How old is beautiful? In this youth-obsessed culture of ours, can women of a certain age be beautiful? Let us consider the evidence …

My 80-year-old mother, Gloria, has hair like a fluffy dollop of white cotton candy on her head. Always baby-fine, her hair now is as soft as goose down, framing her face in a soft bubble. Mom complains about her too-fine, too-thin hair all the time – but I think it’s beautiful … because it’s hers.

My cousin Holly, who just turned 60, used the occasion of her birthday to point out how the pounds keep shifting south, no matter how much she diets and exercises. “Somehow, 140 pounds today just doesn’t look like 140 pounds 30 years ago!” she laments. Her boyfriend Richard glances at Holly’s silhouette in her lavender birthday frock, then mumbles appreciatively, “Her figure is beautiful.”

My friend Barbara, now in her 50s, jokes ruefully about her breasts. “The headlights don’t point straight forward anymore,” she quips with a wry smile. But her husband Mel protests, “The headlights are fine, sweetheart,” then adds, “but if you could please not lean on the horn so often!” We all laugh together. Mel thinks his wife’s breasts are beautiful.

My 40-ish sister-in-law Kris, peers into the mirror as she gets ready for work in the morning. As her young daughter Kayla bursts into the bathroom to grab a tube of hair gel, Kris is tugging at the edges of her face, trying to imagine how a facelift might erase those annoying fine lines. “Oh, stop it, Mom,” Kayla scolds. “Forget the facelift —you’re beautiful just as you are.”

All across America, woman of all ages are fussing and fretting about wrinkles, the effects of gravity, and the passing of years. An enormous amount of self-inflicted suffering is totally unnecessary. Some days, I want to grab all women collectively by the arms and shake them. “Snap out of it!” I admonish. “Don’t you know you are beautiful?”

Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder and those who love us see us most clearly. If we could borrow their lenses of love, we would all know the right answer to the question:

“How old is beautiful?”