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Turning 50 is as dangerous to women as a beach thong in a big surf. Age, to women, is what the Apollo 13 is to space travel; the Titanic to boating. Show me a woman who is happy with her age, and I’ll show you the electro convulsive therapy scorch marks. Our mothers’ always told us that beauty came from within. Within a jar marked beauty cream. Surely, brains and style are just as important as youthful skin?... Yeah, right. And Cher is ageing naturally. In truth “Je ne se quoi” is just French for crêpey necks and crows feet. Why? Because women suffer from facial prejudice – we get judged on our looks in a way that men don’t. (For females, wordplay is foreplay. How else is Woody Allen still getting laid?) Going over the Niagara Falls of fifty, a girl starts to feel that there really is no choice but to get a bloody barrel. But all this is about to change. Because, Madonna - style icon, role model, trail blazer, is about to hit the Big 5 O. Which means that fifty is suddenly fashionable.
Disco diva, sex symbol, style icon, earth mother, brilliant business woman, pop queen, provocateur – Madonna is a genius at reinvention. During her 30 years at the top, she has shifted more then 250 million albums, securing her an estimated 200 million pound fortune and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, making her one of the best-selling pop stars of all time.
Madonna’s trajectory has taken her from street smart to suite smart; from Desperately Seeking Susan rough diamond to diamond encrusted Material Girl. Just when we’d recategorised her as a sleekly tongue-in-chic Marilyn Monroe – she’s transformed again, into a kabbalah-chanting Earth Mother, practically threshing her own wheat and churning her own butter. (Lourdes is now 11, Rocco, seven and David Banda whom she adopted in Malawi in 2006, two.)
But, just as we got used the idea of Madonna as Mrs Ritchie, a gentrified 'English' land owner with pin-striped lingerie, she's gone and metamorphosed once more. This time as a disco diva, complete with leotards, leg warmers and retro perm. (On me a perm would look as though I’d just sutured my pubic hair to my cranium, but on Madge, it just makes her look funky and fabulous. How does she DO that?).
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