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The other day, my editor sent me a picture of Elizabeth Hurley. You know, the British model and actress who dated Hugh Grant and wore giant gold Versace safety pins held in place by panels of black fabric. (And that is my offensively reductive biography of Liz Hurley for those who didn’t grow up in the ’90s.) Anyway, the picture. Hurley as a Bond girl at a New Years Eve party in a white bikini with breasts up to here, legs up to there, and abs that can’t be faked with self-tanner. Thing is, the picture was a month old. Hurley is 60.
If we’re going to be honest, let’s be honest. There were things we were sold at a young age—let’s call them guarantees. Facts, givens, immutable truths. They were our true north. The earth was round, vaccines were good, and once you hit 50, the great big ahhhh of high-waisted jeans was waiting. Hollywood and the natural order of the world would have no interest in you so you are free to put yourself out to the pasture of flannels and day drinking.
Then we got flat-earthers. Next, anti-vaxxers, science-skeptics, data-deniers, truth-haters. True north became the Wild West.
Honestly, I can live with the idea that facts are now vibes. I can even entertain the possibility that we’re all riding an earth-sized Frisbee through space in a cosmic game of ultimate between the gods.
Just leave 50 alone.
We were told that 50 marked the beginning of…not giving up necessarily, but maybe caring less? Loosening the grip. Softening the edges. Sliding into puff sleeve tops and low expectations. And all the energy that we previously reserved for crunches could now be directed to more fulfilling pursuits than our physical presentation. Actually, it wasn’t even 50.
A few years ago, I was interviewing Jennifer Aniston for Allure. The subject of age came up. (Nicole Kidman, also during an Allure interview, would later tell me that I was “obsessed” with the topic after a particularly persistent series of questions.)
Aniston held up her phone. “Have you seen this?”
On her screen was a picture of Archie and Edith Bunker at the piano during the opening credits of All in the Family. Think back to their ’70s collars, their orthopedic shoes, the vaguely tragic wallpaper, and aesthetic of a retirement home that smells like canned soup. If you remember nothing else from All in the Family, you probably remember the Bunkers were 700 years old.
Above Carroll O’Connor was the number 46.
Above Jean Stapleton: 47.
“It can’t be,” I said.
“It is,” said Aniston.
“It can’t be,” I said again. The bargaining stage of grief.
“We have to fact check,” I said. I did. The TV people that looked to be well past retirement, were comfortably middle aged.
So who moved the goal posts? The answer, at least in part, is Aniston herself—along with every other ageless, unlined celebrity.
Jennifer Aniston, then age 53, had nothing to hide on the cover of Allure in 2022.
Photography by Zoey Grossman
Personally, when I got to 40, I gave up. But that only lasted 20 minutes. That’s how long it took me to see women my age wearing bikinis to yoga. The other 40s looked incredible. The best shape of their lives. Fine. Okay, I'll keep at it. Bikram every day. Shoes to wreck my lower back? So be it. Laser away that dark spot on my forehead, and sure why not, Botox. I remember an Allure coverline back in the days that Liz Hurley was wearing the safety pin dress: It was something like “Long Hair After 40 And Other Rules to Break.” Now it was more like a dare. So I let my hair fall well below my braline. And in a singular act of defiance, I got the Daisy Dukes out of storage.
This is 40: long hair and Daisy Dukes.
When confronted with the question of age, Paul Cavaco, the esteemed former creative director of Allure, used to say, “I only have so many shopping days left until Christmas.” So I told myself it wasn’t even Black Friday yet. Keep it up for a few more years and don’t worry, 50 and its cardigans will be there for you in due time.
Then, February 2, 2020 happened.
It was the JLo Super Bowl halftime show. And the only thing more exciting than Jennifer Lopez’s rhinestone-encrusted bikini was her age. Lopez, swinging her hair and her hips around a stripper pole in front of 120 million people, was 50. The “L” in her name was more like a roman numeral honorific than an initial.
If you ask me, that’s when the contract broke. The simulation jammed. It’s like we were all in the Matrix and it was glitching.
JLo showed the world what her version of 50 looks like at the 2020 Super Bowl.
We all knew empirically that 50 would come. But here’s the thing: When I got to 50, they moved the goal posts again. It wasn’t just JLo. One day I was shopping with my sister—my sister who is seven years older than I am. We wandered into Prada, which had just launched a collection of cashmere kilts, maybe 10 inches long but more like eight. I legitimately thought they were scarves—until my own sister grabbed one and tried it on. (True story: She bought it and I bought one for my daughter.)
Fact is that today the other 50s look better than the other 40s did. Forget 50 is the new 40; it’s more like the new 27. So, my question (my plea?) is: Do we ever get to give up?
Let me spoil it for you. Nope.
The social contract I was given stated: Sure, you can dye your greys, but keep your hair short and sensible. When she was my age, my own mother’s beauty routine was one part Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream, one part highlights at the Kenneth Salon in midtown Manhattan. Indulgent, yes. Cutting edge, hardly. The message I got was that once you hit 50, “wash-and-go” is your demographic. That the age of “ageless” is 51 to 59. That you get to have the expensive moisturizer and keep up with eye cream. Sure, as long as there have been women in their 50s there have been facelifts (oh don’t be so literal). But a few decades ago, those facelifts were meant to yank up loose neck skin; they were not meant to make you look like you should be sharing clothes with your daughter. Back then, as you rounded the centennial halfway mark, exercise got to be tai chi. Or a walk with a friend. But today? Your Oura ring needs another five miles, thanks.
Do we ever get to give up? Nope: Here I am in my 50s.
Nowhere in my agreement with the universe, did anyone tell me that my sixth decade should make room for crop tops, bikinis, or HIIT classes with my own children. Ours was a promised land of generous cuts and anything that would hide what nature was pulling back into the earth.
The irony—I don’t even know if that’s the right word for this mishigas—is that Lopez later told me (again for an Allure interview) that once you hit 50, it all gets harder. What exactly gets harder? I should have asked. Looking your age?
When I interviewed Aniston, who is a few years older than I am, I asked her how to avoid the whole aging part of life. (Maybe Nicole Kidman was right about me?)
“I was working on a movie,” Aniston told me. “There was an older man working on the set. I’d seen him on a couple different jobs, and he never stopped working, working, working. I go, ‘you are impressive; I mean you never stop.’ And he just said, ‘I don’t let the old man in.’”
That was a nice metaphor. Like oldness was a thing on the front stoop and we could dead bolt the door and slide on the chain, then put on a Taylor Swift album, top off the tequila, and dance in front of the mirror.
But is this feminism? Legions of women claiming their power, owning their sexuality at the same time that they’re wearing HRT patches? Or is this the patriarchy with better lighting—the most influential women in the world succumbing to a man’s ideal of what we should look like? Is the driving force virtue-proselytizing from the creatine crowd? Or is it a signal that even though you can’t bear children, you still bring the world flat abs and perky boobs?
If you can answer that, please call me. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking at pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow with her daughter Apple Martin at the recent New York premiere of Marty Supreme. Apple in a slinky Calvin Klein dress that Gwyneth wore 29 years earlier at the premiere of Emma. Sweet. Sustainable! Psychologically destabilizing.
What’s interesting—by which I mean bananas nuts crazytown—is that Blythe Danner (at the Emma premiere) and Gwyneth Paltrow (at the Marty Supreme one) were the same age: 53. Two beautiful women, one who looked her age—short gray-blonde hair, a dress of Eileen Fisher proportions—and one who put aging on airplane mode.
Blythe Danner at age 53 with daughter Gwyneth Paltrow…
…and Gwyneth Paltrow at age 53 with daughter Apple Martin.
“When you write this, don’t make it sexist,” said my daughter over breakfast. Sixteen years old and pre-scolding me like a tiny HR department. I won’t make it sexist, I told her. I mean, the world already beat me to it. One side got Jennifer Lopez and Liz Hurley and Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman. The other side got to have dad bods, cooler shoes than Archie Bunker’s, and maybe a side of testosterone. But we let them look their age. Old men are tolerated. We are no country for old women.
Back to that old man at the door for a minute.
Maybe I’ve been thinking about him all wrong. Maybe he’s not some nefarious force here to suck what remains of my collagen. Maybe he’s more like Santa Claus, an old benevolent version of future me, with a bag of wisdom and wit, acceptance and joy, the kind you only get after a few decades. I should probably get to know him better. He looks like he enjoys tequila.
