In Vital Accessory News

No more Sea Hag.

Older is the new black.

File under: Talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-gerontology.

One cannot help but notice that of the billions of things one might choose to write about this sultry weekend, Alessandra Stanley –Lady Writer at the NYT -- and Jennifer Frey – Lady Writer at the Washington Post -- have written essentially identical articles,

NYT: “In the Prime of Their Time”

WaPo: “The 40 Factor”

featuring the same topic,

NYT:

Botox and plastic surgery allow actresses to look younger. Television is permitting them to act their age.

Older stars who once had to resign themselves to playing frustrated spinsters or docile moms are suddenly flaunting their ripened sex appeal on television. Its not “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” anymore. This season marks the summer of hot cougar love.
...

WaPo:

Kyra Sedgwick breezes into an Upper West Side coffee shop, straight off an appearance on "Live With Regis & Kelly," and you're fully aware of two things: She's both movie-star beautiful (oh, those waves and waves of gorgeous blond hair), and she's beautifully deaf to the Hollywood conventional wisdom that says roles start drying up for women once they hit 40.
...

and even focused in on the same actress.

NYT:

...
Kyra Sedgwick returns this week for her third season as Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson, the sexy and single-minded detective on “The Closer.” At the moment Brenda is dating someone close to her own age. But the success of that TNT series has emboldened other networks to showcase 40-plus female protagonists who like to date young.
...

WaPo (repeating):

Kyra Sedgwick breezes into an Upper West Side coffee shop, straight off an appearance on "Live With Regis & Kelly,"...

That they have each devoted pricey columange to the teevee-epiphany that all women over 40 are not desiccated crones.

That they have written of this revelation with the kind of whispery awe-struck wonderment usually reserved for the discovery of new planets.

And lastly, one cannot also help but notice that they are connected by the ineffable, existential duct tape that is Kevin Bacon.

(WaPo)

...
"Kev" would be actor Kevin Bacon, her husband of 19 years. For the longest time, Sedgwick refused to look at the script because committing to a one-hour series -- even one involving only 14 episodes a season -- seemed out of sync with the lifestyle she and Bacon had carved out.
…

Now I personally to come from a family positively festooned with strong, smart women. I also happen to think Ms. Sedgwick is rockin’ and that, generally, we are blessed as a nation to be in the sweet spot of the Era of a Hot, MILF Amazon Army the likes of which no previous generation of American men has ever tried to talk out of its pants.

That being said, the one-in-a-billion chances that these two writers would happen to hike through the same jungle, stumble into the same 7-11 and grab the same banana has less to do with beating impossible odds than it has to do with the following:

1. Now that “Lost” is on hiatus and Tony Soprano is finally dead, teevee writers who do not want to roll on the thousandth balding retread of the Death of the Sitcom, or the rise of the Empire of the Craptacular Reality Show, have to talk about something. And,

2. As long the Boomers and those they trail in their wake exist, the age limit at the Hotness Bar will continue to rise. Because until the last of them is planted in the ground, the Boomer will not tolerate being anything less than the latest, the sleekest and the sezziest.

In other words

I’ll stick with you baby
For a thousand years
Nothings gonna touch you
In these golden years