All the things that get better with age – fear not there are plenty
What gets better with age? Wine, leather, perspective, a person’s ability to spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing, FOMO, but not plumbing, not tyres, not dairy products or mattresses or digestion. And what about people?
That’s where this new column comes in. Because we find ourselves in the time of age rebranding. We’ve moved on from aspiring to be “good for your age” – that’s practically an obligation now, it is an obligation if you have any sort of public presence; try having little brown teeth on television and see how that goes – and now “better with age” (BWA) is the new life goal.
It’s not enough to be “well preserved”, or even “amazingly youthful for your age”. It’s no longer remarkable to give birth at 49 or headline Glastonbury at 76 or get engaged at 92 or head up a wildlife documentary series at 97, all those things happened without anyone batting an eyelid last year. No, the accolade you want to be aiming for is “better as the years go by”. But how does getting better with age work and what does it look like?
You can definitely be fitter in your 50s than you were in your 30s, and there’s a lot of that about these days. No one thought about hoisting 10kg weights 10 years ago and now we’re all at it (even Nigella) when we’re not boxing and doing pilates. It’s perfectly possible, if you’re a midlifer, that your stomach is flatter and your arms are leaner than they were 30 years ago when you’d never heard of good and bad fats and gut microbes.
There’s a good chance your teeth are whiter. Your hair is better dyed. You have muscles your mother never knew you had. Maybe you dress better because you’re less eager to conform, as Yasmin Le Bon, 59, said recently: You get “more adventurous” because you care less about other people’s expectations and that should apply across the board.
Can you look better with age? I would argue that Penny Mordaunt – a spring chicken at 50 – is getting better, if only because she has the poise and bearing that kicks in with age and experience. No one who witnessed her sword-carrying moment would have thought she was anything other than in her glowing prime. And, for quite a while, Sharon Osbourne looked better with every passing year, happily owning up to it being all her cosmetic surgeon’s work, and plenty of it; though now, at 71, she says her last facelift “was the worst thing I ever did” proving that better with age has an expiry date, depending on how you approach it.
And then there are the men. I’d take the silver fox Pierce Brosnan over the bouffant blow-dried Bond Brosnan any day, and apparently most women in the UK had a crush on Adrian Dunbar as Superintendent Ted Hastings in Line of Duty, when they never gave a thought to the whippersnapper in Hear My Song, 30 years previously.
There’s a whole category of men who are generally agreed to be hotter over 50, sometimes having not been that hot at all, and not necessarily because they’ve hit the running machine or had a hair transplant (yes, in the era of BWA, men have tweakments too, and sometimes even own up to them).
Surprisingly fit, older men do get our attention (small round of applause for Charles Dance). Everyone fancies Martin Kemp more these days because he’s twinkly and smiley and a lovely Dad, and we prefer Hugh Grant now that he’s gone to the dark and funny side and says he’s “too old and fat and ugly” to be in romantic comedies. Do we miss the George Clooney of ER days? Would we trade the baby faced Macca for the 81 year old legend? No, because they’re getting BWA from our POV. Things can only get better? Let’s see shall we.