Two things a woman should never do once she reaches the age of 40, say fashion experts, is to wear horizontal stripes and Capri trousers. I do not wish to pick holes, but surely there are more pressing image issues these days for the middle-aged woman than a three-quarter-length pant.

Judging by some of the 40-year-olds I see in town these days, I think I’d focus on bigger “don’ts” such as: don’t have your navel pierced/attend hen nights in pubs wearing bunny tails/use the word “party” as a verb/imagine that having a tattoo makes you “hot”/ever refer to yourself as a “naughty girl” because you have eaten a custard cream.

But, this year, there is another worrying development: a trend for people who are not six years old to wear cartoon T-shirts. I imagine the intended effect is, “Look – I’m still cute and ditzy!” – but to me it’s faintly perverted that anyone over 25 would wear a picture of anything that might appear on a toddler’s lunch box.

Yet they are everywhere – people with spider veins wearing T-shirts featuring, say, Daisy Duck (Topshop), Minnie Mouse, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm (Asda), My Little Pony (Choice). What are they thinking? No one, apart from maybe the steamed-up-glasses brigade, wants to see a middle-aged woman’s breasts with the words “Little Miss Giggles” stretched across them. It’s Lolita in reverse. It’s freaky. Make it go away.

But perhaps it illuminates what a through-the-looking-glass world we now inhabit when women approaching the menopause wear Tweety Pie tops, while seven-year-olds skip out to play in thongs and push-up bras. Simply coming to terms with your real age and relaxing into wide-fit shoes doesn’t seem to be an option any more. Do we imagine we can magic away crow’s feet with a tight T-shirt bearing a motif of an animated Smurf (asos.com)? Yes, inevitably, manically trying to slap the bloom of youth back into life with Botox, surgery and inappropriate clothing will come to be one of the defining characteristics of the age.

And now we have another phenomenon: “chummy mummies”, in which mothers conveniently forget that their proper role is to scream at their daughters, “You’re not going out dressed like a pole dancer!” and actually join them on the razz, hitching up their skirts and tittering kittenishly when a man says, “This is your sister, right?” Such a mother calls her 14-year-old daughter her “best friend” and confides that, “Pilates has really pepped up my libido!”

Cheerleader chummy mum seems, according to magazines, to be Jade Jagger, who was recently “partying” with her miniskirted, high-heeled 12-year-old. Nice.

Please, let’s stop all this, embrace middle age and remember that it’s just not dignified. Kids’ T-shirts are for kids, not for people with liver spots.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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