Turning 40 is dreadful – let’s not pretend otherwise

Last week, pictures of the actress Sienna Miller frolicking with glee in a tiny orange bikini in St Tropez with her boyfriend were widely shared. Miller is 40, and her boyfriend, the Burberry model Oli Green, is 25. Miller was described as looking ‘incredible’, a mixture of fantastic abs and, it was implied, exuberance at her still-strong, possibly intensifying sexual power. Women at 40 are a fascinating breed, treading a line of dubious width between youngish and middle aged; between fertility and its winding down. In past centuries, women were lucky (or unlucky) to get to 40. 

Now the ether resounds with rhetoric about how empowering it is, how the follies of youth have been left and in their place come the burnished glories of still-attractive maturity. There is a watered-down rhetoric for men of the same age, recently resurgent since Prince William hit it in June, which seems to toggle between joys of self-knowledge and family life, and wise acceptance of decreasing muscle mass and hair. In