An Ageless Commodity : Is 50--or 60 or older--still sexy? You bet! From music to movies, the mature look is exerting it appeal. After all, Tina Turner is the comeback queen, and Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood still get the girl.

The woman walked slowly on stage, wrapped in a nondescript bathrobe, clutching a handbag.

She began to sing--off-key--Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “If I Loved You.” She fumbled a little, mumbled a lot and then said, “Heck with it,” stripped off the bathrobe, dropped the handbag, and there stood a vibrant, pretty, smooth-faced woman--singing on key in a black-and-red skirt suit.

With that little gouge at stereotypes, Alice P. Allyn, 82, of Colchester, Conn., brought down the house at this year’s Ms. Senior Connecticut pageant.

“I’m walking onto the stage, and they’re introducing me, and (the announcer) said, ‘She’s 82,’ and I could actually hear gasps from the audience,” said Allyn, who was named first runner-up in the March contest in Windsor Locks, Conn. “They expected to see an old lady, and all I could think was, ‘Gee whiz.’ ”

So much for the beauty-before-age thing. Just look at the movies this past summer: Sixty-two-year-old Sean Connery struts himself in “Rising Sun.” Clint Eastwood, 63, gets the girl in “In the Line of Fire.” And, coming soon to a theater near you, “The Bridges of Madison County” stars that other aging cutie, Robert Redford, 55.

Which brings up an interesting question: Can the rest of us be 60 and sexy?

If you follow the ancient standard for beauty--namely, you have to be firm, high and 25--probably not.

But slowly, almost invisibly, age--and that weathered, life-experience look it brings--is becoming more appealing than in years past. Who can argue with the sexiness of comeback queen Tina Turner, age 53. Or the confidence of take-me-or-leave-me Angela Lansbury, 67?

*

And where does this attitude change come from?

It could be a shameless manipulation by baby boomers--who in their teens said, “Never trust anyone over 30”--now allowing that you can look like your parents and still be considered attractive.

Or it may be an honest reaction to simple demographics. We all live longer now.

These days, in so many neighborhoods, 50--what used to be the slowing-down time--is only halfway there. Sexy is as sexy does.

“They certainly advertise and foster that belief,” said Ethel Austin, 78, a Hartford, Conn., free-lance writer. “More women are in business in their 40s and 50s and are aspiring up the ladder. When I was in my 40s, single women didn’t even own a car. The whole age bracket has lifted, and women are freer to do things.”

In order to understand why there are so many vibrant grandparents out there, you have to look one generation beyond: the still-active great-grandparents.

“I do believe that there are broader definitions of attractiveness that may go beyond aging,” said Dr. Richard W. Besdine, director of the Travelers Center on Aging at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. “There is a less rigid definition of what is sexy, and that is encouraging news.”

Roberta Figer runs Silver Foxes Inc., a marketing and public relations business in Upstate New York. She is a consultant for companies who target the mature market, once portrayed as grandmas who bake cookies.

“I’m afraid those grandmas are flying those airplanes and traveling around the world and getting married and working out at health spas and starting new careers,” Figer said. “I’m in my 70s, and I’m still working like a dog--because I love it.

“In our concept of aging, we talk about down-aging--people in their 50s look like they’re 40, and so on. People are living so much longer, and because they are, they’re much healthier and better educated.”

And better-off financially.

Is that sexy? It is to advertisers. Figer said mainstream companies are careful to present the older models in their ads as looking anything but forlorn and passed over.

Instead, they are standing tall--even if they’re June Allyson, 75, selling diapers for grown-ups.

The key is self-confidence, said A. Cynthia Matthews, executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Aging.

“The only thing that’s missing for a lot of the older people is self-realization of their own worth,” Matthews said. “Once you realize it and are convinced of it, you can go out and have a different kind of life, a life that’s full of adventure and excitement.”

Perhaps that attitude is trickling down to the younger generation. The Center on Aging’s Besdine was talking to his 23-year-old daughter recently about an older man who was romantically involved with a younger woman. Besdine’s daughter was against the union and said the older man should appreciate older women.

“And she was exactly on,” said Besdine, 53. “When I think from a personal perspective, women under 30--and maybe even under 40--from my experience and point of view, are more like children.

“Young women and, even more so, young men really have developmental issues, and those are not particularly interesting to someone who was through it 20 or 30 years ago.”

*

Which is not to say that a younger woman--or a younger man--isn’t sexy, he said.

“You can look at a 20-year-old body and appreciate it and say, ‘That’s nice, but it’s not what I want now,’ ” Besdine said. “What would be nice is if a 20-year-old could look at a 67-year-body and say, ‘It’s nice, but it’s not what I want now,’ instead of, ‘Yuck, sag.’ ”

Allyn is very involved in her community and only occasionally does her arthritis remind her that she’s in her ninth decade. She had to be coerced into entering the seniors’ pageant by Cathy Russi, director of the Colchester Senior Center, who wanted a Colchester representative in the contest to show residents that mature people are active, too.

“I know a gentleman who still restores cars and uses his motorcycles,” Russi said. “At the center, we do line dancing, we exercise. There are seniors who are couch potatoes, but there are a lot of seniors who want to remain actively involved--physically and mentally.”

And that’s the crux of the whole sexy question.

“Sixty-five-year-old people are in the bloom of middle age,” Besdine said. “They are the leaders of our world in everything but sports. That kind of intellectual, political, economic and cultural leadership of our society is pretty sexy stuff.

“What’s that old line? The sexiest organ in the human body is the brain. Sexuality is something that grows out of a relationship and interest and excitement, rather than Playboy dolls or whatever the fantasy world of a 16-year-old is about,” Besdine said.

“I think that fits much better with ideas of adult fulfillment. As soon as you allow that, people who are 60 and 80 may be able to get in on it.”