Sweet 60

Wearing a tight pair of jeans and a Uniqlo duffel, fuchsia pink ring-binder stuffed with notes about Existentialism under my arm, I stride into the university, the typical undergraduate.

Changing classroom between seminars, I catch sight of a reflection in a glass door. Looking back at me is not a fresh-faced young student, but an elderly woman. For a split second I wonder who that woman is. Someone coming up behind me, perhaps?

But, of course, that undergraduate is me — who any day now will be entitled to free prescriptions on the NHS and cut-price tickets at my local cinema: having just celebrated my 60th birthday.

It's all very well for Cherie Lunghi to talk about "60 being the new 40" and to insist that we should "accept the inevitable". Certainly, as I age, I find the disparity between how I feel on the inside and how I look on the outside grows ever greater.

Living life to the fullest

Right now, I can't decide whether my 60th birthday is a milestone or a millstone. It's scary heading for senior citizenship in a society that places so much premium on being young, in which women of my age are invisible — unless, of course, they happen to be called Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren.

Facing up to mortality is not something that concerns me. What I want to know is how to live life as a sixty-something to the full, without behaving like a fool. Should I succumb to ageing gracefully or is disgracefully the way to go? Or is there a middle way?

There's no road map for being a woman of 60-plus today. It strikes me there's a good, a bad and an ugly to this state of affairs. On the upside, far from slowing down, for many women fun and freedom beckon in their seventh decade, once your children have flown the nest. By the time they were in their sixties, my mum and dad had given up globetrotting and settled for a holiday apartment in Spain. Contrast that with the fact that several of my friends are organising adult gap years or busily spending the kids' inheritance on exotic treks to visit the gorillas in Rwanda. My friends still manage to find things to wear at Topshop or H&M, and swap clothes with their daughters.

And if, at 60, my mother was still gossiping with friends over coffee or, indeed, the fence, women of my age are doing it on Facebook, relishing the world of social networking.

I've discovered that I'm a far better student at 60 than I was at 18, when I dropped out of university. More focused, more confident, better able to analyse, question and contribute.

But that's the good news. Now for the not-so-good ...

We can't afford to stop work. The majority of my women friends continue in some form of paid employment — and enjoy the engagement with the outside world this offers. Others are busy doing the granny shift.

But when it comes to relationships, I'm struck by a worrying trend. The only age group in which divorce is on the rise is among those of 60-plus. For men in particular, it seems to me, when age comes knocking at the door, common sense flies out the window.

Many sixtysomethings are getting on with life as best they can, but it's not a prospect they relish. Some of those who were abandoned by their spouses are bitter; some who did the dumping are beginning to regret it; while those who have found new partners (me included) are counting their lucky stars.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

In Western society, beauty has always been treated as a virtue, and with cosmetic surgery promising faces and bodies that deny the years, there's no refuting that women feel empowered when they view their surgically improved selves in the mirror. But 60 is 60, no matter what the smoke and mirrors say.

Since the Fifties, women have enjoyed extraordinary advancement, and I feel privileged to have been witness and participant in them, rather than taking them for granted, as younger women today naturally do. At 18, I walked into my first job on a magazine. I could type. I could make tea. And that's all that was required to start on the long road to becoming editor of Cosmopolitan. Of course, it wasn't all plain sailing. But the options open to us — compared to those available to our mothers — were huge.

That's why I'm irritated when younger women complain about how hard it is to maintain a work-life balance. No one said it was easy, and choice sometimes comes at a price.

There was a time when I paid that price with a massive breakdown and clinical depression that lasted two years. But would I have changed my life if it would have guaranteed avoiding those two years of hell? No, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

But what might my sixties bring? I haven't a clue, and I'd rather not know. But as with every other decade, there are bound to be losses and gains. To misquote Shakespeare, age will certainly wither me, but hopefully custom will not stale my infinite variety. Or my curiosity. I've finally come to accept myself as I am, rather than need the constant reassurance that I'm an OK person. To say I'm glad I'm not young any more would be a lie. But I'm not sad either.