Ageing sure doesn’t look like it used to. With maverick celebrities such as Nick Cave (57), Madonna (56), Tilda Swinton (54), Carine Roitfeld (60), Hillary Clinton (67), Tom Ford (53) and Helen Mirren (69) leading the way, hitting 50 no longer means shuffling into a grey-haired hinterland. Instead, members of the baby boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) are using their later years to reinvigorate their careers, their lifestyles and even their love lives.

Coming of age in the 60s and 70s, then living through the punk, yuppie and dotcom years, boomers have an adventurous spirit. Now they’re rewriting the ageing rules, buoyed by their significant numbers and affluence, as well as greater longevity. With life expectancy continually rising – currently around 81 years in many developed nations, according to the US National Institute on Aging – boomers can now expect to enjoy their retirement for 20 or so years. Because not only are boomers living longer, they’re healthy for longer, too. A 70-year-old today is as healthy as a 50-year-old in 1950, according to gerontologist Aubrey de Grey.

Photography by Terry O’Neill. Images courtesy of Bolder magazine

Legendary photographer Terry O’Neill believes we live in an ageist society, but he’s not letting that stop him living life to the full

With boomers sticking around longer, older people are becoming an ever-larger segment of the population. According to market research company Nielsen, by 2017, almost half of the US population will be 50 and older, controlling 70% of disposable income; by 2050 there will be 161 million 50+ consumers, up 63% on 2010. Already the most affluent generation, boomers will have spending power reaching £9.6 trillion by 2020, Euromonitor reports, but you wouldn’t know from mainstream media. Despite controlling much of the world’s wealth, only 5% of global ad budgets are spent on campaigns talking to 50+ consumers, notes J Walter Thomson – and the focus is often on dreary necessities like walk-in baths, funeral plans and denture creams.

While they may be misunderstood and undervalued by society at large, boomers are fighting back and creating a new vision of ageing that’s social, adventurous, beautiful and empowering. As Dominique Afacan, co-founder of Bolder, a magazine celebrating elderly creatives, comments there’s still a widespread perception that boomers are “frail, somehow less interesting or perhaps inactive, just sitting at home on a rocking chair. Slowly, brands are waking up to the fact that this is far from the case ‒ not only are they often hugely busy and energetic, still creating or learning, but they have the most fascinating stories to tell as a result of their years of life experience.”

Silver Screens

Bolder is just one of the new wave of media directed at thriving, adventurous and opinionated boomers. The online magazine was started because “we noticed that in our careers and in our personal lives some of the most interesting people we’d meet were much older but this didn’t seem to be translating in the media we consumed,” says Afacan.