Forget the latest designer handbag. For a whole raft of middle-aged female celebrities, there's only one fashionable accessory you need to dangle on your arm – and that's a toy boy.
From Madonna to Susan Sarandon, Kylie Minogue to Wendi Deng, and Kate Moss to Mariah Carey, it seems more women of a certain age are falling for the charms of men years – and in some cases, decades – their junior.
This week, Minogue, 48, announced she would take the surname of her 29-year-old fiancé Joshua Sasse when they marry. Wendi Deng, 48, former wife of octogenarian tycoon Rupert Murdoch, was spotted recently handin-hand on a beach in St Barts with hunky 21-year-old model Bertold Zahoran.
Kate Moss, 43, is romancing Count Nikolai von Bismarck, 29, while 51-year-old Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet is dating fashion designer Erik Torstensson, 38.
The toy boy trend isn't just reserved for celebrities, either. According to a recent US study, almost a third of single women between the ages of 40 and 69 are dating younger men, with "younger" defined as 10 or more years.
So, what's causing this boom in toy boys? For some of the celebrities mentioned, there's an undoubted desire to attract attention and controversy.
Fast approaching 60 and with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for men 30 years (or more) her junior, Madonna never shies away from an opportunity to display her passion for men who could easily be her sons.
In Harper's Bazaar magazine, she said recently: "I have lovers who are three decades younger than me. This makes people very uncomfortable."
Certainly, there's still a stigma against women, especially those in or beyond menopause, dating much younger men. And let's be honest, it's not just men who judge. The relish with which these women scoop up toy boys unnerves many others who would recoil at being labelled a cougar.
But this suggests something of a societal shift. And, fascinatingly, it's one that reveals as much about the diminished status of men as it does the increasing dominance of older women.
Today, attractive young men play the same role previously enacted by pretty young girls with their sugar daddies.
For a generation of commitment-shy men who feel they're being sized up as potential fathers on the second date by younger women fixated on their biological clock, an older woman is an enticing alternative.
After all, a newly invigorated, middle-aged woman has a cachet today like never before. She's rebooting her sexuality – with a little help from her toy boy.
© Daily Mail
