Or maybe things have been getting rough recently because Sharon Stone is starring in Basic Instinct 2 at the age of 48. Whatever.

But there is a much greater problem which is rarely discussed . . . in fact it could be called the silent epidemic. And that is the issue of lamb dressed as mutton.

Whatever happened to the teenager and her fashion? We are now left with 16year-olds who dress like footballers' wives, and most footballers' wives, bless them, won't see 30 again.

Schoolgirls going out for the evening now favour stilettos, hair straighteners and enough make-up for a disillusioned divorcee. (I'm not even raising their skirts, although God knows it wouldn't take much).

Attending a function at one of what the government likes to call our thirdlevel institutions recently, we found all the 19-year-old helpers dressed in black cocktail dresses, fake tan and strappy sandals. It is hard to work as an usher with a beaded handbag on your shoulder - but they tried their best. They were all beautiful girls, it's just that they looked, not like students, but as if they were wives at a corporate dinner.

Young women's fashion used to be such fun . . . and not just for the young women, but for all of us. Young women are the ones with the time and the energy to make what they wear amusing and surprising. Their clothes were the original street theatre, an outlet for their wit. I bow to no one in my newly-acquired fondness for handbags but I'm afraid that jeans and a handbag just don't pack the same punch.

Suddenly we have a situation where both mothers and daughters are struggling to attain a mean age of 35. Of course, this struggle is much, much harder for the mothers, so it is not surprising that their efforts have attracted the most attention. After all, middleaged women are always good for a laugh.

But isn't it strange that whilst mummy's uniform is now jeans and a leather jacket, her daughter is hitting the rails of sequinned evening wear before she is old enough to drive?

I realise that the teenager was a modern invention, but who expected her to die so soon? In America, the teenager died a long time ago, and young women pushed themselves into hairbands and pearls and executive suits pretty much as soon as they hit puberty. America is (or was) the ultimate capitalist society.

In mainstream American culture, it did not pay to look leisured, or as if you were not ready for a real job, or real shopping, or real sex. Now the fashion signals on our own streets tell us that we have arrived at the same point.

Somewhere during the past decade, 35 has become the ideal fashion age.

While I have no objection to this . . .

although, to paraphrase Philip Larkin, it has come a tad late for me . . . the uniformity of the look is troubling. Or, to be more specific, boring. Are there no alternatives left? Must everyone look the same?

As the singer Pink puts it: "The way it is now, I feel that it's just the one image of women out there which is being fed to society."

It is Pink who has crystallised this issue for us. Her song Stupid Girls is about the celebrity girls (aka Paris Hilton). Pink's video for the song . . .

according to Brian Boyd in the Irish Times, who presumably has seen it . . .

shows "models and heiresses obsessing over designer handbags, fake tans and cosmetic surgery".

As if it were only models and heiresses. Hello.

Stupid Girls has won a commendation from the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, for it also contains an attack on the permanent dieting this new aesthetic demands.

As Pink says: "There needs to be more alternatives, options and examples about how you can be cool."

I think a National No Make-Up Day would be a good start. Just for girls under 30, to put them in touch with their inner slacker. The rest of us would not have to take part. Are you kidding?