Dame Hotness: Mirren at 63

I remembered hearing about this a while ago and thought it was particularly appropriate for this week, considering the prohibitive nature of female aging that Mellencamp discusses. Here Helen Mirren is touted as the sexy 63 year old, the tone of the article is at times hard to decipher, seeming to state that we(meaning heterosexual younger men) should be able to desire older women, but the unspoken contingencies of that assertion are somewhat clear (if she is a hot older woman, etc.). Mellencamp's "chronology disavowl" seems to be at work here. Mirren can be 63 years of age, as long as she does not look the part according to patriarchal sexual standards (note the panoply of anti-aging advertisements surrounding the article, hmmm). Mirren's iconicity does seem to stem in part from the visual construction of her often uninhibited sexuality (Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Calendar Girls; and especially her role as DCI Jane Tennison in the BBC's Prime Suspect).

I think Dame Helen will be hot no matter what she does (personal bias perhaps but hey, I dare you to prove me wrong)