How on earth do some women look BETTER as they get older?

SOMEWHERE in the middle of the new middle age, people begin to fall into two categories: the ‘super middles’ and ‘everyone else’.

Everyone else is pretty easy to spot. They’re like most of us who look in the mirror and do not recognise our own faces.

It’s common to go to parties and run into old friends whom you haven’t seen for a while and who don’t recognise you. Happily, you’ll often find yourself able to return the favour.

Scattered throughout the crowd, however, will be another category of middle-ager. They ‘haven’t aged at all’ and look ‘exactly the same’. Indeed, due to a diligent health routine and the right cosmetic touches, they may even appear to have aged backward.

Meet the ‘super middles’. They are like they were before, but even better.

Take Carl. Twenty years ago, he was a mess. He was out of shape and anxiety-ridden.

Now, he’s confident and fit, wearing designer Italian. He’s got all his hair, which helps. He drives a fast convertible and looks good doing it.

Most of Carl’s once-successful friends, however, burned out. Like most middle-agers, they now spend their afternoons golfing and their mornings going to doctors.

Not Carl. He started his own company, which requires him to spend a lot of time with cool people in their 30s.

Yes, Carl is annoying because it is annoying to have conversations about ‘cool thirtysomething people’ whom no one older than 50 cares about. But still, you have to admire the guy.

AND then there is Victor. He was an $800-an-hour corporate lawyer until he divorced, got fired, hit rock bottom then charged back up, realising his true calling was to help others. He got his pilot’s licence, bought a small plane and now flies it to disaster areas in need of supplies.

Victor is a good person. And this, indeed, is the hallmark of the super middles. They are trying to be better people — not just physically but spiritually and psychologically.

They are about improvement and a determined happiness. This time, they’re going to get things right.

Like Marilyn’s new friend,

Rebecca. Ten years ago, Rebecca was one of those ‘I don’t know how she does it’ women.

Then she hit 50. Her husband lost his job, they got divorced, and then she lost her job and went through a typical period of middle-aged madness, during which she filled her time drinking and engaging with inappropriate men.

One night, when a guy she’d pinned her hopes on told her he was seeing two other women as well, she became enraged and slapped him across the face.

He socked her in the shoulder and sent her reeling. There was a police report.

Then she was caught outside the school grounds driving over the limit and that was it. She stopped drinking and started exercising — boxing at first because she was so angry — and slowly her life turned around.

She’s now training for a mini triathlon and has started another business helping women make investments. It’s doing so well she recently bought a bigger house.

The biggest change is that she is no longer angry at herself.

When she drank too much or ate too much or just in general messed up, she would berate herself continually. Now she feels so much happier because she doesn’t have to waste time being angry at herself for messing up. Did I get it? Yes, I nodded. I did. And because she got it, Rebecca had just found herself a super middle guy named Brad.

Like Rebecca, he was an extreme exerciser. And because he was a super middle, he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings for Rebecca. Nor was he afraid of commitment. Indeed, in true super middle style, Brad wanted to move in with her even though they’d only been seeing each other for four months.

I went to a party at Rebecca’s new house to celebrate Brad, the house, and the new vistas that middle age were opening up. All you had to do was to look around at the guests to believe it. Everyone was attractive and gleefully admitted to being older than they appeared.

The men had biceps and the women had those tight glutes and quads that look good in exercise pants.

Everyone was doing something important and meaningful with their lives — and that was what counted. The room was filled with happy cliches and laughter. ‘It’s all about beautiful, healthy people coming together,’ Rebecca declared. ‘Age is irrelevant now and we’re all in new territory. There are no rules.’ I got further experience of the super middles when a pair of them came to stay with my friend Kitty. Like many super middles, they were in their 60s. Kimberly, 61, was once an actress but she’d given it up when she had kids. Steven, 67, who used to be an Olympic skier, was now an instructor in Aspen. Like so many super middles, they were obsessed with their health. After unpacking, they brought down containers of special vitamins and tinctures that needed to be stored in the refrigerator. They went back upstairs, put on their bathing suits and went outside. They had typical super middle bodies. Thanks to the ten or 12 hours they put into exercise every week they were in better shape than most people of any age and were not afraid to strut around in small scraps of fabric.

THEY did that for a while and then they spotted the paddle boards. When a super middle sees any kind of board, they’re compelled to get on it. When they got back to land, I tried to make conversation by asking Kimberly about how the paddle had gone. ‘It was beautiful. It was so Zen.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You should try it.’

I smiled. I have, I wanted to say, and I didn’t find it at all Zen. I suddenly realised that it might be difficult to communicate with these super middles. They were all about vitamins, exercises and Zen-ness — a language that I didn’t speak.

But then I found something Kimberly and I could talk about. She had an invention! She had invented a machine that could destroy cellulite. A lot of people were clamouring for it and now she had to figure out how to manufacture the machine.

She’d just got back from a trip to China. On the first night at the hotel, she cried. She was afraid she couldn’t do it. Afraid she was a fraud. She called her son.

‘You can do it, Mom,’ he said. ‘We know you can do it. We believe in you.’ Kimberly hung up and she did it. Of course she did: she’s a super middle.