WILL LIZ EVER STAR

Joyously confident in her amazing body at 53 — or just putting intolerable pressure on middle-aged women? After that very flirty striptease, two brilliant writers lock horns...

ONCE more unto the beach, dear friends, as Elizabeth Hurley unleashes the big guns in her latest full frontal assault. Glamorous Liz this week posted an Instagram video of herself doing a striptease amid the palm trees of the Maldives, teasingly slipping off a silk mini-robe to reveal one of the bikinis from her swimwear range.

It was the paisley print Kashmir number (€194 from Elizabeth Hurley Beach) in case anyone is interested in the finer details. But removable bust-boosting pads and a high-tension, halter-neck tie? Wham bam, who gives a damn?

Much more fascinating is that, at the age of 53, the glamorous actress and model is not going gently into that twilight of waterfall cardigans, sensible pleats or even the forgiving folds of a swimsuit cover-up.

Look at her! A lifetime of discipline, denial and a four-raisinsa-day diet has meant that Liz still has the body of a goddess — and the kind of creamy cleavage that cries out to be etched onto the nose cone of a fighter plane. Or displayed on a lace-edged tray in the finest French patisserie, at the very least. No wonder she wants to show it off at every opportunity.

And I mean every. Over the past year, there has been barely a month without busy Lizzie slipping into a two-piece, heading for the shoreline and pouting like a preening porpoise posing for a marine life calendar.

While we shivered in January, she delivered in her turquoise Aquarius bikini in the Maldives. As we suffered in the harsh March winds, she was toned, teak and very far from bleak in the Seychelles.

Some might argue that it is unbecoming for a woman of Liz’s age to skip about in the demi-scud, with nothing to save her blushes except a few straining triangles of overpriced Lycra. However, I say, go for it, girl!

Never mind that the last person to wear so much eyeliner on a beach was Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean, nor that chronic body narcissism such as hers is looked upon unkindly in the world beyond the relentless promotion of the Hurley beachwear empire. You’re so vain, I bet you think this thong is about you? Well actually, it is all about her — but perhaps in good ways, rather than bad.

I see Hurley’s bikini glory as an act of triumph for older women everywhere, something we can all cheer on from the frumpy side lines, the ultimate aspirational vision of a post-50 glamour puss.

Does she ever eat hummus or crisps or skip the gym for a box set instead? Does she ever tire of lettuce and water and a handful of grapes for supper? The architecture of her abs and the splendour of her embonpoint suggest not.

La Hurley’s ongoing allure is a pop-eyed testament to an enviable confluence of good genes, ritual abstinence and whatever cosmetic wizardry the youth fairy has bequeathed upon her enchanting appearance.

While it would be easy to dismiss the Hurley posturings as those of an ageing beauty who is determined to make whey-hey-hey while the sun shines, let us not forget there is a commercial element at play here, too.

We cannot moan about the exhausting flesh fest because here is a woman who is only seizing the opportunity to advertise after she ran out of weddings and highprofile romances to sell to Hello!

After all, this is how her career began. Back in 1994, Elizabeth Hurley was a little-known actress who achieved global notoriety by wearing a plunge front dress to a film premiere.

On the arm of her then boyfriend Hugh Grant, her appearance in the infamous Versace safety-pin dress on the Four Weddings And A Funeral red carpet made her name and nailed her status.

Since then she has gone on to become a mother, wife, divorcee, organic farmer, Estée Lauder model, swimwear designer and international bikini wearer.

Millions of women are more familiar with her bosoms than they are with their own.

We now understand that age shall never wither them, nor custom stale the infinite variety of poses she can wrangle them into in some corner of a fabulously photogenic bikini, on a beach far from home. She is an absolute star, in more ways than one.

time. Not a day goes by without blame being heaped upon famous young women who force impossible ideals of sexual beauty upon their peers, and are then held responsible for everything from depression to anorexia to promiscuity among their age group.

Yet when an older woman forces equally impossible ideals of sexual beauty upon her peers — women in their 50s and 60s — they tend to be met instead with a saucy nudgenudge: ‘Cor. She’s still got it, eh?’

I don’t care if it’s Helen Mirren in a swimsuit or yet another production of Calendar Girls.

Sixty, they tell us gaily, is the new 40. They lie. Sixty is still 60; arthritis is still arthritis. And anybody who pretends otherwise is applying pressure we really don’t need.

The fact is that older women — at least as much as younger ones — can feel like failures if they can’t handle this pressure. I know it’s daft and I know we should know better. But if we didn’t look like Twiggy or Jane Fonda or Mirren or Hurley when we were 20, we’re hardly likely to cut it at 50. Nor have we made a priority of buffing our bodies day and night; only last month, Hurley was boasting about moisturising her face ten times a day. (Anyone else too busy or simply think that just maybe life is too short?)

Nor do we have expensive lighting and air-brushing to hand every time someone sneaks a snap of us.

And yet, still, we are vulnerable to dents in our self-esteem. For some women, it’s as simple as wanting to see that old sparkle, almost forgotten, in a husband’s tired eye.

For most women of 50 or 60, it’s more a matter of their own exhaustion. They are managing lives that would send the average man running for the hills.

For the first time in history, the majority of us will have worked outside the home at the same time as raising children; many still are.

Age usually brings workplace seniority, which means the outside work is more, not less, demanding than it was when we were younger. Even when the day job is behind us, many immerse themselves in hands-on grandparenting to help their daughters’ careers.

Some are simultaneously coping with sick or demented parents who are living longer all the time.

As a generation of women, they deserve medals. The lot of them.

What they don’t deserve is even a hint that they’ve still failed — because, somewhere along the way, they forgot to keep squeezing their body into a racy bikini.