By Jill Foster


Defying stereotypes: Hillie Marshall does not look or act how people expect 65-year-old women to


With her thigh-skimming skirts, toned bare, tanned legs and biker boots, 56-year-old Carole Middleton dresses just as fashionably as her daughters.

In the recent picture of her on a shopping trip with Pippa (they favour the same High Street stores), it was tough to tell who was the parent and who the twentysomething daughter.

Carole, a mother of three, has the enviably slim figure of someone half her years — and she’s clearly not ready to slip into ‘comfortable’ middle age quite yet.

Likewise, Hillie Marshall has the kind of glamorous look that many a 20-year-old would envy.


She admits that when men come into the dating agency she runs asking to meet young women, they are taken aback when she reveals her own age. Hillie is not some nubile young woman, but a 65-year-old mother-of-two from West London, who looks at least a decade younger than she really is.

‘People have a stereotyped image of what a 65-year-old mother should look like — short, greying hair, conservative clothes and a cardigan,’ she says.

‘But that’s not for me. I go shopping with my 30-year-old daughter in Topshop, Primark and H&M, and we often swap clothes. It’s not that I’m trying to be young; I just don’t think about getting old. I live life the way I always have.’

Both Hillie and Carole Middleton are part of a fast-growing trend of women (and men) living ‘agelessly’.

Madonna, at 52, is still lithe, while Helen Mirren, 65, made Vogue’s most glamorous list despite being of pensionable years. And Sarah Jessica Parker didn’t allow a minor thing like her advancing years (she’s 44) to stop her becoming a parent — even if that did mean relying on surrogacy.

The ‘ageless generation’ are never too old to find a new lover, start up a new business or have a baby. In fact, they’re ready for anything — except death.

Now, in a new book about the phenomenon, Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer terms these ‘ageless’ individuals ‘The Amortals’.

‘Amortality may not be a word you’re familiar with — yet — but you’re bound to recognise some of the symptoms, perhaps even in yourself,’ says Mayer. ‘Do people say you don’t act your age? Maybe you aren’t even sure how someone your age should act.

‘Did you start your first business at 17 or was it at 70? Are you always taking up new activities, tackling new challenges and enjoying pursuits that your contemporaries have put aside — from rock climbing to rock music?

‘Amortals are challenging some of the prejudices and structures associated with all the phases of life, and especially their middle and later years.’

More like sisters: Carole Middleton looked the double of her daughter Pippa on a recent shopping trip


Indeed, although Shakespeare wrote about the ‘seven ages of man’, life expectancy in Elizabethan times was below 40. Nowadays, Mayer suggests we should have perhaps ten, 12 or even 15 stages of our lives, given the average man will live until his late 70s and the average woman to her early 80s.

The average lifespan has increased by 30 years across the world in the past century.

Medical advances and healthier diets have enabled the number of centenarians to rise from a few thousand in 1950 to 340,000 globally in 2010. In 40 years, that figure is projected to reach nearly six million.

So, what has caused this shift?

Genes may play a part in how healthy we are, how young we look and how long we live, but amortality, Mayer argues, is a state of mind.

It is society, she says, which is re-writing the rules of what it means to be 40, 50, 60 or beyond. As Mark Twain once said: ‘Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.’

During research for her book, Mayer asked people from a wide variety of different professions and cultural backgrounds to tell her the age they were and the age they felt. Many told her they felt decades younger than their actual ages.

Mayer empathises. She says: ‘At 50, I’m still hyperactive, still compelled to accept dares and push myself to sample new experiences, however daunting. I compulsively fill every moment and then complain to my husband and friends that I’m too busy.

‘Give me more leisure time and I’d spend as much of it as possible in the vivid, busy undersea world, with my 82-year-old father, another amortal.

He took up diving at the very end of his 60s and, like my mother, still works, at least when he’s on dry land.’

Mayer’s father is a theatre historian; her mother a freelance arts publicist.

So how can you attain amortality? Power, fame and wealth, Mayer says, all help their owners to stay as young as the person they feel.

Actress Demi Moore, 48, has never looked better and has a handsome and successful husband (who’s 15 years her junior) to boot — actor Ashton Kutcher.

Demi dresses like her daughters, and looks just as fresh and, frankly gorgeous, as they do.

It may take more work, but she’s willing to put in the hours in the gym, the trips to the beautician and — if the rumours are to be believed — visits to the cosmetic surgeon.

‘The rich have a better chance at longer life spans, and importantly, health spans, than the poor, although bad diets and sedentary ways are eroding this advantage,’ Mayer explains.

Young at heart: Madonna, 52, right, and Helen Mirren, 65, are still glamorous


But it’s not just the rich — the desire for amortality has trickled down to the woman on the street.

Women in their 40s and 50s are 15 times more likely than their mothers to use self-tanning products and 14 times more likely to use anti-wrinkle creams. Their global spending on cosmetics has risen by £1.9  billion over the past ten years.

‘We’re all taking up yoga and popping our supplements to stave off old age.

Then there’s the across-the-board popularity of shops such as Zara, Gap, Topshop and H&M, which appeal to women from the ages of 14 to 60-plus.

‘The meanings of age have become elusive and visual clues untrustworthy,’ Mayer explains. ‘Children dress like louche adults, while their parents slouch around in hoodies.’

Attitude also plays a huge part. ‘If we don’t think of ourselves as old, we won’t think ourselves into being old,’ says Mayer. Look at the fiftysomethings at festivals with their children — the whole family wearing Gap parkas and Converse trainers.

‘My 60-year-old mother is talking about going to a festival this year,’ says 33-year-old copywriter Olive, from London. ‘And she’s constantly on social website Facebook, messaging her friends who are all 20 years younger, posting songs — along with photos of herself on the beach in a bikini.

‘I cringed at first, but she looks great, and she’s happy, so why not?’

But isn’t all this just an attempt to deny the reality of the loudly ticking clock?

Mayer says our perceptions of ageing have come adrift, as early death has all but disappeared in the developed world. ‘Unlike past generations, who saw death on a daily basis — whether it be the stillbirth of a child or a parent killed off by consumption, plague or war — today we can often be middle-aged before we see death up close.

Confident: Demi Moore, 48, right, has a toy boy Ashton Kutcher and looks as young as her daughter Rumer Willis, left


‘Even then, it’s usually in the sanitised surroundings of a hospice or hospital.

‘Polite societies don’t dwell on death. We’re expected to dab our eyes and get on with the business of living,’ Mayer explains. Perhaps this is illustrated best by Simon Cowell who, as a typical amortal, shows no signs of slowing or settling down even though he is over 50, and says: ‘I can’t go to funerals. I find it very difficult to deal with that kind of reality.’

Other amortals avoid looking death in the face by embarking on an affair. ‘If there’s one thing that really drives amortals, it’s the impulse to blot out thoughts of our own mortality,’ says Mayer. ‘And passion, especially if spiced by drama and intrigue, proves a great distraction.’

How can death be around the corner if we’re, like 77-year-old Joan Collins, revitalised by the love of a man 30 years our junior? Once, asked if the age gap between her and her fifth husband, Percy, 46, bothered her, Joan shrugged: ‘If he dies, he dies.’

But does she really feel oblivious? ‘I honestly never give it a second thought. He’s just Percy. His age is the last thing on my mind.’

Joan has said she is determined to live to 100. But money can’t buy eternal life, no matter how ‘youthful’ your attitude and whatever the cosmetic surgeons or supplement manufacturers are forever telling us.

According to Mayer: ‘Genes, environment and dumb luck’ determine how long we live and in what condition.

‘Embracing old age isn’t a bad thing, if that means appreciating your accrued wisdom and feeling comfortable in our loosening skins,’ she says.

‘But amortals are often in denial about ageing and death and may become angry and depressed when confronted with reality.’

This is one of the perils of amortality. And Mayer freely admits that non-amortals may laugh behind the backs of amortals and their behaviour.

But, she says: ‘Dignity is overrated. If you’re the kind of person given to muttering “act your age, not your shoe size”, beware. Conforming to outdated, restrictive ideas about age is just as damaging.’

She describes one experiment by the renowned Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer that found that dressing old can make you feel and behave older.

‘Most people try to dress appropriately for their age, so clothing in effect becomes a cue for ingrained attitudes about age,’ explained Langer.

‘But what if this cue disappeared? We found that people who routinely wear uniforms as part of their work life, compared with people who dress in street clothes, missed fewer days owing to illness or injury, had fewer doctors’ visits and hospitalisations, and had fewer chronic diseases.’

Last year, the BBC re-ran another experiment of Ellen Langer’s in which several celebrities all in their 70s and 80s were asked to ‘go back in time’ and live in a house decorated as if it were 1975. They had to dress in kipper ties and kaftans, only discuss news events from that particular decade, and to all intents and purposes live as though they were still only in their 40s.

The results were remarkable. Their mental faculties improved drastically and so did their physical health.

The oldest housemate, actress Liz Smith, 88, was able to walk without her sticks for the first time since a stroke had affected her two years previously.

‘The moral of the story?’ says Mayer. ‘It’s healthier to be mutton dressed as lamb than mutton dressed as mutton.’


source:dailymail