Helen Mirren has the world’s sexiest body!

Say what you will, but at least people are learning that you can be healthy and sexy without necessarily either starving yourself into a cackling skeleton monster or frankensteining your body until you resemble two hams hanging off a coat rack. It’s just a matter of eating like a sensible human being, going for a jog every now and then, and not telling yourself that you can eat either five pizzas or air for dinner.

High Fashion vs. Dame Helen Mirren

Sixty-six year old actress Helen Mirren was recently voted the female "body of the year" by Los Angeles gym patrons, beating out Jennifer Lopez and Pippa Middleton and other younger competitors. Mirren's enviable physique has been the focus of many a photographer (and an SNL skit) and it is formidable. While it may not be realistic for the average sixty-something woman to have Mirren's figure, I was thankful that at least the people who voted her the "body of the year" chose an actual mature woman as a sex symbol.

The New York fashion world has not been as kind lately. For years, it has pushed the size 0 and size 00 super-slim figure out onto the runway. The sample sizes are now so small even models have trouble fitting into them. For some designers, the solution is to not to change the clothes, but to  hire models as young as 12 who are still in the gangly, hip-less, limbo of adolescence. Now, art directors and photographers and designers have gone even further and are dressing figures that aren't physically possible for women, and that's because they're not women. Ten-year-old model Thylane Loubry Blondeau has recently taken the fashion world by storm, posing in French Vogue and walking for Jean Paul Gaultier. Blondeau's childish body is highlighted (some say sexualized) by pictures like the one of her in designer jeans with necklaces covering her bare chest, or another where she's wearing stiletto heels and lying on a tiger-skin rug. Another person who's captured designers imagination is the biologically male, androgynous-looking model Andrej Pejic, who wears both menswear and women's clothing on the runway and in photo shoots.

I understand that breasts and hips, even size 0 ones, may tweak the lines of a haute couture dress, but designing clothes for women that are modeled by young men or prepubescent girls just doesn't make much sense and seems to create a body archetype that is literally unachievable for women. Already, images of grown women are Photoshopped so as to be comically incompatible with biological reality. Depicting a young man or a prepubescent girl as a fashion icon just takes it one more, illogical step forward.

As for Mirren, well, her figure is remarkable but at least within the realm of reality. It's encouraging that even the body-conscious gym-goers of Los Angeles see a womanly figure as something to celebrate. New York fashion world, you could take a page from their book. Maybe sixty is the new size zero.

Helen Mirren has the sexiest body on planet

She's 66 years old. She has an Academy Award for playing a decidedly frumpy Queen Elizabeth. Her last movie role was as the elderly spinster nanny to Russell Brand's playboy millionaire in "Arthur." And she's officially got the best body in the world. Dame Helen Mirren, what was it like when they created you on Mount Olympus?

When the gym chain LA Fitness polled 2,000 members on the sexiest male and female physiques on the planet, you'd expect renowned hotties like Nicole Scherzinger and this year's It Girl, Pippa Middleton, to make the list. And they did. But who'd have guessed that Inspector Jane Tennyson would blow away the competition for the top spot? Or that 48-year-old Elle Macpherson would come in second, and 42-year-old Jennifer Lopez would land in fourth? And lest you thinking defying Father Time is for the ladies, the male list is decidedly unyouthful too, with Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, David Hasselhoff and Simon Cowell all making appearances. Note to gravity: YOU LOSE.

Now, an LA Fitness poll isn't exactly the ne plus ultra of scientific inquiry, and it's not as if Helen Mirren's off-the-charts level of foxiness is going to change Victoria's Secret fashion shows or Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. You need only do a comparative perusal of the Maxim 100, where teenagers like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift are holding their own against a variety of Kardashians and models, to know that dewy, voluptuous youth never goes out of favor.

There's something defiantly cheeky and provocative about the LA Fitness poll results -- a little like, oh, I don't know, declaring Mirren's costar Russell Brand the sexiest man of the year.  Look at us! Thinking outside the box! No wonder LA Fitness's marketing director Tony Orme told the Hollywood Reporter this week that "It's great to see the public celebrating bodies of all shapes and sizes, and proving that you really can look fabulous over 40 and 50."

That's really the point here, isn't it? A beautiful body at 18 is all but a birthright, but one at 60 is the result of damn hard work and incredibly serendipitous genetics. And indeed Mirren declared last year that her "best friend" is her Wii Fit.

Of course, a survey whose results suggest that beauty and sexiness aren't the sole terrain of the young -- and that having a rocking body is possible at any age -- is well in service of the fitness industry. Sure, Mirren, like those ankle-biting whippersnappers Macpherson and Lopez, surely has all the body, face, and hair upkeep that a woman could dream of. Simply rolling out of bed looking like a million bucks becomes an increasingly unrealistic option the older any of us get – even a woman who is still cavorting around in red bikinis and posing naked in magazines.

Yet despite the attention-getting nature of the LA Fitness poll, it serves as a reminder that beauty and sexiness don't necessarily have an expiration date. That aging is inevitable, but "letting yourself go" only has to be if you choose to make it so. That being vibrant and active is always seductive. And that the untouchable Helen Mirren can outscorch legions of females 50 years her junior.