Do you really want to be ‘Hot at 50’?

Not if I have to give up cheese and wine!

Hey girls, isn’t it great to see that you can still be ‘Hot’ at 50 or even 60? Just look at Sharon Stone, Halle Berry, Courtney Cox, Liz Hurley and Jennifer Aniston looking fabulous photographed in their bikinis, with bodies many 20-year-olds would envy!

Surely this is a good thing? It shows you can look fantastic at any age.

I’m not sure. If it is so great, then why do I feel so uneasy about it? The women above all work in the entertainment industry – they depend upon the way they look for their work. I really do think it is great – for them, but maybe not for the rest of us mere mortal women.

How many women do you know who have flat stomachs, no wrinkles, cellulite, or flabby bits? I know women over 50 who are fit and slim, but they don’t look like that.

So, just how easy is it to look like Sharon Stone at 60 and could I look like that too?

Ageing Naturally

Our bodies naturally change as we get older, so trying to look like we did at 20 is not realistic. In the run-up to menopause our body shape changes due to hormone fluctuations. Fat is distributed differently; it moves from our hips and breasts to our waists. Our metabolism slows down, so we need to eat less and this makes it easy to put on weight and harder to shift it when it is there. This change is an evolutionary tactic to ensure our survival 1000s of years ago when our lives were quite different. The world we live in now has changed dramatically but our bodies have not adapted as quickly.

This means that dieting is harder than it was when we were younger. We can’t just go on a quick diet to shift those few extra pounds as we did in our 20s.

But if you did want a figure like Liz Hurley or how easy is it? Can you just cut out the carbs and get off your backside and into the gym now and then?

If only!

No, it takes hard work, discipline, self-denial, the feeling of constant hunger and pots of cash to look like that.  No ice cream, chocolate, alcohol, takeaways, cake or biscuits. Food is for fuel only, and should be kept to the minimum!

Giving up everything that is fun!

I remember years ago reading that Jenifer Aniston never had food in the house. All her meals were delivered. And according to another article I read, Liz Hurley goes to bed hungry every night and Courtney Cox lives on kale, spinach and broccoli but loves it – yeah right!  Poor Halle Berry must eat protein shakes when working to keep her energy up, especially with her gruelling exercise regime. What fun!

Demi Moore really sacrifices it all for her figure. She only eats raw, organic food and goes on horrendous diets like the one which limits you to lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup! Then there is plastic surgery. Demi is famous for having $10,000 worth of work done so she could compete with her younger co-stars on one of the Charlie’s Angles films. I am sure she isn’t the only one to have surgery to try and look younger, especially in the entertainment industry where looking young and thin is so important.

Looking like a film star really is a full-time job, and the older you get the longer it takes. There are those intense exercise regimes and costly beauty treatments. Your diet is especially important, food must be planned meticulously, no grabbing a ready meal if you are short on time. If you don’t do it yourself, you must pay someone to do it for you and that is expensive.

For those of us with jobs that do not involve modelling or acting is it really necessary to do all this?

I don’t know about you but, I want to have a life and do things like go out for dinner where I am not confined to eating only egg white omelettes or raw vegetables. I want to go down to the pub and drink beer or eat pizza every now and then.

Age denial and the cult of youth

There is so much pressure on women to look attractive and sexy to men, whatever their age. I think one of the great things about getting older is being much less bothered about what other people think about me. I do not want to have to starve myself or punish my body at the gym just to look attractive to men. I like not having the pressure of being ‘hot’ anymore. I do not care if men don’t want to have sex with me, I don’t want to have sex with most of them either!

There is a certain amount of age denial going on here. We do not value the experience and wisdom of age. Our constant obsession with what we look like proves this. It is as if the outside of us, the way we look to others, is more important than who we are as people. Wouldn’t it be great if we could honour ageing and see youth as just one aspect of beauty?

I know it is a cliché, but I would much rather be admired for who I am as a person than where I lie on the ‘fuckable’ scale!

No cheese!

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about what I look like or want to be fit. I still love getting dressed up to go out somewhere – or even sometimes to stay in! I exercise to keep fit and healthy so l can carry on doing all the things I want to do. But I have found ways to enjoy keeping fit, like walking and Qigong, rather than it being a chore.

In an interview with Caitlin Moran, Courtney Love said that to keep slim she never eats cheese. That would be torture for me. I want to eat cheese, drink wine and slob out on the sofa to Netflix every now and then!

So please spare me from the ‘Hot at 50’ photos. Yes, those women look great, and good for them. But I don’t want to be under pressure to look like them.

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