WHETHER it's Madonna looking like a slutty female flyweight on the cover of her latest album, Hard Candy, or John McEnroe flaunting his taut body on the beach, one thing's for sure: pushing 50 ain't what it used to be.
Once, contemplating your h
alf century meant settling down in your armchair and tuning into The Archers. But as Madge and McEnroe showed last week, it doesn't have to be this way. Today's third-agers are more likely to be spending their children's inheritance, embarking on unsuitable new relationships or going bungee jumping than having an early night with a cup of Ovaltine.
Some are using the time to achieve lifelong ambitions: writing a book; learning to paint or getting a degree. But for others, hitting the big five-oh is an excuse to behave even more disgracefully than they did in their youth.
For her latest book Sex And The Seasoned Woman, author Gail Sheehy interviewed 400 women from 45 to 91 and found hitting 50 brought with it a new sense of vitality. One dentist, for example, decided it was about time she learned to fly. This in turn led to a love affair with a 28-year-old flying instructor.
"We belong to a new universe of lusty, liberated women who are not willing to settle for the older stereotypical roles of middle age," says Sheehy. "A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience. She is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of her life, despite failures and false starts."
For some people, of course, it isn't so much a case of hitting 50 – it's more a case of 50 hitting them. Plastic surgeons' waiting lists are full of third-agers struggling to turn back time. Women are going under the scalpel to get rid of eye bags and laughter lines, while men are having pectoral implants and liposuction on beer bellies.
Last week the Foreign Office highlighted the growing problem of "Saga louts" – over-50s getting tanked up and into trouble abroad.
There were also new reports of a marked increase in sexually transmitted disease among the over-50s as, newly single after divorce or bereavement, they enjoy a sexual freedom they missed out on in the past.
A veritable bevy of glamorous stars are hitting their half-century this year: Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer and Holly Hunter among them – and their attitude seems to be that age is no longer a bar to anything.
Madonna – whose new single '4 Minutes', featuring Justin Timberlake, will be released tomorrow – seems to be a 49-year-old in denial. Those who work with her may call her Oldfrapp behind her back, but she battles every day to create the illusion that she is still in her 20s. Rigorous work-outs mean she can perform eye-boggling stunts on stage. However, unlike tennis champion and fellow 49-year-old McEnroe, whose body looks every bit as good as it did at Wimbledon 15 years ago, exercise has left her arms sinewy, while what is rumoured to be plastic surgery has left her face looking harsh and angular. Not many women of Madonna's age would want to pose legs akimbo in a black leotard and thigh-length boots – for their children's sake if not their own. It is, she insists, all a question of attitude.
Jamie Lee Curtis, who turns 50 in November, has taken a very different approach. Refusing to rage against the dying of the light, she shows how it is possible to make an asset of the encroaching years. Proud of the way time has changed her body, she has posed grey-haired and topless for the front cover of a forthcoming issue of the Association of American Retired People's magazine. The actress, who eschews plastic surgery, said she decided to bare all to convince women they can still be beautiful in old age if they take care of their bodies.
To Glasgow writer Muriel Gray, who enters her sixth decade in August, Madonna's approach to ageing borders on the pathetic. "I do feel sorry for people who sold themselves on sex – when they get to this age they must have a real crisis," says Gray, who looks to the likes of Dame Helen Mirren and Dame Judi Dench as templates for growing old gracefully.
"I feel that when you hit 50, you need to behave with a little bit more decorum – I mean I still do silly things, but I don't go clubbing. Because I have the same body shape as I had when I was 17, I do sometimes go into shops and buy the most ridiculous outfits. I bring them home and realise there's an almost 50-year-old head sticking out the top. Then I hand them over to teenage girls who think it's fantastic I could have been so self-deluded."
Emma Soames, former editor of Saga magazine agrees. "There's a saying: 'If youth but knew and age but could.' Your fifties are the only time in your life when you do have the knowledge and you still have the drive and ability," she says.
Of course, the years may exact a more punishing toll than a few wrinkles and a receding hairline – Prince, a few months shy of turning 50, is about to get a hip replacement, and 49-year-old Michael Jackson has had most of his face replaced.
Between denial and surrender, is there a third way? Unlike many of her peers, Pfeiffer makes no claims to be reconciled to turning 50, declaring only: "Well, it's better than the alternative, isn't it." She has decided against plastic surgery, though it's something she thinks about from time to time. Her obsession with beauty creams is, however, diminishing with age. "I have so many beauty products, I'm not kidding you. So certainly I feel the pressure that women feel and at times, it's a struggle," she admits. "But the older I get, the less of an issue it becomes."
For Sharon Stone, too, an obsession with the physical signs of ageing is a sign of superficiality. "How can people be so selfish and obsessed with it?" the actress asked last year. "You should realise how lucky you are when you have a wrinkle. That means you are alive. That means you have laughed and cried."
The full article contains 1094 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
