What is it with society’s current ‘panic attack’ of attempting to defy time and aging?

Although this is not new one – many fables and stories of generations past often had their characters searching endlessly for the ‘fountain of youth’ or some kind of crystal/elixir/spell that would let them be eternally young Peter Pan / Valda / Benjamin Button). But now it’s a global obsession!I am happily in my fifties, and my answer to that is quite simply, ‘because we can’! Fortunately for us, there have been so many advances in aesthetic procedures both surgical and non-invasive, wonderful inventions and discoveries of herbs, creams, tonics and oils that we almost have an embarrassment of choice. In addition, women (I guess we are predominantly the ‘culprits’)now have a healthy history of earning their own money and spending it on whatever they so please.

Me, I am all for the physical augmentation of one’s looks and bodies, for both men and women. If you can have a little Botox, a nip and a tuck, pin your ears back or transplant some hair and it makes you feel better about yourself – why not? Life is tough enough as it is without having to worry about frown lines, sagging jaws, or muffin tops. If you want to remove hair, tilt your boobs up or make your calves bigger, go for it! If you feel a bit guilty or embarrassed, just think of it as job creation!

Where I do need to draw the line, however, is when other things, more noticeable and showy just make older people look silly (and older)! Even at my age, it doesn’t matter if my legs were gorgeous, long and slim (they aren’t!), wearing a tiny micro strip of fabric for a skirt (aka a fanny pelmet) – nooooo! Ladies – a woman in her fifties or sixties just doesn’t look right in a leopard print lycra cat suit, a tutu or Lady Gaga hooves. And middleaged men, especially if you have gone ‘to seed’ as it were – please listen to me, you look silly on a Harley Davidson with tight leathers (paunch hanging over) and a tin potty on your head! Dye your hair, have a facelift, buy a Porsche but please not the Harley.

I know I will incur the wrath of many people here – but everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I believe that discreet and understated enhancements are the better form of staying young. These procedures are the ones we try to keep secret or whisper about to our friends. It’s hardly likely that any self-respecting ‘nifty fifty’ would turn up at a mixed dinner party and show off her tummy tuck scars or his butt reduction.ThusI don’t understand the need for the external pretence, surely if you look young and beautiful, goal achieved! Ablatant display of wearing your teenager’s clothes or revving a motor cycle will make you look, just that, a sad old person desperately trying to look young.

And just by the way, as per the Jenny Joseph poem, ‘when I am old. I shall wear purple”!