CAMILLE PAGLIA: How To Age Disgracefully In Hollywood: The social critic and academic blames 1960s disruptions of gender roles (and not the entertainment industry) for Madonna’s and J. Lo’s difficulty letting go of their youth as she chastises them to “stop cannibalizing the young.”

The main problem facing today’s aging women is not sexism but the lingering youth cult of the 1960s. Traditional mating patterns have been disrupted: Marriage is postponed by extended education and early career demands. Because of easy divorce, middle-aged women are now competing with younger women for both men and jobs — and thus are resorting to costly interventions to look 20 years younger than they are.

If aging stars want to be taken seriously, they must find or recover a mature persona. Stop cannibalizing the young!

Well, Hollywood is pretty cannibalistic. And, of course, “traditional mating patterns” were designed to give women important roles past their childbearing years. The cult of youth, not so much.

Plus: “Most disappointing about Madonna’s speech was her collapse into rote male-bashing, which has escalated in Hollywood and surely will increase its cultural isolation from the national audience.”