If you’re past 50, an offer of a snog isn’t rude – it’s a miracle!
IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that a heterosexual woman over 50 who keeps herself ‘tidy’ does so for two reasons. One, she doesn’t want to frighten small children. Two, she wants to be considered attractive. It’s certainly the only reason I persist in my gruelling grooming and exercise regime, and why I rushed out to buy that new anti-ageing serum from Boots last week, otherwise I would be quite happy eating Krispy Kremes in a slanket.
We long to be desired even if – especially if – we have officially passed the point of no return, which comes for females decades earlier than the male, as a legendary comedy sketch confirms.
A gaggle of gorgeous actresses – Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus etc – are having a piggy picnic of bread, pastries, tubs of ice cream, gallons of white wine, and the comic Amy Schumer comes along and asks them what they’re celebrating. The answer is ‘ LouisDreyfus’s last f*** able day in Hollywood’. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was about 34 at the time.
You will not fall off your chairs, then, to discover I didn’t share the outrage when a man disclosed he’d snog the successful, slim, rich, famous and single writer Joanna Trollope at the London Book Fair last week.
Tony Mulliken, a PR, was chairing her event and said he’d read she was always ‘looking for a great kiss’ and as he’d often ‘seen her in Kensington’ he’d like to ‘give her a snog’. At worst, a leedle bit creepy. At best, rare enough to make us hurl aside our knitting and improving book club histories and cheer.
After all, it’s not every day a middle- aged man even sees a woman older than he is, let alone announces he’d play tonsil hockey with her in public. But our romantic hero’s leaden attempt at gallantry did not land well. For in the audience was an author and former police officer called Clare Mackintosh. She took out her concealed weapon – ie her smartphone – and took him out in a heartbeat.
Mackintosh tweeted that she was ‘revolted’. Mulliken’s words were ‘grossly inappropriate’ at a time when “#metoo victims have finally been given a voice’. Other women piled in, declaring themselves ‘horrified’ by the ‘reductive and inappropriate’ remarks. Mackintosh even made a formal complaint to the Book Fair.
OK, maybe Mulliken is a clunky bit of kit – more Amstrad than Apple. But his only crime was trying to be courtly to an attractive older woman, without having taken the precaution of downloading the latest anti-sexism software update first. After all, a popular BBC Sunday politics show had until only a few weeks ago a ‘light’ feature for backbench MPs called ‘snog, marry or avoid’. As Jenny Sneesby, the show’s producer, told me: ‘We did it as a bit of fun – life is life.’
In 2016, James Cleverly, a newbie-ish Tory, was asked whether he would snog/ marry/ avoid the Prime Minister. Without hesitation, deviation or repetition, Cleverly cleverly said ‘snog’ and his career has taken off like a Harrier jet ever since (he is now deputy chairman of the party).
Indeed, whenever the PM sees the hunky ex- serviceman, she calls out, ‘I still haven’t had that kiss!’ with a girlish giggle.
EVEN though most rightminded people would agree with me that a sexy older lady being called snoggable calls for a new Bank Holiday at the very least, kissing Trollope went viral and not in a good way. This is what really makes me boil, though, even more than the hideous gender hotness gap. Even if the supposed ‘victim’ of sexism doesn’t ‘call it out’ herself – and Miss Trollope was careful not to, she no-commented – never fear, someone else will. An ever-vigilant agent of the sexism Stasi like Ms Mackintosh will take offence for her ‘on behalf of all women’.
Mulliken had to not only grovel his apologies to Miss Trollope but to Ms Mackintosh, too.
Not in my name, sisters. OK, Mulliken might have read the room wrong, but he is guilty of nothing but trying to be nice to an older woman by declaring her (still) sexually attractive.
I’m prepared to bet the farm that – just like Theresa with James – twice-married Trollope was not put out for a second that a man wanted to snog her. Even if she didn’t issue a public statement welcoming this historic announcement, I bet she was thrilled, just as I would be if builders ever wolfwhistled at me.
I do wish everyone would get a grip. Miss Trollope is 74!