60 IS NOT THE NEW 40: GET REAL

I loved this article because it was so almost "right on." However, take it from me 60 is not the new 40. With 60 comes physical changes and for most of us our bodies start to slow down. 60 certainly is different for those of us in good health than it was in our parent’s generation. With good health and if one is fortunate not to have economic worries, 60 is poles apart from what it used to be. But is it the new 40? Don’t be fooled. It most certainly is not. Realistically, 60 is the new 60. And we can enjoy it. However, even with the additions modern science has brought, time does not stand still.

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

60 is the new 40!
By GINA SALAMONE
Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Cher turns 60 Saturday, but has no reason to wish she "could turn back time."
With an album in the works and a deal to replace Celine Dion as resident performer at a Las Vegas hotel, Cher is heading a pack of seasoned stars refusing to settle down and take up sewing.
Celebrities in their 60s like Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda and Sherry Lansing all have projects lined up that would tire a 20-year-old, and are proving that 60 is the new 40.
Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York, believes they have plenty of company.
"We baby boomers - me, Cher, Diane Keaton - we're the 'me' generation, so we had no problem lavishing all this time on our own exercise regimens and whatever," he says. "I think 60 is the new 40 for this generation that's about to hit 60."
In other words, whippersnappers, don't trade in your twin sets for leather pants. "The baby boomers are more experimental with their clothes than, say, the Gen X people who reembrace the conservative dressing of their grand-parents," adds Doonan. "Cher thinks nothing of walking around in chaps by Chrome Heart."
Fad or not, sixtysomething stars are making sure they don't dim out.
Cher will reportedly get $60 million to put on a flashy show at Caesars Palace in 2008, after Dion's contract is up. Word is the hotel is building a concert hall for her.
Though she's sold impressive numbers of tickets throughout her four-decade career, her three-year "Farewell Tour," which ended last year, was the highest-grossing ever for a female performer: She made more than $250 million playing to more than 3 million people.
Will Cher slow down in other areas now that she'll officially be 60? Nope. She's supposedly hard at work on a rock album.
Keaton, who recently turned 60, and Fonda, 68, aren't too old to be the faces of beauty. They've both just signed contracts to be spokeswomen for L'Oréal Paris' anti-aging products. Keaton's ads will be seen in the U.S.; Fonda's, in Europe.
Singers Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner continued to achieve greatness into their 60s. Franklin has snagged her 16th and 17th Grammy Awards since turning 60, while Turner's 2000 world tour was the highest-grossing act of the year. And her 2004 greatest-hits compilation, "All the Best," entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 2, the highest debut of her career.
Lansing, 61, stepped down as CEO of Paramount Studios in 2004, but set up the Sherry Lansing Foundation a year later to promote cancer research and education.
Doonan says that at this point, keeping track of most women's ages is irrelevant, and in any case impossible, thanks to time-reversing beauty procedures.
He points to the five Southern California women featured in "The Real Housewives of Orange County," a reality series. "All these chicks are all pumped up and Botoxed and they have fake hair and fake tans - you can't tell how old they are," he says. "It's more like 20 is the new 80."
Cher has called herself the "plastic-surgery poster girl." Fonda has admitted to going under the knife, but now preaches against it.
SHE'S A NATURAL
Keaton maintains she's all natural. And she's what 60 looks like to Cathleen Rountree, who's written books on women turning 40 and 60 as well as the upcoming "The Movie Lovers' Club: How to Start Your Own Film Group."
"I find it hard to take Cher seriously in the sense that when women in their 60s look at someone like her ... most say, 'How can I possibly look like that?'" Rountree says. "The truth is, you can't unless you've had all of that work done that she and Jane Fonda both have done.
"But you look at someone like Diane Keaton ... women who have not had any work done, and you just go, 'Wow, they are gorgeous women, both inside and out.'"
Growing old gracefully has so much to do with attitude, Rountree says: "If we look at turning 60 realistically, maybe it's what 40 used to be to my mother or my grandmother, but it is getting older. And looking at that with a kind of respect for ourselves and for our lives and excitement about what's still possible, I think that can be a really hopeful and productive point in life."