Where are Madonna's wrinkles?

The case for Madonna as an original style leader never really bore close inspection. What she has mostly been is someone who identifies popular emerging trends and hijacks them.

So it's probably no surprise that, at 50, she's chosen the path of so many celebrities and opted for a taut little face that's almost completely devoid of wrinkles. No crows' feet to suggest that she may have laughed once or twice. No frown lines to hint that any degree of thinking, feeling or evolving has occurred behind that forehead in the past five decades. But it is disappointing, because if Madonna really were the ground-breaker of her own mythology, surely she could have been the one to transmit an interesting image of what 50 could be to a generation of women who have come to fear ageing as one of the greatest evils of our time.

No one's suggesting that she should have let herself go, or even entirely let nature take its course. Heaven forbid. I'm all for whatever scientific intervention those lovely boffins in white coats come up with, so long as it doesn't result in the tight hazelnut with its unconvincing pointy cheekbones and chin that seem to comprise the McFace that we've all come to recognise in women of a certain age.

And there's another thing about ageless ageing: it really isn't ageless. In fact, any woman whose face doesn't move is a woman well past her teenage years. Why the aspiration to look ageless anyway? Isn't that what shop dummies are?