Is gorgeous George being coy?

Published May 29, 2015

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London - George Clooney has been musing on the secret to graceful ageing for men. His conclusion? Don’t try to fight it, boys.

The 54-year-old actor admitted this week “there is nothing fun” about ageing in Hollywood, even for a great big honeybun like him.

Clooney argues that attempting to hold on to youthful looks actually makes men look older, and to be fair, he has a point. Every time I see Paul McCartney with his tragic aubergine hair rinse clashing with his papery white complexion, I want to beg him to stop. He looks like a corpse wearing a dirty mop on top.

When Tom Jones ditched his hair dye habit and turned into a silver fox overnight in 2009, he looked better than he had done for years. At 68, going natural made Tom look younger and sexier, not older and greyer.

Paul would, too, if only he had the confidence to throw away the hair crutch and take the grey plunge.

Gorgeous George argues that guys should be more like him, and who would argue with that? They should accept their limited options, which are, he claims: “Get older or die.”

Well, ahem, ahem, cough-cough into my fizzing glass of cynic salts. It’s all right for a handsome brute like George to say that.

Like Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Bridges, he is one of those lucky men who has aged like a fine wine, while millions of others must contend with the curdle factor as they age like soured cream.

Mr C could have added that marrying a woman nearly 20 years younger also helps to put a spring in any ol’ geriatric’s step. But here is the point.

Is George being entirely honest with us? For a start, he has platoons of the best beauty experts in the business at his command. Look closely at photographs of Mr and Mrs Clooney on the red carpet and you can see he is often wearing more make-up than Amal.

Get older or die? In 2007, he seemed to admit he had gone under the knife. In a TV interview, he said: “I had my eyes done. Can you tell? I think it’s important to look awake.”

The following year he joked in Esquire magazine he’d had his testicles rejuvenated. “I got them unwrinkled. It’s the new thing in Hollywood - ball ironing.”

Typical George remark. Very droll indeed - but he didn’t know what he started.

Californian plastic surgeons speedily came up with the solution to the previously non-existent undercarriage problem. A male “tackle tightening” operation was soon on offer, a procedure that straightens and smooths scrotal skin, which apparently is as delicate as the eye area.

That’s quite enough about that, thank you very much! Even though it is nice to think of all these Californian men walking around with piles of neatly folded laundry steaming away in their personal baskets.

Let nature take its course? Well, that is fine if you happen to look like George Clooney. He’s got great scaffolding and a good head of hair. He’s got Hollywood expertise to make him look great, on the red carpet and the screen. However, lots of other men his age are not so blessed.

Some don’t want to be bald. Some don’t want to be grey. Some don’t want to have eyelids that droop like those of a sad elephant. And surely they, like women, should be able to improve their looks as they see fit?

So much pious rubbish is written about plastic surgery. So many regard the quest for physical self-improvement with an oddly vicious and Victorian disapproval - but if you want it and can afford it, why not?

For men - and women - in the public eye, ageing is particularly hard. One can see why they are sorely tempted to do something about the looks they feel are fading. For those who are terribly attractive in the first place, the loss of beauty must be a particularly bitter blow.

Look at The X Factor finalist Christopher Maloney, who had stress-induced hair loss. He spent £60 000 on cosmetic surgery after being called Mr Potato Head by online trolls. Poor Christopher.

I hope he feels better about himself, even if it is not good for men in the public eye to be so thin-skinned - and I don’t just mean down there.

Meanwhile, George may be being disingenuous about his beauty secrets and what he does to keep his allure, but he will always, always be gorgeous. It may be unfair, it may be inequitable, but that’s just the way it is.

Daily Mail

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