Demi Moore was the toast of awards season. When she picked up her Best Actress award at the Golden Globes, women everywhere cheered at how Moore, once dismissed as a "popcorn actress", has overcome decades of misogyny. A month later, at the Baftas, she looked amazing in a custom-designed Alexander McQueen dress. And, despite losing out on the top trophy to Mikey Madison at the Oscars, Moore radiated youth in a plunging, crystal-studded Armani Privé gown that hugged her enviable figure - and therein lies the problem.

Moore is 62. I am 62. We were both born in 1962 (magic numbers!). And yet we seem to be from different planets. How do famous women look so good at 60-plus, with their swishy hair, honeyed skin and coltish limbs?

Do these 60-something goddesses ever duck to avoid their reflection in mirrors? Carry tweezers in their handbag? And absolutely - on pain of death - refuse to take an up-the-chin selfie?

I believe in necessary vanity (we're all working for longer). I try to keep up with the trends. I have the season's fashionable parka and Cocorose vegan trainers. I go to the gym, slap on Augustinus Bader Rich Cream and try to apply Victoria Beckham's Kajal eyeliner without looking like a clown (no one wants to scare the children).

But there the resemblance stops. As columnist Kate Mulvey recently complained, while Moore and Trinny Woodall, 61, look like "perma 35-year-olds", we look more like their mums. Annoyingly, these poster girls for ageless beauty will insist it's all down to a weekly vitamin drip and a few bunny hops, but I suspect there's a lot more that cosmetic surgeons could tell us.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that 62 is newly fashionable (hello, Jodie Foster and Michelle Yeoh). As a female journalist I'm never supposed to reveal my age (our sell-by date is frighteningly young). "If you stop colouring your hair, you'll never work again," one editor advised me, as two grey-haired male executives walked past to the boardroom.

But the tide is turning. In the last few months, I've had three headlines in newspapers mentioning I'm 62. The first time I opened the paper and saw my dodgy byline photo next to that number, I choked on my steel-cut oats. Now, I'm out and proud, and any shame about being in my seventh decade is over.

In fact, it makes me laugh when friends in their late 50s boast, "Oh, I'm not 60 yet", like it's the gateway to oblivion. Sisters, we're newly cool.

Yet something troubles me about the emphasis on Moore's "glow-up". The message isn't very progressive: you can be 62, but only if you look 32 - which is incredibly unfair to real women.

If the bar is set unrealistically high, women end up getting undressed in the dark or wearing matronly swimwear (my corseted Miraclesuit cost more than my fridge). And despite all the exercise (many of us are fitter than we were in our 30s), partners rarely see us naked. My ex loathed my collection of nighties, but how else is a 60-something woman supposed to have sex?

And don't get me started on mature dating. As my friend, the chef and food writer Kerstin Rodgers, 64, says indignantly: "It's like an Olympic sport with all the expense and upkeep."

Society has collective amnesia about what real flesh-and-blood bodies look like. It's The Stepford Wives in reverse. Because, disappointingly, the new glow-up is all about looks rather than achievement. Moore pioneered equal pay for women in the acting industry and blew pregnancy taboos out of the window with that naked Vanity Fair cover. But still we scrutinise her arms.

Back in 2015, when Helen Walmsley-Johnson wrote her classic memoir about ageing, The Invisible Woman: Taking On the Vintage Years, the fear was that older women simply disappeared. Now, if anything, we're too visible.

"There has been a lot of change in the way older women are represented in media, film and TV," Walmsley-Johnson, now 69, observes. "But I feel slightly cautious that it might be the latest gimmick: 'OK, we put older women in. That's the thing now and it will win us brownie points.' But whether it lasts, I don't know. For myself, I made a conscious decision not to go down the route of tweaking. I'm trying to make peace with what is happening to me and my body," she adds.

Visibility matters, of course. We feel better about ourselves when we see women ageing well. "There's that phrase: 'You can't be what you can't see'. But you also can't be what you can see - because you can't afford it or you haven't got Demi Moore's bone structure," laughs Walmsley-Johnson. "There are multibillion-pound businesses that thrive on our insecurities, but none of it defeats ageing. Ultimately, it's an unwinnable fight."

And isn't it a little tone-deaf to obsess about the body beautiful when we're at an age where friends are going through chemo or immunotherapy?

Arguably, by 60 you should have proper life wisdom, kindness and a modest sense of status (if you haven't already been edged out of the workplace). At parties I always head for the corner with the 60-something women because that's where the gossip and naughtiness is going on. Their f---it mentality is empowering. And I'll be shot for saying this, but often the 60-plus men are talking about parking or the wine club or themselves.

However, there is a tyranny to being the world's most fashionable age. At 62, my own mother (a naturally pretty woman) looked marvellous with a hint of lipstick - but she also retired at 58. No one worried if she wore the same M&S dress twice; a good bag and a smile was all the armour she needed.

Not any more. Now, we're expected to compete with very rich women who have their own gym, nutritionist and private jet. As a freelancer I can't help resenting how much money we spend on our appearance. And I'm pretty low-maintenance, trust me.

Of course you want to live your best life and scrub up well on occasion but, if the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, surely denying biological ageing is an own goal. The menopause is like a second adolescence: a chance to rethink what - and who - you desire to be. And I imagine it's the same for men. Ultimately, we all have slightly more important things to do than be captured on Instagram in our pants.

I absolutely loved Moore in her new film, The Substance. Made by a radical feminist director (the French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat), it's a brilliant satire on ageing and the wellness industry. I was particularly moved when Moore's character, Elisabeth, sabotages a date with a sympathetic man because she hates her mirror image - and we all know that moment (in fact, Daniel Craig offers a similarly vulnerable take on the ageing body in Queer).

I even got through The Substance's last 20 minutes of body horror. But I'm not sure everyone is getting the nuanced message: in the cinema young men (and some women) were cheering as Elisabeth's flesh fell apart; literally laughing at a woman's ageing body.

So, are Moore and her ilk to blame for the fact that we're all expected to look like supermodels? "I admire them and appreciate their beauty. It's not their fault they get held up as alpha examples of mature womanhood; [something] we should all aspire to," says Walmsley-Johnson. "But the whole idea of competition isn't helpful."

For me, the great quote about ageing comes from David Bowie (a man who knew how to rock a suit). "Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been," he proclaimed. Ideally, the ego falls away and it's time to be more authentic.

By all means applaud Moore's glow-up (after all, it takes a hell of a lot of work) - but not at the expense of your own sanity.