Congrats Jen.. you made it to 50 without breaking a hip
NOT since the new dinosaur exhibit at the Kelvingrove Museum has there been a more celebrated spectacle over the age of 50 than Jennifer Aniston.
Not only has Aniston reached this age without breaking a hip but I reckon she could trampoline without peeing herself.
And apparently they didn’t even have to puree her birthday dinner because she still has her own teeth.
She is, as the headline writers say, still hot and they are not referring to menopausal flushing.
They mean the right type of hot, not dried up and crumbly, like an over-baked scone and not chilly like a nearly dead person.
Her locks are still as light as the Californian sun and not the gloomy grey of the future surely now looming, since she turned half a hundred.
And she still looks “sizzling” in a bikini, the tastiness of a medium rare steak as opposed to the old boot Charlie Chaplin ate in the Gold Rush.
I recently read an article in a national newspaper with the headline ”Why women get more miserable with age”.
Might I suggest one reason is the way they are scrutinised and assessed, as if they were a rusty banger scraping through the MOT.
We might not literally send them out on an ice float to die, in keeping with Inuit folklore, but metaphorically it sometimes feels like it.
Add to the mix Aniston’s choice not to have children and her two failed marriages and there’s handshouldn’t wringing and tilted head sympathy all round.
Hollywood is leading the way where other industries have so far failed to follow but actresses are still having to produce their own shows to ensure quality work.
When Nicole Kidman accepted her SAG award last year for the female-led production of Big Little Lies, she opined actresses over 40 would have been “washed up” 20 years ago.
Emma Thompson, pushing 60, joked they would have to exhume the next male lead considered fitting to play opposite her.
The small screen is far behind, with BBC television and radio, Sky, ITN and Channel 5 combined having just 26 women over 50 working as regular on-air presenters out of a total of 481. And that matters because, like movies, TV shapes culture.
Women relate to Aniston because they feel her pain.
They may not suffer the humiliation of being in the public stocks to have sexist crap lobbed at them but on a daily basis, the same stink is tossed their way.
Currently, one in three UK workers are aged over 50 and while ageism is a problem for men too, women face a double whammy with it.
According to research, ageism at work began at 40 for women and 45 for men and for those who, unlike Jen, don’t have £200million in the bank, that’s a catastrophe.
And there’s the army of women who don’t still “sizzle”, who thanks to mother nature being a total bitch, feel invisible when their body heads south like a migrating goose. It matter but society dictates it does because women are expected to fight age, while men can wave the white flag and still be considered relevant.
While women feel compelled to spend the GDP of an African nation on wonder creams and be mummified in Spanx, men let it all hang out because they can.
One of my favourite sketches of all time is on Inside Amy Schumer, when she stumbles upon Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette on a picnic toasting Julia Louis-Dreyfus on her “last f***able day”.
When they tell Amy that, for men, that day never comes, she gorges on ice cream, a luxury the metabolism of no woman over 50 can risk.
It’s funny, so watch it but if you’re a woman over 50, wear a Tena Lady in case you laugh or indeed, cry.