It is amazing being in your 50s. The best. You feel fitter, look hotter, your confidence is at warp factor 10 and building. Are you getting this at the back? You can wear what you like (apart from frills, but that's only Alexandra Shulman's opinion, not Yasmin Le Bon's) and you are definitely wearing a bikini. It's no biggie, is the point, because 50 isn't just a number it's the gateway to the best years of your life. There's the Trying 20s, the Tense-making 30s, The Frying 40s and then you burst through the clouds into the sunny uplands of the Fabulous 50s, when you've never had it so good.
This is 50-shaming. It rumbles along all year and then, come spring, bursts on to the scene with photographs of actor Liz Hurley, 52, watering the garden in a plunging purple maillot or British television presenter Davina McCall, 50, looking like an Olympian. It comes dressed up as words of hope from the front line of feminism. It looks like sisterly encouragement — sex is only getting better; speaking up at work is a doddle; who isn't doing a marathon?
But you may find that your experience is not one of improvement in all areas, and that instead of feeling empowered by all this you feel inadequate.
You're wearing Adidas trainers, you're never going to have a Barbara Bush hairdo and you may even be going to a festival next summer but, come on, we're in our sixth decade. You'd have to be on drugs not to notice that some things are getting worse and to pretend otherwise is like photoshopping your family holiday pictures.
So, here are a few 50-shaming myths ...
