If you think about it, it really is ridiculous. However, unless you do think about it for a minute or two, these days it is all too easy to be seduced into the notion that younger women — say, women under 35 — are intrinsically more desirable and compelling than their more experienced sisters.

After all, everywhere you look we are surrounded by an unconditional celebration of feminine youth matched only by an inexplicable lack of interest in older women.

Take fashion. Every year, a fresh crop of teenage girls is conscripted on to fashion’s catwalks. These size-0 striplings are sent blinking out in front of the flashing banks of cameras to sell clothes meant to be purchased by women years, even decades, older than them. It’s no surprise that so many women today worry unreasonably about how old they appear, or fret about their womanly shapes when, again and again, undernourished schoolgirls are held up as paragons of beauty.

In cinema, of course, every year or two we are told that some starlet nearly as young as the catwalk’s teen showponies is the new quintessence of womanhood. But is, for instance, Scarlett Johansson really any more womanly than Charlotte Rampling or Uma Thurman? Does she really have any more mystery than Meryl Streep? If I were being selfish I might just suggest that this is, actually, not such a terrible thing. After all, the people who benefit the most from society’s unthinking worship of callow girls over fullblooded women are men like me: men who choose to follow a different path, who succumb instead to the scintillating, intoxicating allure of the older woman.

That famous roué Jack Nicholson got it about right. Well known for his amorous pursuit of woman both young and old, he once mused exasperatedly: “Why should we all think that everybody drops dead at 50? I have had enough so-called experience with older women in every way. There are things about them that are fabulous.” These fabulous things are too many, too myriad, to even hope to list in full, but here are just a few to conjure with; independence, confidence, sympathy, sophistication, authority, lack of real in- hibition and kindness.

All of these traits are marks of maturity. They are earned through experience. Consequently, they are the sole preserve of the older woman. And as they are gained, the women who possess them become ever more beautiful, ever more desirable, and ever more comfortable in their skins.

As Andie MacDowell said when she was 43: “I am more beautiful that I was when I was younger.” In his book Sentimental Education, the great French novelist Flaubert puts it best of all, describing the middle of a woman’s life as “a period which combines reflection and tenderness, when the maturity which is beginning kindles a warmer flame in the eye, when strength of heart mingles with experience of life, and when, in the fullness of its development, the whole being overflows with a wealth of harmony and beauty”.

There is another compelling but far less flowery factor to consider: sexuality. Women hit their sexual peak precisely at the age when society so often (so wrongly) tells them that their desirability is in decline — the mid-thirties. Men, far more predictable beasts that we are, are at are most voracious in our late teens.

This means that by the time we too are in our mid-to-late thirties our libidos have been on the slide for more than 15 years, while our female contemporaries are revelling in the peak of their powers.

Little wonder, then, that such a large proportion of older women make the intelligent, calculated decision to embark on liaisons with younger, more malleable, men. It simply makes sense.

A survey three years ago from the US National Association of Retired Persons found that around one third of single women between the ages of 40 and 60 dated younger, not older, men. Wonderfully, the older woman/younger man relationship is far less frowned upon than it once was. The term “cougar” was first coined in America to describe dismissively older women who enjoyed relationships with men years younger than them.

Now, though, “cougar” is a badge of honour and Demi Moore, Amanda Redman and even Joan Collins are admired for their relationships with their extremely fortunate young partners.

Of course, you don’t have to be a young man to appreciate fully-grown, magnificent women like these. The sad thing is, though, that many single (and some not-so- single) older men fail to appreciate the bounty of their female peers, succumbing instead to the thoughtless appeal of youth for the sake of youth.

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