Not retiring: What should older people wear? Anything they like

Some of the right-wing media seem to be obsessed about telling older people – women, let’s face it – what they can and can’t wear.

Since June GB News has had a whole series of articles about what over 50s women should wear. The Daily Express has also joined in. “Women over 50 can look younger with stylist’s tip that ‘makes a huge difference'”, it says.

Summer seems to underline this tendency, with articles showing older celebs looking either ‘amazing’ in swimsuits or ‘worryingly’ delapidated.

I get a lot of this on my Facebook posts because I am of an age. There are before and after shots of how badly, apparently, some women have aged. There are ads about health supplements and wills and comfy shoes. There are links to Suzi Quatro videos, even though I have never expressed any interest in Suzi Quatro [though I have nothing against her] and she was big the decade before I was interested in music.

At some point, as a woman, you would like to be beyond the age of having to bother about what you look like. The menopause, I read, was supposed to be a liberation. We were supposed to climb the mountain and sail down the other side to freedom. And it has been liberating not to have to worry about periods or suffer period pain. But, in an age of fillers and Botox and the like, the goalposts have moved and we are still expected to be ‘hot’, and not because of the menopause, and feel judged for what we wear.

The good news is that older age can bring a sense of inner confidence and less interest in pleasing others. After all, most middle aged women have been through quite a bit. But there is still this niggling sense at the back of the brain that what you look like is in some way linked to your worth, even if it’s only comments about how good you look for your age.

Then there’s divorce and the call to be out there again. The dating apps make it very perfunctory. It’s mainly based on what you look like. I remember a news article of JLo at 50 saying ‘this is what 50 looks like’. It may be what 50 looks like for JLo, but the rest of us may look slightly more worn around the edges. That’s not a bad thing. Celebrities have to be visible. Old age can bring invisibility. But there surely has to be a middle ground where you don’t have to look ‘hot’, but can still be visible.

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