What this man won’t ever understand about women over 50.

There is a man we all ought to feel sorry for today.

His name is Yann Moix.

The French author and television host said in an interview with Marie Claire that women over 50 are “invisible” – which is an odd thing to say given I can currently spot one, out in the wild, from the corner of my left eye.

According to Moix, who is himself 50 years old, women his age are “too old to love”. He much prefers younger women, he explained. Particularly their bodies.

“The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all,” he helpfully explained to readers of the magazine, a significant percentage of which are over the age of 50.

Should someone tell the author that women over 50 also love to buy books? Perhaps we let him find out the hard way instead.

Funnily enough, most women were not outraged. In fact, many over 50 breathed a deep sigh of relief. One woman tweeted, “Hey Yann Moix, can women under 50 also be invisible to you as well please?”

One cannot help but want to light a candle for poor Moix. Or have a moment’s silence, in order to reflect upon the enormous loss the poor man is suffering.

He will never know the joy of loving a woman for any reason other than the way she looks. Is that not the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?

Imagine never truly knowing a woman over 50, who are among the best of us, wiser, funnier, more self aware and infinitely more clever than those who are yet to have lived a life?

The depth of his attraction doesn’t go much beyond a fast metabolism, perhaps a body that has not born children, or shown the inevitable signs of ageing.

But what do the signs of ageing, maybe a few lines on your forehead, and creases around your eyes, actually mean?

They mean you’ve laughed and cried, thought and learned, grieved and celebrated, had holidays you won’t ever forget, and experiences that make you infinitely interesting.

They mean you’ve got better stories.

Moix won’t ever know true romance, as French comic Anne Roumanoff put it, defined by a true connection between two people.

He won’t ever know what it’s like to almost forget what someone looks like because you love them so much. Or to discover an intellectual equal, who challenges you and excites you, not with their tight bottom and impossibly flat stomach, but with their mind.

And imagine never knowing how attractive a woman over 50 can be!

An unselfconscious smile. A self-assured way of walking. A body which she might accept wholly, in a way very few women in their 20s can.

The irony is, Moix does not deserve a woman over 50. He wouldn’t know what to… do with her. It is indeed a relief he wants nothing to do with women who have lived more than 49 years, 11 months and 30 odd days.

That way, he doesn’t have to learn the hard way, that they are well out of his league.