Of all the gossip spewing out of the imminent Madonna divorce, the most poignant item is that the 50-year-old pop star is enraged with estranged husband Guy Ritchie because he told her she "looked like a granny" on stage.
The granny comment is reported to be part of a "dossier" of unhusbandly conduct by Ritchie, 40, which has been put about by Madonna's lawyers and presumably leaked to the media as part of a tit-for-tat soap opera that does little for the dignity of either spouse, but much for the entertainment of the masses in hard economic times.
Ritchie's comments made Madonna feel "worthless, unattractive, unfeminine, insecure and isolated", reported London's Daily Mail, which has been forensically dissecting the break-up since Madonna's publicist announced it last week.
But the fact is, Madonna does look like a granny on stage, albeit a 21st century, super-fit, androgynous, very driven kind of granny - and what's wrong with that? Mick Jagger, 65, embraces his inner old codger; why shouldn't Madge?
It doesn't matter how much plastic surgery or exercise or weird dietary restrictions a woman (or, increasingly, a man) indulges in: age is age. And Madonna cannot be anything more than a well-preserved … 50-year-old.
That is very reassuring to the rest of womankind, most of whom will never have the time, inclination or narcissistic tendencies to work so hard in a vain attempt to arrest the ageing process.
For one thing, if the scurrilous gossip emanating from the Ritchie camp is to be believed, Madonna used to slather herself nightly with $1000 face creams and wear an anti-ageing plastic body suit to bed, which does not sound like a recipe for "business time".
Sugar and dairy are banned in the Madonna house, so Ritchie had to drink his coffee with rice milk. "Madonna was a domestic tyrant," reported the Mail. Ritchie "wasn't allowed to eat sausages at Christmas", which for an English person is an intolerable hardship.
Then there was her workout routine: two to four hours a day, six days a week.
And while she has not admitted to plastic surgery, her plump face and taut jawline speak of very good work - less Jocelyn Wildenstein than Demi Moore - which owes as much to the latest filler magic of dermatologists as it does to the surgeon's knife.
"I'm not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat," she said this year. "There are no short cuts to being Madonna."
Poor her. For all her half-billion-dollar fortune and her continuing chart-topping success, Madonna has fooled herself into believing that with enough hard work and money she can perfect her body.
It is true she looks more polished and toned than she did in her 20s. Plucking her eyebrows helped, and her supreme fitness is a beacon of inspiration for the gen Xers who follow in her footsteps, although her gammy knee - evident in visible support bandages under her fishnet stockings in recent photos - does give pause to reflect on the perils of excessive gym work.
So do the ghastly close-ups of her overly muscled arms that periodically appear in the gossip magazines - showing a chiselled anatomical structure that is best kept under wraps on a woman's body. Still, she is living proof that even the plainest girls can wind up looking "hot", with effort. As Helena Rubenstein famously said: "There are no ugly women, only lazy ones."
Ever since Madonna turned 50 in August, she has been held up to women as the feminist aspirational hero, for redefining middle age and reassuring that big consumer bubble of baby boomers that 50 really is the new 40, or even 30.
But is it more a feminist achievement to defy age or to embrace it? And isn't it more reassuring for an ageing woman to look at her peers and see they look the same as she does, rather than like Madonna?
After all, Madonna's ideal of physical perfection is achievable only with a ruthless single-mindedness which, at least in her marital predicament, doesn't seem to have brought her happiness.
By contrast, the gentle ravages of age have only softened the faces of such beauties as 60-year-old Olivia Newton-John, 66-year-old Robyn Nevin, 62-year-old Joanna Lumley and 63-year-old Helen Mirren. They may have resorted to a few anti-ageing tricks, and by 30, few women don't succumb to at least a good face cream. But the visible wrinkles and gentle sags of their faces show they have come to terms with the natural limitations of human existence.
Of course they don't look like 20-year-olds, but then, neither does Madonna. She looks like an altogether different sort of human - not unattractive but not young.
And if 50-year-old women are occupying the space of 30-year-old women, not to mention monopolising 30-year-old men, where does that leave the real 30-year-old women? It's hardly fair.
The new Peta-Pan phenomenon of middle-aged women hooking up with much younger men can be applauded as a long-overdue blow for equality to match the ancient practice of rich older men dating much younger dolly birds, preferably blonde with boob jobs.
But there will be no real equality until the toy boy's older woman looks not like Madonna but like Ronnie Woods, the haggard 61-year-old Rolling Stone whose recent affair with a 20-year-old Russian waitress has caused him some marital difficulties.
Madonna's face might freeze over before that happens.
devinemiranda@hotmail.com
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