Salma Hayek’s skinny-dipping picture does nothing to help middle-aged women

Rowan PellingFri, September 11, 2026 at 9:00 AM UTC

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Salma Hayek marked her 60th birthday with a nude selfie on social media - SalmaHayek/Instagram

In two years’ time, I am going to be 60. Which, as a woman of the world, can only mean one thing. I am already busy planning how best to demonstrate my indefatigable agelessness.

If Salma Hayek can mark this milestone with a nude selfie on Instagram depicting her frolicking in shallow sea water, with artfully tousled “surfer hair” setting off pearly gnashers to advantage, how can I raise my game? Perhaps with a full face and gusset lift before revealing the terrifying results on my brand new OnlyFans channel? Or maybe the kids can spray paint me gold, à la Gwyneth Paltrow (a stunt to mark her 50th birthday), but maybe add a kookie custom touch like cobalt-blue nipples? Or one of those “sweaty but sultry” weight-lifting photoshoots that celebs do with their personal trainers, while sporting teeny-tiny vests and spray-on leggings?

Or can we all declare an amnesty and cease this “I’m in better shape than my teenage self” malarkey? We all get it. People with money and time on their hands can do Pilates 24/7 and have magic voodoo stem-cell facials, while feigning horror at the very thought of Botox.

Old people increasingly look fabulous and frozen circa 1991. The high empress of this look is Vera Wang, the 77-year-old American fashion designer, who arrived at this summer’s Fragrance Foundation Awards looking like a stroppy schoolgirl – or “all gussied up” as she put it – in oversized shades, a PVC bra, a strip of black bandage, heels and some diaphanous flares that appeared to be falling off her buttocks. Needless to say, her hair is still glossy black. The mirage was spellbinding until she started to walk unsteadily down the pavement. I suddenly feared she might snap in half like a toothpick.

I must confess to being guilty of some youth-chasing vanity. I dye my mane golden brown, whiten my teeth, run twice a week and work hard to stay the same dress size as I was at 28. But there’s a point when reasonable maintenance gives way to an aggressive insistence on vigour.

Take Tom Cruise in last year’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. He’s beginning to take on shades of Cliff Richard. Yes, they look young. But they don’t look real-deal young. Would it kill Cruise to let a few greys percolate through that eerily dark mane? To take an afternoon snooze after dispatching endless bad guys and riding that motorbike off the side of a mountain?

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I’ve just returned from a four-day trip to Norway for a birthday party with a group of close friends aged between 52 and 72. Only on arrival did we discover there was a rocky 20-minute walk from the car park to the hired cabin. It was only when we stepped inside that we realised there was no running water (only a tap by the outside loo), while nine of us would be sharing three dormitory-style rooms.

My sons, aged 18 and 22, wouldn’t be fazed by this at all, but let’s just say you could hear a sound like glass shattering as the veneer of eternal youth fell from our collective shoulders. We had to organise the rooms in terms of bladder control, along with bad backs, snoring and who was most likely to plunge down the steep, narrow wooden stairs if there wasn’t a night light. One guilty member of the party had forgotten their nighttime mouth tape. Another took a metal bucket to bed and woke the whole house at 4am with the longest pee any of us had ever heard. It was like monsoon season in Gujarat.

Suffice to say, we all averaged about two to three hours’ sleep per night, and had to anaesthetise ourselves with hard liquor to survive. Huge fun was had by all, but we all looked like Ursula Andress in She – after she ages 2000 years in seconds – on the flight home.

I couldn’t help comparing it to another weekend jaunt I joined some weeks earlier in the Cotswolds. There were a dozen or so blithe young things in their 30s, a couple in their 70s who went to bed early and, er, me. I tried to keep up with the youngsters, gamely dancing until 3am. But when they announced their intention to skinny-dip in our host’s pool, I knew it was game over. No one wants to be creepy Aunty Vampira under such circumstances, so I retired.

“Golly, you look exhausted!” said one of the lovelies to me the next day after she confessed to zero sleep. And therein lies the truth of the matter. You can act young, you can look young, but Gen Z owns young. It’s their real estate, and they can evict us with one knowing look. It’s time to stake out our own turf.

When I turn 60, I want to be left gently snoozing in a Pall Mall club armchair.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”