Celebrity Style on trial

For decades, we’ve been told that, while men get better with age, a woman’s beauty will simply start to fade. Of course, we know that’s not true –but ooft, it’s a hard message to forget! Until, that is, you see the photo Susanna Reid has shared of her fi rst news broadcast 20 years ago. Compared with an image of the 49-yearold now, if we didn’t know better we’d say there was a very real chance the presenter is ageing backwards. But while it would be easy to blame the ‘Playmobil hair’ and the boxy jacket (so 90s!), it’s far more than aesthetics that make Susanna look so incredible now. She’s markedly more confi dent and self-assured –things that really do only come with age. And she’s not the only one proving that youth isn’t something we should all be clinging to. Tanith Carey explains how getting older has been the making of her...

Susanna 20 years ago (left) and now

MAKING OF US WHY IS THE AGEING

‘I FIGHT THE FRUMP’ ‘IT’S A LIE WE’RE SOLD THAT WE’RE ONLY ATTRACTIVE IN OUR YOUTH’ two decades ago reminded me I’m not the only woman who looks better as the years have gone on. Dressed in a lilac granny jacket, with mousy cropped hair, Susanna was unrecognisable from the assured, stylish woman today. As her career has blossomed, so have her looks. She allows her light to shine through in her more colourful

clothes and radiant smile. There was a time when a woman considered herself at her peak at 21, mature at 35, and positively past it at 40. But these days, we just keep getting better with age – and what’s more, don’t we know it?!

It helps to have great role models –Gillian Anderson, Nigella Lawson, JK Rowling and Jennifer Aniston, all women who look just as good, if not better, than they did two decades ago. With age comes experience. I don’t try to look like someone I am not. I know my weaknesses but I have also learned how to emphasise my good points – and most of all, I hold my head up high. i h t i i g to keep Tanith Carey, 52, is an author and journalist who lives in north London with her husband and two daughters, aged 18 and 14.

The fi rst time your husband sets eyes on you, most women would like to think their fi rst impression is, ‘Wow, she’s gorgeous!’

Well, just over 20 years ago, when Anthony saw me on my fi rst day in the newspaper offi ce where he worked, he certainly didn’t think that. He later told me my loafers, anklelength skirts and dyed black hair made me look like ‘a goth bluestocking’.

It was the mid-90s, I was in my 20s and dressed down partly because I was very unsure of myself and partly because I thought it was the best way to be taken seriously. But over the next few years, I chalked up a few career successes. As a result, I realised there was nothing wrong with allowing myself to be a little more glamorous.

Anthony clearly noticed me becoming more comfortable in my skin – because, within a few months of my fi rst promotion, he asked me to dance at the Christmas party. Two years later, we were married.

Looking at pictures of Susanna from

Talking About

WORDS: MISHAAL KHAN, TANITH CAREY. PHOTOS: GETTY, PA IMAGES, BBC, ALAM laughed in the face of the me p p so much as a hint of dowdiness, I don’t think, ‘Oh well, that’s it for me.’ I fi ght the frump. Be beautiful Along the way, it also hasn’t hurt that I’ve learnt the value of a good blow-dry Tanith in her 20s (left) and feeling more confi dent now

and treat myself to expensive highlights every eight weeks instead of getting my hair colour out of a packet. Now, when I look back at my old photos, I realise we women have been sold a lie that we are only beautiful when we have youth.

The years may have added a few wrinkles. But they have also brought me confi dence, as well as the knowledge to know what to do with my looks.

Best of all, I have learnt that getting older doesn’t mean the end of looking good. A woman can be beautiful, in her own way, at any age.

THEN

DAWN F a positi transfo good an

AFTER

She’s wondered if she’d look better with Botox, but RUTH LANGSFORD, 59, says, ‘I’m getting older and I want to embrace that.’

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