91.

I was looking at my high school graduation pictures the other day, and I realized that I look older. At first, I thought maybe it was wrinkles or pouches or some awful thing like that. My mother said it probably was. (She's very supportive.)

But then, over coffee, when I asked a friend if I looked older, she also said yes. And I asked, "Well, in a bad way?" And she answered, "God no, you're more experienced and intelligent now!"

I don't know whether either of those last things are true, but I prefer "experienced and intelligent" to "wrinkled and stooped"- and since neither is under par for reality, I'll go with the former.

My point is, there are all these articles about how women reach their "sexual peak" in their 30's, whereas men hit it in their late teens, and the general takeaway from all this overanalysis is not a clear definition of what that ridiculous phrase even means but the sad conclusion that what is sauce for the goose will never be sauce for the gander.

Meanwhile, plenty of columnists (and by "plenty" I mean, that chimera of the NYTimes, Maureen Dowd) lament that women get worse-looking with age, whereas men only get better. But I think the more enlightening comment in this whole debate comes halfway down Dowd's column, where one Democratic aide says, "we've been staring at aging white men since the beginning of the democracy."

To get more equal opportunity about it, if we start staring at aging white women (and then, whoa, aging women of color and then, you know, whatever frontier could possibly exist after that) I suspect this attitude will go the way of the Whig Party. After all, in scientific theory, men are as likely as women to get less viable over time. (Or at least, to produce aneuploid offspring, aneuploid being a fancy term for "chromosomally abnormal" which is a fancy term for "special" which is a condescending term for...well, there's really no good way to say it, but if you've ever witnessed/borne/been the child of an older man you might know what I mean.) And of course, my favorite blog has a whole 'nother reason for why women prefer older men.

In an old interview with Cosmopolitan, Eva Longoria said that she felt more confident as a woman in her thirties than a woman in her twenties, and it extended to her sex life (I'm actually classing up Cosmo's dialogue - this is obviously a world of class away from the interview where she told Rolling Stone that the best sex she'd had all year was with her vibrator.) And this is no doubt because in her thirties Eva was starring in a hit prime-time drama, whereas in her twenties she was...even Imdb doesn't know what she was doing. And the two are not unrelated.

Meanwhile, on my favorite prime-time drama, the main character (with whom I uncomfortably identify) is a former conservative talk show host turned campaign advisor who just married a Senator. In the most recent episode, it comes out that her three brothers were betting on when she would get married, and the earliest estimate was 35. "Let's be honest - no one ever thought this would happen," is the common refrain, which makes sense to everyone, including the viewer.

Age carries a physical stigma for women because it degrades our most valuable resource. But I wonder if that matters anymore. I wonder if, in a mere fifty years, it will matter at all. In Ocean's 13, Matt Damon's character tries to seduce Ellen Barkin's older 'cougar' character. The days of older women lacking power, personality and opportunity are over. And I think the days of older women having no appeal of their own - no growing individuality, no keener sense of their place in the world as time goes by - are ending also.

Maureen Dowd, who for all her fire-haired feminist enthusiasm is still a conventionally pretty woman (and always has been) probably has trouble understanding this second, more Michelle-Obama-type allure. But Michelle - who seduced and married Barack back when he was just the office skintern - is not an example to ignore. Until he ran for the presidency, she almost overshadowed her husband, and reporters the country over have been salivating after her since she first appeared on the candidate's arm. She has a magnetism reflected not in what people write about her, but the fact that they do it so often, and with such enthusiasm (and I'm including myself, here.)

Nice teeth, nice skin, nice hair, these are all great. But there is no attractive power on earth that is greater (in my opinion) than intellectual force. And we're fortunate that we no longer live in an environment where women can't develop that.