Aging Women in Hollywood and, Well, Everywhere Else Too
I’m closely following the media coverage and public comments on posts and news articles after the 2014 Academy Awards presentations – and many of them are pissing me off. While I read about how lovely Lupita Nyong’o, Jennifer Lawrence and the bevy of young Hollywood starlets looked and comported themselves, I am also reading some cruel comments about Goldie Hawn, Liza Minnelli and Kim Novak. Fashion critics comment on the “age-appropriateness” of Meryl Streep‘s and Julia Roberts’ gowns, a term reserved in fashion circles only for the very young and any woman over 40. It’s not fair. Women are not allowed to age – in Hollywood and in many other professions in the United States. “She looks good for her age,” is a comment I’ve heard too often about women in both the public eye and in my own private circles of friends. And I’ll bet you’ve heard it too.
Kim Novak’s appearance as an Oscar presenter at the 2014 Academy Awards Show was deemed “an embarrassment” by several commenters and, in truth, by several friends with whom I spoke the day after the show. Novak is 81 and starred in such movies as Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo, Of Human Bondage and Pal Joey. She is also an accomplished artist. I’m not totally certain what the problem with Ms Novak was, but I assume it was the fact that she had the audacity to try to fit a physical image that Hollywood demands from older women and then to parade herself onto a worldwide stage to allow all to judge her face, her figure and the way she handled herself. “Kim Novak’s Face Shocks Audience” proclaims one online tabloid. “Kim Novak’s Face is the Talk of Twitter,” says another online post. It’s not fair. As I recall, Jacqueline Bisset received similar treatment after her appearance on the Golden Globes. Goldie Hawn who is surely one of the most brilliant and talented women in Hollywood also received more than her fair share of criticism for her appearance. What are these women, or any woman for that matter, supposed to do?
Society extracts a great price from aging women, and indeed from women of all ages – but that’s a topic for another post. We are expected to maintain our youthful looks for as long as it’s humanly possible, even if that means dieting to excess, exercising to exhaustion and judiciously using Botox and fillers in the most undetectable way. And, when those things no longer work and our looks begin to diminish we are supposed to skulk off to a corner and fade away or risk being called “an embarrassment.”
I write about anti-aging products, fitness and the importance of a healthy diet for EverBeautiful.com. I consider these to be lifestyle-enhancing, if not, as may sometimes be the case with diet and exercise, life saving. But I would never disparage someone because of their age any more than I would insult someone because of their weight. I don’t have the answers to this age-old dilemma. It’s something women have grappled with long before my own looks began to change. Look, there’s nothing wrong with liking to look at youthful, radiant faces and toned, fit bodies. But we have to learn to be more accepting of the changes women go through as we age and to dispense with the snarky comments and outright insults, especially those from other women. It’s one thing for Donald Trump, who tweeted that Kim Novak “should sue her plastic surgeon,” to be an ass. Trust me, I’m not giving Donald Trump a pass because he’s got testosterone flowing through his veins. It’s just that I don’t expect much more from him. But I do expect more from women. Even the venerable Tina Brown, founder of Women in the World, which, according to their Facebook Page, is a movement dedicated to advancing women and girls through stories and solutions, and CEO of Tina Brown Live Media, jumped on the bandwagon when she tweeted “Kim Novak has had so much plastic surgery she can’t actually speak.” To give Ms Brown the benefit of the doubt, perhaps hers was nothing more than an observation – but was it a necessary one that had to be tweeted out to her 76,600 followers?
Neither men nor women are immune from disparaging comments when they fail to age less than gracefully. Men suffer barbs too, but we can all name at least a handful of men who’ve had terrible cosmetic surgery, wear bad wigs, don bad wardrobes and bad makeup and yet, generally, unless they’re twits, these things are overlooked.
Yes, it’s time to reevaluate. Society needs to change the demands it makes on women (and men) as they age and judge them not by their appearances but by their accomplishments. Nice thought, I know. And while I doubt this will happen in my lifetime, we can share this value with our daughters and sons so that it will hopefully happen in theirs.
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Excellent article that should be read by people of all ages. And thank you Melody for being the voice ol women.
Yikes – Thank you, but I’m hardly the voice of women. The insults pissed me off so that I felt compelled to write about them. Glad you liked the post. xo