This here board is one of the few places I've found online that has anything like a healthy view of aging.
I was hanging about the Big Brother forums recently, because I was into Big Brother this year. The Celeb BB had a woman on, in her fifties, who hasnt had any plastic surgery and who looks a little weathered for her age. Kickass figure but lines on her face.
Some of the stuff people were posting was just depressing. It's like they felt personally affronted by the presence of a female face with lines on their television screen.
And the abuse the classics professor Mary Beard came in for after her tv show was aired was just surreal. People posting in the review comments that she made them feel physically ill and they shouldn't have such an ugly woman on tv.
This is Mary, she's 58 and an eminent scholar (Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts professor of ancient literature).
This is David Starkey, aged 68, who also presents history programmes on TV. He comes in for a lot of stick for his analysis and occasionally provocative statements...people don't generally complain about how he looks, or suggest that his physical appearance is an affront to the viewing public.
