WHY EVERGREEN JANE’S IN THE PINK

Jane Fonda turned up at the emmy awards this week looking less like Jane Fonda and more like pop singer Gwen Stefani. However, this is totally cool, everybody, because that was her intention.

Swinging her unlikely ponytail, 79-yearold Jane said that 47-year-old Gwen was her style inspiration, and why not? When you get to your eighth decade, you find your stimulus where you can.

Jane was wearing skin-tight hot pink, dripping with diamonds and emeralds, as peeled and primped and glazed as a coldwater prawn.

In Hollywood that night, she was at the forefront of a clutch of over-50 female stars from The Land That Forgot Time who all looked fabulous.

Michelle Pfeiffer (59) appears to have been preserved in iridescent aspic since The Fabulous Baker Boys; Susan Sarandon is now 70, but with a wasp-waist that is evidence of her devotion to Pilates, while Jessica Lange (68) looked both regal and beautiful with her magnificent sweep of hair and Gucci dress.

But it was Jane who raised the most eyebrows, primarily because she seems to be no longer capable of raising her own.

Her appearance might owe something to the dark arts of the Hollywood cosmetologists, but what else is Jane supposed to do? She has been a star and a beauty for her entire adult life. Should she just give up and embark on the slow desiccation into cronedom and wearing fleece? or should she carry on raging against the dying of the light, her slim figure and sculpted face testament to a lifetime of discipline, selfrestraint and the punishing regime of the beautiful and the damned.

To me, she looked not only wonderful, but also heroic. Still a star, still viable and a survivor, in every way. Move along now. nothing not to admire here.