Katie Piper's right, ageing is like a bereavement

"Age is just a number," goes the old adage. The new version should perhaps come with an addendum: "Age is just a number — but one that your face and body should never reflect." It was the recent words of presenter and activist Katie Piper that prompted this musing on our collective endeavour to erase the visible passage of time.

- Helen Coffey, The Independent

“Ageing can be compared to a bereavement,” the Loose Women panellist said at this year's Hay Festival while promoting her new book, Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space. “Sometimes we know we're losing somebody or something, and it’s slow, it’s gradual—and when it’s ageing, we look down at our hands, we see they look different. We catch ourselves in the shop window, and everything's changed.” The 41-year-old's sentiments hit a nerve.

I'm 38, a mere slip of a girl, surely, and yet I've already started having those out-of-body experiences — suddenly seeing a photo of myself taken from an unexpected angle and thinking, “Who's she? That middle-aged woman with the chins and the deeply etched eye bags?”