It’s no secret that fashion faux pas exist, and a tube top might just top that list for some. But does the sight of a woman in her fifties, spotted dancing on a sofa at a bar as New Year’s Eve approaches, truly warrant a storm of online criticism? Are people genuinely worried she might injure herself, or is the uproar simply ageist? Should Lauren Sánchez, partner of Jeff Bezos, really be criticized for enjoying a night out?

The comments beneath the footage are unkind, to say the least. Some of the tamer reactions include: “Unpopular opinion, but there comes a point when you’re too old for this,” “Exhausting and cringe,” and “This is what hell looks like.” Another comment refers to “doing normie stuff with my botched wife.” We’ll spare you the details of the harsher comments.

The video, captured by another guest at a friend’s birthday celebration at Nikki Beach in St. Barts, first appeared on the Page Six website and quickly went viral, largely due to Sánchez’s choice of a short denim skirt.

Critics also took aim at her appearance, noting her dyed hair and long nails, while her wide-brimmed hat failed to shade her from judgment about her lips and figure.

But perhaps the biggest offense, according to online trolls, was her apparent enjoyment of the evening. Should she really be preoccupied with approaching 60, they wonder, rather than reveling in the moment? Instead of having fun, should she be tethered to her husband, Jeff Bezos, as though he were a prized possession?

All around her were ‘bottle girls’ (I’d never heard the term before) and twenty-something girlfriends (Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest squeeze, Vittoria Ceretti, was a guest on the Bezos yacht for New Year: She’s a 27-year-old Italian supermodel. The type Carrie Fisher refers to in When Harry Met Sally as ‘Thin, pretty, big t**s. Your basic nightmare.’)

Shouldn’t Sanchez be in a kaftan or pareo or even better a burqa? Before wriggling to get into her bikini behind a bath sheet – which is what women past 35 are told to do. A pathetic solo tango in case any man nearby catches sight of cellulite or a superfluous hair (anything below our eyebrows) that glints in the sun. The sun is the enemy, too. We should never bask in it, revel in it, worship it.

Lauren Sanchez, whose husband is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, enjoys the sun on a yacht in St Barts

Sanchez’s greatest crime of all, according to the online trolls, is that she seemed to be openly enjoying herself

But Lauren Sanchez is clearly enjoying her breasts when women have had it drummed into our heads for decades to fear them. (A plus point: I doubt she could drown, a possibility if you choose to get married in Venice.)

Alcohol, too, we’re told will kill us faster than it does men, so she should give the $10,000 bubbly a miss. Shouldn’t she be off being a slave to her (now adult) three children? Or worrying about impending incontinence?

Older woman should be a hot mess of embarrassing afflictions, not carefree in the Caribbean, dancing to banging tunes, so the barrage of criticism would have it.

Someone on X even pointed out: ‘Imagine [being] married to the richest man in the world and you are taking your phone out to record when you are getting a bottle service lol. You can tell someone who grows up from poverty.’

Sanchez did indeed sleep in her grandmother’s car and benefited from family support and social services. So, she’s nouveau not nepo: the rich and privileged can never win.

Sanchez – okay, I will type that she is 56 but I really don’t want to reduce her to a number – is growing older disgracefully.

She doesn’t, thank the Lord, take herself too seriously: she started her wedding week with a foam party on a yacht and went into space wearing a comic-book catsuit.

Yes, of course, her refurbishment has erased most of her original features (in her case not mantelpieces and panelling but her lips, nose, facial structure. She told Vogue, ‘I’m a different person than I was five years ago.’) But let’s face it, with time and money no object, and a rich husband to hang onto, I’d indulge in every high-tech cosmetic procedure going.

Catching a glimpse of the inside of my elbows, my melting-Viennetta buttocks and scars from my breast reduction, the hammocks each side of my mouth in an unfriendly hotel mirror is dispiriting enough. Imagine having every person you encounter, even at a private party or in the middle of the ocean, posting a photo of your wobbly bits online!

And remember: Sanchez is damaging no one but herself. I can’t see young women aspiring to look like her, any more than they look up to Joan Collins.

Sanchez, pictured with Bezos, doesn’t, thank the Lord, take herself too seriously: she started her wedding week with a foam party on a yacht, writes Liz Jones

Her wedding gown, designed by Dolce & Gabbana, took 1,900 hours to make and cost an estimated $300,000 

Sanchez pictured after her Blue Origin flight to space alongside stars including Katy Perry 

Of course, it’s an uneven playing field: Jeff Bezos hasn’t high tailed it to Turkey for a hair transplant, doubtless knowing his money, power and intelligence trump hirsute. And the only size he ever has to worry about is the length of his yacht.

Sanchez is undoubtedly not stupid: she worked as an Emmy award-winning journalist. To my mind, she is championing older women, not moaning about hot flushes and brittle bones, meaning she does more for our morale than the likes of Naomi Watts with her books and ‘wellness’ brand will ever do. Not everything about being female is a problem.

Sometimes, and too rarely, being a woman is absolutely fabulous. Lauren Sanchez is proof.

Her wedding gown, designed by Dolce & Gabbana, took 1,900 hours to make and cost an estimated $300,000. Her decision to wear a corset did not make her oppressed, rather a doppelganger of her idol, Sophia Loren. And don’t say, ‘Well if she spent less on clothes the poor would no longer go hungry.’ I think the only people to blame for war and famine are men, not shopaholics. To quote Carrie Bradshaw, she’s simply exercising a woman’s right to shoes.

Lauren Sanchez is like Marmite – you admire her joie de vivre or, rather chippily in my book, you hate her. But either way, clearly the only person whose opinion she cares about is her husband’s, such an old-fashioned and underrated conceit. And there he is, partying and clapping right alongside her.