"Brad Pitt's new girlfriend is a perfect example of the new 'trophy wife'. But there's a better choice."

Dear Brad – Hi. It’s been years.

Twenty-seven long years since you broke out of stripper-waiter purgatory and into Thelma And Louise with your sly smile and your cowboy hat and the money-stealing, orgasm-dealing role that changed your life.

If there’s anyone under the age of 35 reading this right now, stop it. Immediately go and watch that movie beginning to end.

Brad, you’re not even the best thing in it. Sorry, you’re pretty amazing and everything, but there’s also Susan Sarandon. So, you know.

A lot of water has passed under your man-bridge in those 27 years.

Listen to Holly, Mia and Jessie on Mamamia Out Loud talking about the new ‘trophy wife’:

Many, many movies, for a start. And photo shoots and interviews. And charitable foundations. Production companies and Oscars noms and headlines about secret babies and more-secret reunions and regrettable political affiliations and literally rivers of zombie blood.

And here we all are. With a few more wrinkles, some runs on the board, a handful of crushing disappointments, a crowd of children at our feet. Some broken hearts behind us, some scars on our own.

Age. It’s like a country song.

Do you still have your cowboy hat, by the way?

Anyway.

I hear you’re in the market for a new wife. Internet gossip sites and inspirational memes tell me that a 54-year-old man with more money than God and the jawline of Michelangelo’s David could never be happy alone. You know, living in your own architecturally-designed mansion and being able to do whatever you want and sleep wherever you want and eat whatever you want and travel to wherever you want and work whenever you want and have sex with whomever you want… That’s got to be a cold, empty life, right?

So. I hear you’re auditioning for a new wife.

And I also hear that the application process for high-profile movie-star wives has changed. The JD has taken a substantial edit.

I blame George. I mean, I know you’re friends and everything, but he really screwed this thing up.

Remember when all that was expected of famous, powerful men was that they would keep trading-in supermodels every five years? I think it was called the DiCaprio Plan?

And then Clooney - the eternal bachelor who woke your sleeping babies up with the screech of Harley tyres on the driveway who could always be relied upon to bring a hot babysitter to Christmas drinks - fell in love with the world's most perfect human, and he really raised the bar.

Until then, you thought you were punching way above your weight with a wife who travelled the world saving refugees from devastated hell-holes and saving women from hereditary cancers and raising awareness of rape as a weapon of war and making movies about complex overseas conflicts in foreign languages.

And you were. You were a trailblazer, if you like. But then George met Amal and there was no going back.

And now Prince Harry has gone and compounded this trend.

Now a real Hollywood power-player needs a real power-player alongside him. If I wasn't blaming George, I might blame the Obamas.

So I get it. Your new wife needs to reflect really, really well on you. She needs to signal your second-act maturity and wisdom and the weariness you feel around childish, pretty, instant-gratification things.

I can see that this new candidate - this Neri Oxman, an intensely intelligent and beautiful architect and designer, a "rock-star professor" who's also an artist, with a popular Ted Talk and hair that shines like a chestnut mare's - I can see she ticks all the boxes.

But truly, Brad, I think it's time to do something straight-up revolutionary.

I think it's time to shake off the shackles of expectation and make your next wife an exhausted, kind-of-overweight, middle-aged mother-of-two whose Ted Talk would involve reciting When Harry Met Sally word-for-word while chugging chardonnay and hummus.

I think that would really shake things up.

Make the bold choice to break out of your cosseted world where the only options open to you are anything your imagination can conjure. Instead, come and hang out where every night the dinner decision is: "Pasta? Or rice?".

That's where the cutting edge next wave of trophy wife action is at, Brad. The statement for the mature divorcee is no longer a starlet half their age but rather a gym-phobic Netflix addict who comes in just a couple of birthdays short of your own.

I hope this finds you well. I really look forward to receiving the ring in the mail.

I think blue diamonds are the prettiest.

Yours (for the past 27 years),

Holly x