stopped home-dyeing my hair.
- I only have friends who make me laugh.
- I still buy albums.
- I crave fashion (sometimes).
- I own nothing beige.
- I never compromise on shoes.
- I have danced in the kitchen in the past six months.
No, if you would say:
- I still want to look like Sarah Jessica Parker.
- I never eat carbs after 6pm.
- I sometimes wear over-the-knee socks with heels.
- I lie to everyone about my age.
- I never touch my face with my hands because it is bad for the complexion.
(This is something Glenn Close once told me in an interview. I have,
literally, never got over it.)
- I won’t allow animals in my house.
- I am always in bed by midnight.
- I need my own room.
- I cannot see the point of ear-splittingly loud music.
© Shane Watson 2009. Extract taken from How to Meet a Man After Forty and
Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved, published January 15 (Penguin £7.99). Buy it
for £7.59 (inc p&p) through the Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271
2135 or at timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
