The most striking aspect of the ageing body is its invisibility. The ageing body is hidden, not only from the challenging gaze of a gerontophobic world, but from its owner herself who, encountering it in a department store mirror, say, is unlikely to recognise it. "Who can that portly old hag be?" she asks herself, and is startled to find, perhaps for the dozenth time that day, that it is she.

                          Germaine Greer (Guardian article)