what women want?

The Vogue article comments that there has been shift in attitudes towards hairstyles for older women, saying it’s a “welcome move towards embracing our true selves, shunning societal expectations around how we ‘should’ look in favour of what makes us feel good.”  That’s great, and right on message, as I wrote in the earlier comment piece (you can read that here).

If only Vogue had not headlined their article: “The Most Flattering Long Hairstyles If You’re 50-Plus”.  OK, so now we are back to being told what we ‘should’ do…

It goes on to quote celebrity hairdresser Paul Edmonds.  Referencing Sarah Jessica Parker, Monica Bellucci, Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Lopez, Naomi Campbell and Jane Seymour he says: “All of these women look great for their age, without trying to look like they’re 20.”

These are women for whom ‘looking great’ in public has been the default option their whole working lives, subject as they are to the pressures of maintaining appearances to secure acting roles in an environment long known to be one of the worst for gendered ageism.  Things may be changing, and Monica Bellucci may have been a mould-breaking ‘Bond woman’ providing love interest to 007 in the place usually occupied by all those younger ‘Bond girls’, but she’s the exception to the rule that Hollywood casts young women scarcely out of their teens as the love interest of mid-life men, as with Jane Seymour and Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, where there was a 24 year age gap.

Using these exceptionally famous and immaculately presented icons as a reference point is to reinforce unrealistic attitudes for all women, whether older and judging themselves against such impossible role models, or younger and receiving the message they must somehow aspire to such standards as they age.

The comment ‘for their age’ simultaneously undermines even these most beautiful of women.  Adding they should not try to look ‘too young’ demonstrates the impossible task before all women.  Try hard, but not too hard.

The irony is compounded by Paul Edmonds being an older man himself, with his 40-year career profiled on his eponymous website with the comment “you’ll still find him turning out some of the hottest looks” as though that should be surprising.  The ‘still’ changes everything, just like ‘for your age’:  ageism affects everyone, and both men and women can do more to tackle the subtle and insidious remarks that reinforce this.  Together, we can change society’s attitudes for the future.

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