Article: Fluffing up 50

Colette Dowling's "Red Hot Mamas: Coming Into Our Own at Fifty" is meant to be inspirational reading for women of a certain age. So why did I find it vaguely dispiriting?

The low point came, I think, when I read the phrase "incontinence, the final taboo." Gee. I hope it's the final taboo. But I have a feeling it won't be. Nothing about the aging process seems taboo these days, as my generation moves reluctantly but inexorably graveward.

Who are these red-hot mamas? They're babes, apparently. "They wear their skirts short, their feet weighted down with Doc Martens," Dowling writes. OK, they're clinging desperately to the illusion of youth. What else?

They "don't relate to being ...

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