While women in their 50s are dismissed as hags, bags or crones, men get to be silver foxes. Suddenly I realised why women try so hard to fend off signs of ageing
A grey pube. There was no denying it. If I hadn’t been contorted into what felt like an advanced yoga position trying to do up fiddly press studs on the crotch of the teddy I was wearing to a party, I would never have seen it. The party was for a novel I had written titled How to Kill Your Husband, and the theme was “dress to kill”. I had planned on wearing stockings, a miniskirt, a garter belt with dagger, and the ridiculous teddy undergarment that you clearly needed an engineering degree to operate. But how could I dress to thrill when I knew what was lurking beneath?
I immediately checked in with girlfriends. Had any of them discovered a grey pubic hair? Yes, yes, they had. What’s more, having hit my 50s, there was apparently much more I had to worry about. I would soon need to spend my life savings getting rid of stretchmarks, cellulite, chin sags, eye bags, neck wrinkles, crepey cleavage, pelvic floor lethargy, dry vagina, muffin top and menopausal weight gain; apparently, hormonal changes meant that I would soon resemble one of those giant jellyfish in a Jacques Cousteau documentary, floating about like a flesh balloon.
