A couple put their arms around each other and move in close for a heartfelt kiss. She tilts her head and closes her eyes; his are open, looking at her with protective devotion.

They seem happy in each other’s company, clearly lovers and good friends, comfortable with each other and in their own skins.

So far, so touching. But equally, so what? The red-carpet shot published in the Mail this week is nothing exceptional, surely… save for the fact that he is Keanu Reeves, the 58-year-old film star – and his girlfriend, Alexandra Grant, is not only 50 but has grey hair, too.

Yet shock – even horror – is expressed every time a new picture of the couple emerges.

Shock – even horror – is expressed every time a new picture of Keanu Reeves  Alexandra Grant emerges

People can’t seem to get over the fact that a heartthrob is dating a mature woman, rather than a lithe young girl with puffy lips and a spookily immobile face. (Grant’s grey hair always gets a mention in the press coverage.)

What is it that bothers people about this relationship? Is it their similar ages? Is it that, while she is a handsome woman, she is not conventionally button-nosed pretty? Nor does she appear to have had cosmetic tweakments to make her look like every other woman in Hollywood.

Grant may be a successful artist who is trilingual, teaches and is a regular doer of good philanthropic things. But where are the boobs, hips and lustrous long hair that suggest she could squeeze out five kids in as many years and do the Pirelli calendar?

That juicy, youthful, fecund look so many women seek to emulate long after that particular evolutionary asset has gone.

For it is a truth universally acknowledged that a hot rich guy should forever be in want of a younger, hotter wife. Unless she has been married to him for aeons, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that a middle-aged woman just doesn’t sit right with a middle-aged male icon.

I admit I’m a serial offender. If ever I see a male celebrity with a ‘normal’ woman, I’m amazed and almost appalled. It’s not that I’m against it, just that it’s so rare, like albino tigers or Lib Dem MPs. Yet at the sight of another old git posing with his ultra-polished arm candy, I just sigh.

People find it hard to accept that a hottie is seeing an older woman instead of a skinny young girl with swollen lips and a spooky still face.

Male vanity is to blame. Young, attractive women are just as much an accessory to insecure men’s egos as large watches, loud vehicles, and all that boasting about their possessions because they need to be validated for their own importance.

Statistics show that males worry about going bald, while women worry about getting gray. However, women don’t start dating someone half their age when they get older.

The outliers that demonstrate the rule include well-known males like Keanu Reeves who defy these “common standards.”

Another is 69-year-old Pierce Brosnan. He recently used the following statement to defend his wife of thirty years, Keely Shaye Smith, fifty-nine, from fat-shaming trolls: “Friends offered her surgery to reduce her weight.” However, I adore every curve on her body. In my opinion, she is the most gorgeous woman. I am really proud of her, and I always want to earn her affection.

Something that Brosnan and Reeves share in common may help to explain why they are two of the species’ more advanced males. While Keanu’s ex-girlfriend Jennifer Syme passed away in a vehicle accident in 2001 at the age of 28, just after they lost their first child to stillbirth, Brosnan’s first wife passed away from cancer. His separation from Hollywood’s appearance-obsessed madness grew as a result of the catastrophe and his sadness.

While doing research for a magazine article in the 1990s, I had a few encounters with Keanu Reeves. I had to act like a superfan—more like a stalker—for a heartbreakingly embarrassing narrative. I finally went out to meet him after my editor advised me to do so.

Statistics show that males worry about going bald, while women worry about getting gray. However, women don’t start dating someone half their age when they get older.

The man I found yearned for a simple life and obviously did not believe the hype around his star-studded profession. That he no longer feels the need to display his masculinity by keeping a hottie by his side doesn’t surprise me. He is unique among emotionally shallow male narcissists.

Naturally, males could be compelled to alter if women were a little more daring about how they look as they age.

Shortly after their relationship was made public in 2019, Alexandra Grant went to a dinner party in Beverly Hills with a number of celebrities and declared that beauty was “something you can see with your eyes closed.”

I wish, but it’s a commendable sentiment, and the excellent attendance responded favorably to it. But none of them had let their hair go gray.

When Demi Moore was in her late 50s, her jet-black hair resembled that of Morticia Addams. The others were in their late forties: Kate Hudson and renowned stylist Rachel Zoe both had the more seductive West Coast blonde hair that exudes youth, while Gwyneth Paltrow had the more subdued, elegant, East Coast American honey hair.

Let’s not seem as though we are unaware of the presence of grey-haired female celebrities on the red carpet. We do — and evaluate their sex appeal in our minds. The model Erin O’Connor had grey hair for a while, but I’ve seen that she’s gone back to black, which is a clear sign that you are over your sexual peak. I wonder whether the work dried up.

Until you are “old old,” it is still not truly acceptable. In actuality, many of us will pass away with hair that hasn’t been permitted to turn gray.

When I saw the first grey hair, then a rich brown, and finally a blonde, my mouse-brown hair was crimson. Infinite blonde hues. Cost, time, and the fact that I was becoming less and less persuaded by the façade were the reasons I dropped it.

In a sense, giving up the hair dye was also giving up my goal of becoming textbook sexually appealing.

In a sense, giving up the hair dye was also giving up my goal of becoming textbook sexually appealing. I was on the verge of declaring, “I give up.” Look at me, everyone—my ovaries are worthless. Maybe I am, too!

If you’re interested, my partner is younger. He lets me go about my life, but sometimes he asks if I want to dye my hair again. Once, when he was intoxicated, he even asked if I wanted a boob job. I said, “No thanks.”

Is he kidding? I’m not sure how I feel about it, but he claims to adore my grey hair and the changes to my body. In our society, women are always viewed as inadequate. Perhaps ladies are less adept than men at evaluating our appearance based on what we see on red carpets.

Actually, our response to Keanu and his girlfriend Alexandra reveals very little about the happy couple and much about our own prejudice. According to writer Elise Loehnen, who is in Alexandra’s social circle, her buddy is “so much more than her hair color and her famous life partner.” Elise is correct. It appears that Alexandra believes she is sufficient.

What is truly shocking about a picture of a loved-up couple of fiftysomethings is that we – including me – give a fig about it.

For all people’s talk about equality, we have barely budged on this debate. It’s a little bit more accepted in Hollywood for women to look older and greyer, but no matter how many kisses Keanu and Alexandra exchange on the red carpet, our attitude to natural ageing is still one of disgust.