Tom Junod thinks so. He announces, on behalf of Esquire, that 42 in particular is so hot right now:
There are many reasons for the apotheosis of forty-two-year-old women, and some of them have little to do with forty-two-year-old women themselves. In a society in which the median age keeps advancing, we have no choice but to keep redefining youth. Life lasts longer; so does beauty, fertility, and sex. And yet forty-two-year-old women are not enjoying some kind of scientific triumph but rather one of political and personal will. A few generations ago, a woman turning forty-two was expected to voluntarily accept the shackles of biology and convention; now it seems there is no one in our society quite so determined to be free.
Conservatives still attack feminism with the absurd notion that it makes its adherents less attractive to men; in truth, it is feminism that has made forty-two-year-old women so desirable.
Sarah Miller, 44, expresses tongue-in-cheek “relief” that she might still make the cut:
Young women may still be perfect physical specimens. They can put on a bustier and high heels and arrange their legs, as 42-year-old Sofia Vergara has here, in a pose that’s not quite open and not quite closed, but they just don’t have, according to Junod, my “toughness, humor, and smarts.” He doesn’t come out and say that they don’t, but he definitely doesn’t say here, “Oh, the reason 42-year-old women are hot is because of what they look like.” No, it’s because we have a certain gravitas combined with what remains of our beauty. Young women don’t have that gravitas. So we sort of have the best of femininity.
I guess this is supposed to make me feel good.
Update from a reader:
Why would anyone be surprised that 42 turned out to be the magic age for women? After all, Douglas Adams told us years ago that 42 was the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
The Dish 