Why is age still seen as a woman's problem?

Actress Helen Mirren. Photo / Getty Images

We all need to accept that we will grow old and stop shaming women for 'letting themselves go'.

When Bette Davis observed that growing old wasn't for sissies, we had no idea that the politics of ageing would one day become more complicated than the Greek debt restructure. Not two months ago, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that, at 37, she was deemed too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man, presumably because the 18-year age gap was better filled by an actual 18-year-old.

Now we have Dame Helen Mirren, queen of L'Oreal, getting it in the smooth, firm, elasti-flexed neck for having the temerity to look too young in its current advertising campaign. Aged 69 (which equates to 25 in human years), her radiant appearance led the Advertising Standards Authority to meddle in La Mirren's make-up bag.

And they duly discovered that she hadn't been extensively airbrushed and was in fact genuinely Retinol-A* radiant. Who would have guessed?

Apart from every woman on the planet. Being women, we pored over every last pixel of her picture and could have told those rookie ombudsmen fellas a thing or two about the appearance of fine lines.

Still, it is all fabulous publicity for the skincare and cosmetics house, of course, which is sure to enjoy a spike in sales from mature women seeking to emulate the actress' timeless beauty. It would be nice to think a handful of gorgeously scented emollient gunk could transform us all into Oscar winners. But the trouble is, there ain't nothing like a Dame.

Just as it's not reasonable to expect all young women to resemble Cara Delevingne, it's no less unfair to expect all their mothers to mirror Mirren. It's a peculiar anomaly that white-haired men, the Dimblebys and Jon Snows of this world, are widely regarded as eminences grises, whereas on-screen women are still regarded as pariahs at the age of 55, unless they look 45, by whatever means necessary.

It's not just TV suits who perpetrate this double standard. Let she who hasn't tuned into a news programme and treacherously muttered "gosh, so-and-so's looking her age" cast the first aspersion. I'm not sure when exactly older women came under such unforgiving scrutiny, but I've noticed a terribly unsisterly intimation that there is, at worst, a moral turpitude and, at best, something shameful about "letting oneself go", as though, with a bit more effort, any one of us of could predict and prevent wrinkles.

The happy by-product of age is wisdom and experience and, hopefully, a robust disregard for the opinions of those who don't matter. But the inevitable price of life, of living, is exacted on our faces. And yet every one of us sees our ageing not as an inevitability, but as a personal affront. Our head-in-the-sand denial would be comical if the sight of what a friend refers to as her "shar pei face" wasn't such a fright every morning.

As a journalist, I have to ask interviewees - celebrities and civilians alike - their age. Women, who are hardwired to compare and compete, are fascinated by other people's age, but when it comes to divulging their own, they hate it. And I mean, really, really hate it. I spoke recently to a 76-year-old who was appalled at the idea anyone might discover this dreaded secret. It sounds ridiculous, but when you dig deeper, why should a 76-year-old be less vain, less sensitive than she was as a 46-year-old? She's the same woman inside.

Actress Michelle Pfeiffer, a dewy beauty in her prime at 57, has spoken about her "mourning" for the young girl she used to be. Scarlett Johansson admits she started her anti-ageing skincare regime in her 20s. Granted, their faces are their fortune. But all of us need to, if not embrace, then accept that we will grow old, not just because the alternative is so much worse - there's nothing more ageing than misery - but because it impedes our ability to feel content with who and where we are.

So take a leaf from another Hollywood great, Sharon Stone: "Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world. She addressed ageing by picking up her chin and receiving light in a better way. And she looked like a woman. She never tried to look like a girl."

The sun is shining, ladies. Go receive that light.

- Canvas, Telegraph