Cloak of Invisibility? I'm with Mariella Frostrup and Sarah Vine

But seriously,€ she continues, “€œthere are not enough normal women past a certain age, treated as normal rather than €˜relics€™. We have a bad attitude to sex, age and women. We are a very slowly evolving society.€”

This is a question which has exercised me for many years (I am 14 years older than Mariella Frostrup).

Why does a cloak of invisibility descend on women at a certain point in their lives. Sarah Vine used this analogy when she wrote in a Times article, that now that she is in her late forties, men are starting to look through and past her whenever she enters a room or bar. This was then challenged in the Huffington Post by Jan Shure to puff her business SoSensational because "we both (she and business partner Cyndy Lessing) believe passionately that grown-up women can remain sensational and visible not only into their 40's, but also into their 50s. 60s and beyond." I expect, given the name of my business Look Fabulous Forever, that you would think I would be 100% in agreement with Shure and Lessing. In fact I am firmly with Frostrup and Vine.

The point is that of course women can look fantastic into old age.

I have just seen an interview on TV with 80 year old Joan Bakewell who is still stylish and beautiful, as she always has been. But in the U.K., (as opposed to France where I spend a lot of time) it seems that no-one (or is it no man?) wants to see women over about 48 in the public arena. Older women disappear from our television and film screens and are then spotted rarely, like exotic birds. Yet we women are 51% of a rapidly ageing population. In other words there are an awful lot of women over 50 in our "slowly evolving society."

I love wearing makeup (especially red lipstick) because our ageist, sexist society expects me, at my age, to slowly fade from view.

I have no intention of ever doing that. My riposte would be "why should I?" I get up every morning and put on my (LFF) "spendy face gack" (see Caitlin Moran, Saturday Times Magazine 19th Oct) and I immediately feel better. Last week I went to meet my grandson from nursery school. My daughter had left a description of me so that he did not go home with the wrong granny.

She wrote "silver hair and red lipstick". I was thrilled - that's it, I thought. Maybe that should be my epitaph.