Do not go gentle...
Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 11:14 pm
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... z1LtriRvMo
Defying stereotypes: Hillie Marshall does not look or act how people expect 65-year-old women to
With her thigh-skimming skirts, toned bare, tanned legs and biker boots, 56-year-old Carole Middleton dresses just as fashionably as her daughters.
In the recent picture of her on a shopping trip with Pippa (they favour the same High Street stores), it was tough to tell who was the parent and who the twentysomething daughter.
Carole, a mother of three, has the enviably slim figure of someone half her years — and she’s clearly not ready to slip into ‘comfortable’ middle age quite yet. Likewise, Hillie Marshall has the kind of glamorous look that many a 20-year-old would envy.
She admits that when men come into the dating agency she runs asking to meet young women, they are taken aback when she reveals her own age. Hillie is not some nubile young woman, but a 65-year-old mother-of-two from West London, who looks at least a decade younger than she really is.
‘People have a stereotyped image of what a 65-year-old mother should look like — short, greying hair, conservative clothes and a cardigan,’ she says.
‘But that’s not for me. I go shopping with my 30-year-old daughter in Topshop, Primark and H&M, and we often swap clothes. It’s not that I’m trying to be young; I just don’t think about getting old. I live life the way I always have.’
Both Hillie and Carole Middleton are part of a fast-growing trend of women (and men) living ‘agelessly’.
Madonna, at 52, is still lithe, while Helen Mirren, 65, made Vogue’s most glamorous list despite being of pensionable years. And Sarah Jessica Parker didn’t allow a minor thing like her advancing years (she’s 44) to stop her becoming a parent — even if that did mean relying on surrogacy.
The ‘ageless generation’ are never too old to find a new lover, start up a new business or have a baby. In fact, they’re ready for anything — except death.
Now, in a new book about the phenomenon, Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer terms these ‘ageless’ individuals ‘The Amortals’.
‘Amortality may not be a word you’re familiar with — yet — but you’re bound to recognise some of the symptoms, perhaps even in yourself,’ says Mayer. ‘Do people say you don’t act your age? Maybe you aren’t even sure how someone your age should act.
‘Did you start your first business at 17 or was it at 70? Are you always taking up new activities, tackling new challenges and enjoying pursuits that your contemporaries have put aside — from rock climbing to rock music?
‘Amortals are challenging some of the prejudices and structures associated with all the phases of life, and especially their middle and later years.’
Indeed, although Shakespeare wrote about the ‘seven ages of man’, life expectancy in Elizabethan times was below 40. Nowadays, Mayer suggests we should have perhaps ten, 12 or even 15 stages of our lives, given the average man will live until his late 70s and the average woman to her early 80s.
The average lifespan has increased by 30 years across the world in the past century. Medical advances and healthier diets have enabled the number of centenarians to rise from a few thousand in 1950 to 340,000 globally in 2010. In 40 years, that figure is projected to reach nearly six million.
So, what has caused this shift?
Genes may play a part in how healthy we are, how young we look and how long we live, but amortality, Mayer argues, is a state of mind.
It is society, she says, which is re-writing the rules of what it means to be 40, 50, 60 or beyond. As Mark Twain once said: ‘Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.’
During research for her book, Mayer asked people from a wide variety of different professions and cultural backgrounds to tell her the age they were and the age they felt. Many told her they felt decades younger than their actual ages.
Mayer empathises. She says: ‘At 50, I’m still hyperactive, still compelled to accept dares and push myself to sample new experiences, however daunting. I compulsively fill every moment and then complain to my husband and friends that I’m too busy.
‘Give me more leisure time and I’d spend as much of it as possible in the vivid, busy undersea world, with my 82-year-old father, another amortal.
'People think 60-year-olds have grey hair and wear cardies. That's just not me!'
‘He took up diving at the very end of his 60s and, like my mother, still works, at least when he’s on dry land.’
Mayer’s father is a theatre historian; her mother a freelance arts publicist.
So how can you attain amortality? Power, fame and wealth, Mayer says, all help their owners to stay as young as the person they feel.
Actress Demi Moore, 48, has never looked better and has a handsome and successful husband (who’s 15 years her junior) to boot — actor Ashton Kutcher.
Demi dresses like her daughters, and looks just as fresh and, frankly gorgeous, as they do.
It may take more work, but she’s willing to put in the hours in the gym, the trips to the beautician and — if the rumours are to be believed — visits to the cosmetic surgeon.
‘The rich have a better chance at longer life spans, and importantly, health spans, than the poor, although bad diets and sedentary ways are eroding this advantage,’ Mayer explains.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... z1LtrPFVLy
