I have to admit that one of the big reasons I wanted to see “Cheri” was to check up on Michelle Pfeiffer who has been talking freely about hitting 50.

“If you think 40 is liberating, wait till you turn 50,” she said at a news conference.
“You dread it for years and then it happens and it’s no big deal.”

Pfeiffer turned 50 in the middle of filming “Cheri,” the story of Lea, a 49-year old retired courtesan in love with a much younger man. The movie blurbs like to call Lea an “aging courtesan” or sometimes “an aging beauty.” Aging, being the ouch-y operative word.

Critics gave Pfeiffer kudos for playing her actual age. I guess that’s because audiences were bound to give hard study to a 50-year-old playing an aging beauty. Critic Kenneth Turan said the movie is “art imitating life, with a vengeance.”

Actually, both Pfeiffer and Lea seem to manage aging well, at least physically. Pfeiffer’s character Lea ages comfortably, glamorously and more healthily than her friends. Pfeiffer, herself, appears to be aging beautifully, thinly, firmly and blonde-ly.

Certainly age is a theme throughout the story. Lea tells her young lover, Cheri, who is 18, (played by 27 year old Rupert Friend) to not crinkle up his nose or he’ll get wrinkles. Cheri’s mother, played wonderfully bitchy by Kathy Bates, compliments Lea on her perfume and then zings her with how much better perfume clings to the skin when it is “a little less firm.”

When her maid asks Lea what’s wrong she sighs, “You know. Age.”

The film is set in early 1900s France before World War I, a time that has a few things in common with today. Age obsession, for one. Plus, women taking lovers young enough to be their godsons, proving that cougars are not a modern phenom. And the rich and powerful, on the brink of losing it all, growing decadent and obese. Pfeiffer’s Lea is about the only fit one in her crowd, in part because she pushes the wine glass away and dines on toast and grapes while her friends’ necks grow too big for their diamonds.

Lea, in Pfeiffer’s body, looks like she goes to the gym. The chin is holding. The arms are work-out toned. In the books by Colette on which the film is based, Lea eventually lets the flesh take over and stops dying her hair. But in the film Lea’s body and face reveal only minor signs of age and they’re hardly troubling, although telling enough to be registered by the young lover.

And here is a beauty hint for us all:

Pfeiffer told an interviewer the quickest way for her to look older for the camera was to sit in the sun without makeup and not smile. When the smile drops, so goes the face.

Director Stephen Frears raved about Pfeiffer being a sport, never fretting about her looks, never asking for favors from the camera. On the other hand, Frears, who is 68, has his own aging hang-ups and says he thinks it’s more difficult for men than women to get older. The women around him seem fine with aging, he said. They’ve stopped “flapping around about their appearance all the time. I imagine it’s a great weight off the mind.”

Yes, it could be, especially if Hollywood and the rest of the media would get past their own obsession over youth and beauty.

It’s possible that “Cheri” will encourage more films that deal honestly with age. And that wonderful and realistic roles for women over 50 will continue to come along. In the meantime, don’t let your smile down.

I started watching Rachel Maddow during the presidential campaign after “The Nation” reported on a new, novel TV personality who was a Rhodes Scholar and an AIDS activist. She was also a much-welcomed political ally last fall and not nearly as noisy and smirking as some of her MSNBC colleagues.

However, I didn’t expect her to become a regular in our living room. More of an occasional after-dinner treat, like a bowl of mint chip. But now we indulge almost nightly. I still require the more green veggie type of news served up by the reliable Jim Lehrer and his troupe on PBS. I particularly like it when Judy Woodruff is there reporting on politics or filling in as anchor.

A really good night for me is to get Judy first and then Rachel. It’s not the same as having a woman elected president in your lifetime, but if you can remember those years of catfights over who will be the new pretty blonde head sharing the podium with a silver-haired newsman, it’s still thrilling to watch a woman get to the top of her field because of brains and talent. As President Obama noted, in creating his White House panel on women’s and girls’ issues, the fight for gender quality is not over. And while I’m not sure we can say that that this particular glass ceiling has been thoroughly cracked, at least it’s widened enough to allow us to look forward to more Judys and Rachels.

They don’t have to cross their legs in short skirts to fill the camera.

Of different styles, Judy’s the big sister in terms of gravitas, and Rachel’s the brazen newcomer. But I can see them going out to dinner, laughing it up and getting into what they really think of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.

Rachel often says she has the best job in the entire universe, and I bet Judy feels the same. “Very cool stuff,” Judy exclaimed one night after what I remember as a complicated debate on climate change. Rachel gets to pop off in a more colorful way, recently commenting on the “junior high whining” of a former president.

The other thing about these women is they don’t have to cross their legs and wear short skirts to fill up the camera. That doesn’t mean their looks aren’t part of their appeal. Rachel, often in Johnny Cash black, favors an unadorned tailored jacket over modest tank top. She’s called herself “not a typical news babe.”

But neither is Judy, even though she’s a former Georgia beauty queen. Judy looks like she put on whatever just came back from the dry cleaners and spent the last 30 minutes before show time going over GM’s annual report rather than getting a comb-out.

But we notice when she does. The other night my husband looked over and said, “Hey, Judy got a haircut.”

Helen Mirren may have just helped out John McCain. At least in the ageism debate.
Many people automatically assume that a 63-year-old woman is too old for a bikini. And many argue that a 72-year-old man is too old to become president.

Both concerns come from the popular “ism” that a person’s chronological age is their most defining characteristic and therefore determines who they are and what they can do.

Helen Mirren has demonstrated that she does swimmingly in a red bikini, as evidenced in photos of her Italian vacation which won hurrahs for her flat stomach, smooth thighs and chutzpah. But, even though her physical charms appear limitless, and they are enviable, it’s still her superior acting that counts most.

Now, how about John McCain? We’ve got his various political positions to bat around. But is his age a fair target? I hope the Obama campaign can take the high road on this issue. First, because their guy, at 47, could be vulnerable to ageism from the other end. And because he doesn’t want to offend people over age 50 who are expected to make up half the voters in November. There are a lot of Boomers, especially ones hitting retirement age, who are sensitive to being labeled by the year they were born.

Men age, women rot.

I discussed the age issue with a couple of powerful Democratic women who you might expect to seize on any negative they could find on McCain. But they think his vintage should be left out of the contest. California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder know their “isms.” Both were Hillary Clinton supporters and smarted over the sexism that came out during her campaign.

Schroeder, who was in Congress for more than 20 years and made a bid for the presidential nomination in 1987, was a regular on talk shows earlier this year, blasting the media for its misogyny, likening the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the Salem Witch Trials. Schroeder saw some ageism, too, in the Hillary attacks, recalling Rush Limbaugh’s comment about Americans not wanting to watch a woman president grow old before their eyes. And even though Schroeder still thinks sexism was the greater culprit, she said, “There’s no question that sexism and ageism are very related. It’s the old thing about ‘men age, women rot.’

Were a woman contemporary of McCain to put herself out there, the response would be harsher, said Schroeder. For example, she thinks Dianne Feinstein would make a great candidate. But Feinstein is 75. And if she ran, said Schroeder, “they’d nail her on her age.”

The last time Lynn Woolsey ran for re-election, a columnist, who supported her younger male opponent, said it was time to get someone younger with more energy. Woolsey defended herself, saying, “I can’t help my age but I don’t believe anyone has more energy than I do.”

Woolsey, who is two years younger than McCain, said she doesn’t think 72 is that old. “Age isn’t the issue. But health and vitality are.”

Schroeder said that’s what people should be looking at – “to make sure the person has good mental faculties and is in fairly good shape.”

And then you can go after that person on the really important things – like the war, health care, immigration, women’s rights, messing with the ocean digging for oil.

The rest is no more relevant than how you stuff a wild bikini.