Is it a triumph for women that Martha Stewart, 81, is a swimsuit star?

‘It’s interesting how the perennial debate about whether sexualization is empowering or harmful to women really comes into focus when you consider it in the context of older women.’ Photograph: Andy Kropa/Invision/AP

My daughter graduated from college last week, so for fun we watched The Graduate, Mike Nichols’s 1967 classic about an alienated young man and his affair with an older woman.

I remember seeing it when I was in college and identifying with Benjamin, the main character played by Dustin Hoffman. Like every other rebellious kid, I resonated with Benjamin’s disdain for the bourgeois mentality of his parents’ generation – the absurdity of the man who urges Benjamin to go into “plastics”! But now, at 58, I realized that Benjamin was actually an entitled creep for wanting to date his lover’s daughter, and it was Mrs Robinson who deserved our sympathy – and how did I not notice how hot she was?