Getting it in the neck: Nora Ephron still blooming back in 1999. Photograph: Frank Baron.
Christa D'Souza says she is obsessed with age. So is Nora Ephron. D'Souza used the cover of Observer Woman on Sunday to whinge about her fear of ageing. Ephron used a whole book. I Feel Bad About My Neck is one long, desperate whine about how terribly time-consuming it is to keep an ageing body looking good. Ephron used to be witty, wise and interested in the human condition. Her book is neither witty nor wise, and demonstrates only an interest in herself. Ditto D'Souza, who is 47 and looks it. So what?
D'Souza describes a picture of her mother at "nudging 50" back in the early nineties, "wearing a calf length suit and hose". Hose? What era does she think her mother lived in? When did anyone call a pair of tights "hose"? Clearly D'Souza, pictured in a miniskirt with long dangling hair, thinks she looks much better than her mother did at her age. But, of course, in the early 1990s, just post Thatcher, nobody was wearing miniskirts. We were all supposed to be "power dressing", so her mum would have looked a bit dippy if she had been photographed with a skirt up to her bum.
What D'Souza is actually looking at is a projection of her own feelings. Her mother looked old to her because she was her mother (though an incredibly young mother). She can be pretty certain that, looking back in years to come, her own daughter will look at the pictures in Sunday's Observer and see a mother, too. She may not cringe at the thought that her mother was pictured in a frayed miniskirt on the front page of a magazine at the age of 47, but you can be sure she will be determined not to look like her.
The problem with these two women is that they think they have discovered something special about their particular generation. But the only special thing about it is that they are egotistical enough to try to project a personal problem of adjustment as a major generational issue. The cosmetics industry must be loving them for adding to the angst that most people feel as they pass into a new life stage. Because that is the reality of it. D'Souza and Ephron are going through a period of adjustment, just as everyone, male or female, always does at every turning point in their lives.
The way we look matters because it's the way we signal to the world what kind of person we are. A little boy who likes frocks will find out fast that he needs to switch to jeans. If he doesn't, he will be sending out some pretty confusing signals (if he feels confused, he will learn to keep it to himself). When young people first start buying their own clothes they aren't just trying to work out whether blue suits them or if they look better in pink. They are working out who they are, which group they belong to, how they feel about their body, their sexuality and their lives. If, at the age of 14, you go for a miniskirt, does that mean you are "asking for it"? If you dress from head to foot in black, will that render you invisible? If you wear a business suit, will that define you as someone with drive and ambition - or just as a terminal bore?
When a man's hair starts to fall out, he has to decide whether to shave the whole lot off or live with it, and the decision will depend on the way he hopes to be regarded by others. Will it make him look older or younger, more dynamic or simply trying too hard to look cool? It all depends whose attention you are trying to attract.
The great joy of middle age is that, by the time we have reached it, most of us already have a circle of friends and colleagues who know us for what we do, how we think, how well we cope in a crisis and whether or not we can be relied on for support. We have reached the happy stage of being known from the inside and not having to depend too much on how we look to signal our status.
That doesn't mean we don't care about our appearance. It is just that we no longer have to use it as a flag to wave in order to attract attention to ourselves. Frankly, I look back at my teens and twenties and shudder. Why would anyone yearn for that age of constant anxiety? Is my bum too big? Will anyone love me? Will I manage to have babies before I am too old? Will I ever get a job that I like? Will he leave me? Youth sucks - I'll take maturity any day.
Of course, during the process of getting older, we make changes; but worrying about whether you are too old to wear a miniskirt is no big deal. It isn't some great generational challenge, it's just a small matter of adjustment. The important thing in the end, as Anna Ford very wisely remarked, is that "the inside and the outside match". I noticed, as I hit my forties, that the women who looked great were the ones who realised early on that their outer and inner selves were out of synch. They were the ones who went from gypsy skirts to suits in a flash. I remember one woman in particular, who hung onto her girly cotton frocks for several years too long and then one day turned up with her hair cut shorter, wearing something well-cut and flattering. Did she look younger, older? No, she looked as though she had grown into herself. She looked as though she was in charge of the person she had become, and that is the point.
The answer to Christa's problem is simple: it's time to grow up, get your hair cut shorter, and kick the miniskirts into the back of the cupboard. Then get on with enjoying the power that goes with age. Here are some of the ways in which being in your late fifties is far, far better than anything that went before: I know what I like and I can afford it; I know who I like and I make sure I see or speak to them regularly; I know enough about the world to be pretty sure what matters and to focus on that. It is a real joy to go out knowing that what matters is what I can see, hear and feel - not who may be looking at me.
So, here is my advice to the D'Souzas of the world. You have a life, stop whingeing. Grow into the person you have become. You will have to do it eventually, and I can almost guarantee that, a few years down the line, you will have rediscovered who you are. The inside and the outside will match again, and you will cringe with embarrassment that you ever revealed this little adjustment problem to the world.
