Madonna’s 65, Jagger’s 80: guess who’s told to ‘grow up’?

“Oh Madge, isn’t it time you grew up?” was the headline on a review of the Queen of Pop’s Celebration Tour. “While we’ve all grown up and moved on, she doesn’t seem to have done,” was one wincingly sexist reaction to Madonna’s multi-hit, all singing, all dancing, basque bearing, five-star new show. It made me sad.

No one tells Mick Jagger and the rest of The Rolling Stones to “grow up”, when in their eighties they are still writhing around in skin-tight leather and pouting at nubile, 20-something blondes (as in the latest video for their new single, “Angry”).

And Madonna’s only 65, a whole generation younger than rock’s oldest evergreen wrinklies. Why should the Queen of Pop have to “grow up” at all? She’s an anarchist, an artist, there to rattle the cages of society. If she’s still got the chutzpah and the stamina to raise the roof at 65 – well, go her! She’s a symbol of what older women are capable of. Don’t you dare write us off as knitting old grannies – we’ve still got it!

It’s so depressing that in 2023 the double standard around ageing for men and women is still so stark. Grandpa Mick is lauded. Keith Richards is revered as a bad boy. The Stones are celebrated for their boys-will-be-boys, never-grow-up ethos. They can take endless younger lovers, sire kids in their eighties and snake around in leather like teenagers. No one bats an eyelid.

Older men, generally – rather than being condemned as leathery lothario Peter Pans – are seen to get better with the years, maturing into themselves like particularly fine wine. It’s everywhere: the lauding of “silver foxes”, the “you go bro” ethos that surrounds older men with younger babes on their arms. The proliferation of Viagra and those Numan adverts…

For women, the ageing business is not so kind. We’re not silver foxes but cougars; Cruella de Vils or crones. Rather than being seen as good vintages curing with age, we’re seen as more like peaches: one wrinkle and we’re done.

We’re allowed to appear in public – on stage or screen or billboards – only if we’re botoxed and face-lifted to oblivion, air-brushed and brightened, complimented for looking unusually “good for our age”.

Just take the Queen of Pop: Madge has been tweaked and puffed, her face smoothed and padded by the world’s most expensive surgeons to hang on to the “juiciness” so required of older women in today’s world. It’s not just showbusiness: in the corporate world, too, women are desperate to look young and current; scared that a whiff of grey or middle-aged spread will render them redundant.

Of course, every woman makes her own choices on all of this. I’m a great believer in “you do you” – I love the sexuality, radiance and sheer goddamn Queenager energy Madonna projects on stage. She is living proof that older women are still energetic and magnetic; capable of moving crowds of tens of thousands with their prowess and charisma.

It’s not just Madonna either; I saw Grace Jones live at a festival this summer. Like Madge, Grace is a force of nature; a full-blown hurricane of mesmerising sass and magic. In her seventies, she gyrated for 10 minutes singing “Slave to the Rhythm” in leather thigh-high boots with six-inch heels. Like Madonna, she’s still got it. These women are icons for all of us middle-aged women; proof that Queenagers still have power.

But there is a double standard, here. Sure, Jagger’s exercise regime is gruelling – he works out frantically to have the stamina in his ninth decade to do stadium performances and he famously does ballet with his latest squeeze (50 years younger) to keep those snake hips snaky. And an insider tells me the Stones have an army of physiotherapists in their entourage. The after-party isn’t in the bar, but on the massage table.

But while they have to put in the effort to stay fit, they aren’t also feeling the need to tweak and chop their faces up to stay current. They flaunt their reptilian wrinkliness: no botox or tweakments for Jagger.

But for women, it’s different. In her sixties, staying looking young and sexy enough to be the Queen of Pop is not just a fitness workout, but a permanent battle to stay (facially) forever young.

Why? Madonna is an icon, a taboo-busting giant of a woman, who made her name pushing the boundaries. It’s why we love her. “Like a Virgin”, “Material Girl” and “Papa Don’t Preach” all shocked in their time. And she didn’t stop there: she has continued to reinvent, push the boundaries, work with younger producers, have affairs with her dancers, even defy a near-death illness earlier this year and get back on tour.

But… Oh, Queen Madge, oh, mighty Madonna – I love you but couldn’t you break the final taboo and tell the world to stuff its double standards and do all of this looking like a true woman of 65? Wrinkles and all?

Parade your power to show the world that Queenagers don’t have to chase the elixir of youth; that your talent is great enough to bust that last taboo? That it’s OK to be the age you are, rather than pandering to our lookist-gendered-ageist culture by trying to look young?

Be as outrageous as you like. Make jokes about sex acts, gyrate with your dancers, flaunt yourself into your seventies. But how about being a true trailblazer and doing it like Jagger, wrinkles and all? Now that really would be equality.

Eleanor Mills is the founder of noon.org.uk – home of the Queenager