Why 55-year-olds are today’s wonder women, by PETRONELLA WYATT (aged 55)

There was a time when women who reached the age of 55 simply disappeared. Members of my sex were despatched by a merciless cult; the cult of youth.

When men reached 55, they acquired character, bless them. When women reached 55, our hair was turned an obligatory grey, arranged in harsh coiffures, while fashion left us with a brutal scrapheap of low hems and high necklines. 

The staff of youth was confiscated, to be replaced by the homely knitting needle.

No more. When I joined the 55 Club last month, I did so with a bang. I shimmied into a sparkling emerald cocktail dress, rang round some of my favourite male friends and invited them to my London garden for an evening of champagne. 

Gone is the tweeded Margaret Rutherford figure with windpipes that could disperse a London smog. We 55s are not only fighting back, but our form has never been better.

Just look around you. There is 55-year-old Kylie Minogue, glorious in thigh-high red leather boots, who has just released what is expected to be the hit song of the summer and her first chart-topper for 20 years, Padam Padam. 

Other 55-year-olds reigning supreme include the ravishing Nicole Kidman, who now commands $1 million (£800,000) per TV episode, and the indomitable Julia Roberts, the new face of Chopard, with a gold-plated Netflix contract to boot.

In times past, the lady of a certain age who dared to be noticed was decried as not quite decent, and — in the case of Hollywood actresses — relegated to character roles as mothers, or subjected to ‘hagsploitation’ as deranged spinsters.

Now, fabulous women in their 50s and upwards are going into battle clad in the armour that only the confidence and brains of age can provide. So what has changed?

Only two or three generations ago, women in their mid-50s were made miserable by the intolerable conditions of their lives.

If married, they were tied to husband, home and children, subject to an endless rota of tedious domestic tasks, and valued only as grandmothers, carers or cooks. 

If single, they were forced to live in economic dependence on a male relative. We had no occupations to fill our days and no liberty.

Nor, unlike the present, did we have the opportunity or inclination for sex, which was thought of as an abomination for many women over the age of 35. We heard cautionary tales. 

PAMELA ANDERSON Memoir triumph: A one-dimensional sex symbol in her 20s, it took until her 50s for the world to notice Pamela Anderson’s brain. She became Playboy’s ‘playmate of the month’ in 1990 then an international superstar in TV’s Baywatch. This year she released memoir Love, Pamela. Both it and an accompanying Netflix show were widely acclaimed. The mum-oftwo also works on behalf of animals rights organisation Peta

JULIA ROBERTS Big Netflix deal: After reuniting with George Clooney for romantic comedy Ticket To Paradise last year, Julia Roberts joked it was ‘probably going to be terrible’. Yet fans loved her return to the big screen — her first major film since Wonder in 2017 — and there’s more to come. Julia has landed what is widely seen as Hollywood’s golden ticket: her first film with Netflix. Also starring Ethan Hawke, dystopian thriller Leave The World Behind is out in December — and it’s reported that Julia was paid $25million for it. This year she was also made a ‘global ambassador’ for luxury jewellery brand Chopard

One of my great-aunts met a terrible fate because she dared to defy the strictures of her day. A young woman of remarkable ugliness, in her 50s she grew into her looks, dyed her hair red, became a tennis pro and went in search of men.

She did rather well, graduating from a taxi driver to a carpenter to a mildly successful businessman, who proposed marriage. His family were less pleased, insisting that she curtailed her activities. 

Two weeks after the wedding, her husband died having lost all his money, throwing her on the mercy of her in-laws, until she jumped to her death from the fourth floor.

Now, a 55-year-old woman has no need for extreme measures. If she has a good career, sufficient income to maintain her appearance — with regular injections of Botox should she so wish — and, most importantly, a sense of humour, life has never been better. 

She is still too young to worry about the diseases of old age, but also too mature to worry about the opinions of others.

It is perhaps no surprise that most divorces in Britain are now initiated by women and for those in their Fab 50s, with children grown or, like myself, with no children at all, it is an optimum time to forge a life you feel will make you truly happy. 

But husbands can still be taken on, particularly as women — no longer required to choose between motherhood and a career — may soon overtake them as breadwinners.

Though I recall my younger figure with nostalgia, I don’t regret the passing of my 20s, 30s or even 40s. Those decades were chiefly marked by shyness and chronic insecurity, punctuated by tears over unsuitable men. 

The biological urge to merge did for my powers of discrimination what alcohol did for my brain. Now I am past my childbearing years and have acquired the sense not to fall for the next passing male, the opposite sex barely matters a jot. As a result, I have never been more in demand.

NICOLE KIDMAN Soaring TV salary: Watching Nicole Kidman walk the red carpet last month in a Chanel dress she first wore aged 36, you’d be forgiven for thinking time had stood still. Yet Nicole’s career has come on leaps and bounds in the last 19 years. She earned at least $1 million per episode for TV smashes Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, and last year won a Golden Globe playing Lucille Ball in Being The Ricardos. She’s pulling strings off-camera, too. Her company Blossom Films is behind hits The Undoing and Roar. So it’s little surprise she and husband Keith Urban, with a combined worth of £368 million, are set to debut on ­Australia

DAVINA McCALL Best book award: It HAS been more than 20 years since Davina McCall hosted the first series of Big Brother, the show that propelled her to stardom. But while the Big Brother brand might be showing signs of wear and tear, Davina — a mother of three — is still as relevant and ambitious as ever. She has just signed a deal with ITV to front their new ‘Love Island for the middle-aged’, called The Romance Retreat. Davina is also aggressively fighting off middle-age with a vigorous exercise regime and has become a champion of the menopause industry, with a series of documentaries, podcasts and a book, Menopausing, which was crowned The British Book Awards’s 2023 overall Book of the Year. After splitting with husband Matthew Roberston in 2017, the Masked Singer judge is now in a relationship with hairdresser Michael Douglas

The seesaw has upended and a transfer of power has occurred from our younger sisters. Across all professions, including the arts, business and politics, youth is no longer a premium. 

Experience and a sure hand on the tiller have more allure than filling a quota of under-30s. Even in the trivial and transient world of fashion, the most sought after models include the likes of Naomi Campbell, 53, Helena Christensen, who turns 55 this year, and Cindy Crawford, 57.

As executives realise the growing power of older women — particularly our spending power — we are increasingly represented in campaigns, films and on television screens.

Advances in health, diet, hairdressing and cosmetic surgery mean we can, if we so choose, boast the tresses, figure and smooth foreheads of a 30-year-old, and we have enough discernment to avoid the sartorial horrors that younger celebrities parade on the red carpet.

The 55-year-old stars seen here are perfected presences and now offer stiff competition to the nubile blondes with better turned ankles.

The #MeToo movement and its nuclear fallout has made May-December relationships increasingly toxic. The intelligent single man in his late 50s or early 60s has become wary of being seen with a partner barely out of university.

There is another trump card to be played by my generation — our general disdain for the po-faced commandments of wokery.

Lately, male friends of mine have jettisoned their younger girlfriends because they are tired of being lectured on everything from climate change to alleged transphobia, or their deeply offensive habit of holding open a door (never mind the pathologically insulting gesture of offering to pay for dinner).

Thank heaven women in their 50s and beyond are not so chronically delicate, and are able to refrain from treating men as if they were addressing a public meeting.

A male connoisseur of women told my father the most seductive female he had ever met was the then 55-year-old Marlene Dietrich. Sadly, she succumbed to the ageist mores of the 1960s, ending her life as a recluse.

But I’ll be damned if I’m willing to accept that sad prospect. Like Kylie, Nicole and Julia, I am consigning those knitting needles to a museum.