Battle of the sexes
LIKE death, you can’t escape it, no matter how rich. Ageing happens to every living thing, but it is only humans who go King Canute about it.
To call an old person ‘youthful’ is deemed the highest compliment, placing the sponginess of collagen above wisdom and experience.
We frequently overlook innate life force for what our faces look like. When your face is your fortune, you are especially not allowed to age naturally.
Yet even in something as universally unavoidable as ageing, are there different rules for men and women?
Barbra Streisand turns 70 later this month, on Apr 24. She has grown old well — recent pictures show her on the red carpet looking fresh, natural, and seeming younger than her calendar age.
This is most likely because she is rich, has a high quality of life, is rumoured to have had a face lift, and is said to regularly undergo facial fat transplants, by which lard from elsewhere on her body is injected into the wrinkles in her face to puff them out. Most old ladies would look good if they had all that done. It may be uncomfortable and expensive, but people comment on how well Streisand looks — for her age. For women past middle age, this is as good as it gets.
Jack Nicholson, meanwhile, turns 75 tomorrow. Other than telling a UK newspaper last year, “I used to feel irresistible to women. Not anymore,” he seems unperturbed by ageing.
While Barbra is pulling out all the stops to stay young, Jack is frequently photographed looking like what he is — a fat old man having fun.
Beer gut, man boobs, collapsed face, cigarette in one hand, pizza in the other, surrounded by younger and more beautiful companions, Nicholson is the poster granddad for old men enjoying themselves.
You can’t imagine him advertising wrinkle cream, in the manner of decades-younger Andie McDowell.
Because women are judged on their appearances more than men, one of our most enduring cultural myths is that men age better than women. They don’t.
All humans age the same. Individuals might strike it lucky genetically — some people age better than others — but there is zero evidence of one gender ageing better or worse than the other.
It’s all about perception, expectation, and ingrained conditioning; men are allowed to age, women are not.
But does this apply just to us drones, or are famous faces allowed, or not allowed, to age depending on gender?
Women are more adept at ageing. We dye our hair, we use cosmetics, and we have Botox and fillers.
You may even know someone personally who has had a face lift, given that it’s no longer the preserve of movie stars.
We have always been encouraged to engage the tools of our trade — and by trade, I mean the task of being a woman, rather than merely being female — so that we approach ageing the way you would any other tricky, time-consuming (and ultimately hopeless) project.
This explains why so many famous women look so fabulous for so long. Madonna is the prime example of non-ageing ageing.
With a face full of filler and the yoga body of a 20-year-old, she appears ageless; but it cannot all be down to cosmetic intervention and lifestyle. It is the force of her character, too. Ditto Helen Mirren and Judi Dench, both physically aged, but with an unshakeable life force that shines through, imbuing them with a strength, individuality and glamour you don’t see in younger, blanker actors of either sex. Beauty alone doesn’t keep you youthful.
Researching this article, I found famous women for whom ageing has not rendered them too hideously unsightly, and famous men for whom it has. It seems to be that straightforward — famous men age worse than famous women. Famous men, while conditioned to be vainer than their civilian counterparts, are still playing catch-up in managing the aesthetic fallout of ageing; they look far rougher than their female equivalents.
There are exceptions. Sean Penn still looks naturally good, once he’s not trying to impersonate Cure frontman Robert Smith.
Sting, that one-man monument to moneyed smugness, has aged exceptionally well, not because he is superior to the rest of us (despite what he’d have you think) but because (a) he has better ageing genes than his wife and (b) he does loads of yoga. People who do loads of yoga tend not to be as stressed as the rest of us — which means lower cortisol levels, and therefore less stress lines. Then again, he may have had a face lift. Lots of famous men have had facelifts, but not all with good results. Poor old Mickey Rourke, once the object of so much overheated fantasy, now looks like one of his own chihuahuas. He’s still a brilliant actor — his talent hasn’t diminished with age — but in trying to nail his youth to his face with a plastic surgery hammer, he succeeded only in defacing himself in the style of Jackie Stallone. Terrifying. As is Burt Reynolds, who has been so face-lifted he now looks Oriental.
Christian Slater is also living proof of cosmetic intervention gone bad — these days, his eyebrows live further north than Kylie’s, in a face frozen immobile by Botox. The younger the man — that is, between two and three decades younger than Jack Nicholson — the more pressure there is to remain looking young. While some oldies, like Nicholson, have evaded the pressure to remain boyish, others, like Harrison Ford, do their best to keep up, but end up looking like bag-ladies. Liam Neeson and Paul McCartney are both guilty of crimes against hair dye; were they female and had appeared in public with such harsh, unsubtle dye-jobs, they would have been ridiculed, rather than merely sniggered at. It’s a harsh double standard, is it not, ladies?
Meanwhile, the ageing ladies are holding their own. Iman, Oprah and Tina Turner seem not to be getting old at all, given how black skin is so much better at ageing than white. Despite their whiteness, Susan Sarandon, Sigourney Weaver, Kim Cattrell, Jane Seymour, Holly Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sharon Stone are all marching towards late middle age with visual verve.
Jane Fonda is the poster woman for septuagenarian vivacity, even if you do wish she’d shut up about her orgasms, and Chrissie Hynde is the epitome of ageless rock chick, just as Madge is the ageless pop queen.
We can’t all be Madonna. But then you look at Debbie Harry, and have to remind yourself, somewhat awestruck, that she has been around since 1945. While Cher, Goldie Hawn, Joan Rivers and Jessica Lange are examples of what-not-to-do with a plastic surgeon, and Sophia Loren is just plain scary with the bosoms and the glasses, equally, some women grow old disgracefully, and with their individualism intact.
For indomitable old-lady role models, you can’t beat Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood, pink- and orange-haired doyens of high fashion and unselfconscious wrinkles. Now that’s what I call ageing.
Madonna, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter, Kim Cattrell, Jane Seymour, Susan Sarandon, Iman, Oprah, Tina Turner, Jane Fonda, Sting, Sean Penn.
Mickey Rourke, Karl Lagerfeld, Jack Nicholson, Christian Slater (above), Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney, Macauly Culkin, Burt Reynolds, Val Kilmer, Nick Nolte, Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe, Jackie Stallone, Goldie Hawn, Sophia Loren, Cher, Jessica Lange.
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