As a 53-year-old there was naturally one headline that caught my attention this week – “The age when we feel at our sexiest is revealed as 53.”
I’d had a heads up on the story before it was dissected everywhere from the Daily Mail to Women’s Hour. A fellow fiftysomething mate of mine had emailed the press release, prefacing it with: “Well this has filled me with mirth!”
I scanned the story for the evidence of our new-found allure – squinting slightly at the small print through the multifocal contact lenses I’m currently trialling. And there’s no doubt this 53-year-old has been feeling pretty hot in the bedroom lately. There’s nothing like a 3.00am flush to get you naked and thrashing.
Read more: See more columns from Carolyn Hitt here
But nothing was going to stop a survey commissioned by an over-50s dating site convincing the middle-aged demographic that this was a potentially rampant decade. No room here for those vibes of: “not tonight darling I’ve got a menopausal migraine” or sorry love, the angle of the dangle isn’t quite what it was”.
Instead, there was a breathless litany of saucy stats, presented through the prism of the attractive celebrities hitting this milestone of apparent erotic appeal. Here’s what they said: “It is not until our FIFTIES that we feel truly sexy, with more than HALF (53%) of over 50s insisting they feel friskier now than they did in their twenties.
More precisely, 53 emerged as the age Brits feel hottest, with Tess Daley, Jennifer Aniston, Hugh Jackman and Gillian Anderson having all turned 53 in 2022. The survey, commissioned by Ourtime, found as many as four in ten over 50s (41%) were more comfortable in their own skin and confident about their looks than ever before.
Almost a fifth (18%) decided dating was spicier and more exciting too with dinner at the hottest restaurants in town (48%), jetting off for naughty weekends (40%) and beach dates (24%) making the top of the list. 16% still love a night out dancing, while 12% enjoy exotic cooking classes like sushi making.
One in twenty (6%) even said they wouldn’t mind getting stuck into some axe throwing during a date night.”
At this point I paused dumbfounded. It was also the point in the email where my friend had inserted a terrified face emoji. Axe throwing? As she acronym-ised, WTAF? People who actively avoid online dating because they fear they’d end up with a serial killer is a cultural trope. There is literally a blog entitled “So, I Dated An Axe-Murderer… or How to Stay Safe on Tinder Dates”.
But putting aside something that sounded like a gruesome courting ritual from Game of Thrones, I continued with Ourtime’s case for 53-year-old sex bombs: “Reasons for (fiftysomethings) being able to have such a good time include knowing what they want and not being afraid to go for it as well as letting go of worrying about how they come across.
“It also helps that 32% claim some people just get better looking and sexier with age, with silver foxes being a particular attraction."
I paused again here again for a roll-eye. “Silver foxes”. If that applied to both sexes L’Oreal would have never got off the ground. When it comes to fiftysomething’s shades of grey, men get distinguished, women get extinguished. But I hung on for the conclusion: “Furthermore, a quarter of over 50s also found their relationship and sex life became more exciting after hitting a half century. It’s no surprise then that 31% thought the idea of sex getting boring and ‘vanilla as you get older is a myth - with 29% claiming the notion of 50 plus Brits never having one-night stands is outdated and inaccurate. Other stereotypes to get debunked include everyone gets fat and wrinkly as they age (44%).”
There we are then. Without any form of research at all I present my own finding. The real reason 53 is the sexiest age is by then we don’t give a flying fig whether people find us sexy or not. Life throws far more important – and deeply unsexy - challenges at us at this stage of life to worry about our sexual currency.
Women spend most of their lives having this ridiculous metric portrayed as a measure of worth. And while society may carry on applying it with various degrees of misogyny, our fifties are the time when we stop caring what our score is.
Shining a light on fabulous 53-year-olds and reeling off stats that claim we’re all middle-aged sex bombs, may feel a positive thing but the focus is still on appearance and desirability. The full picture of middle-aged womanhood should highlight the wisdom, resilience, accrued expertise and all-round life-experience that can make a fiftysomething female fabulous.
But there are much darker statistics that show the lack of value society applies to those hard-won qualities. Just a few weeks ago research emerged from the Office for National Statistics that showed a demographic of 50+ women have been given the unenviable description of “being too old to hire, but too young to retire”.
Against a backdrop of record job vacancies and the cost of living crisis, 179,000 women in the UK aged over 50 are claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance – a 44 per cent increase from two years ago. The number of women aged 50-64 who have left the workforce entirely within the last two years has increased by 7%.
We are constantly told employers are desperately seeking staff but it doesn’t appear they’re in the market for middle-aged women. Assumptions are made that women in this age group don’t have the digital skills while research also finds they are judged more harshly on their physical appearance in the workplace than men.
I read case studies where women were advised to leave off date ranges from their CVs – a move that could also delete some of the most important examples of their professional experience.
One extensively qualified 53-year-old - who’d applied for 100 roles in the entertainment, leisure and property sectors - was asked for her age by a recruitment consultant. When she asked why he needed it he replied “Because we need to manage employers’ expectations and some might not want to…” He trailed off before skirting around the subject. It was the moment she realised her age was the key barrier.
Understandably it had huge effect on her confidence while there is also the economic impact for women discriminated against in this way who face more than a decade ahead before retirement is possible.
This double-whammy of sexism and ageism leaves the workplace poorer as well as the women it ignores. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: “A mature person is one who doesn’t think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things.”
What a sexy skillset. So let’s not forget a 53-year-old women can be brilliant in the boardroom as well as the bedroom.
