For the Love of Venus, Your FACE is Beautiful as it is!

                                           

I don't know who needs to hear this right now - maybe it's you. I just know I really needed to hear it when I did.

Your face is fine. 

You have permission to age gracefully and not be ashamed. You are free from the conception that older faces need to be erased or modified. You are free from the concept that younger faces need fat lips, perfect noses, and immaculate jaws. It can all stop right now. Wrinkles are OK. Hooded eyes are OK. Neck stuff is OK! 

You know what's not OK? 

The overwhelming consensus that our worth as women is wrapped up in a sad package with fillers and Botox, things like eyelid lifts, vampire face-lifts, and on and on. I can tell you from experience that fillers can be painful, and sometimes can go into the wrong spot accidentally, like sinuses, and you just have to wait it out until the crap dissolves so you can breathe normally again. That's the double edged sword of all this stuff...it goes away. With bad filler, that's a blessing. But otherwise, this type of work is a spiral, a labyrinth of continuous cost, judgement and pain.  This is actress Tori Spelling. She's 47 in this picture (now 49 years old). She's been hounded for her looks since she was a young teen. I can't blame her for chasing that elusive acceptance and beauty ideal, but can we be honest? This is not what is meant to be.

I have never paid for fillers or Botox - I did have a friend that worked in the industry and she used me as an example to her potential boss to prove her abilities. The doctor said that I had to have a 'thick skin' to let them discuss my 'flaws' right in front of me, and some of the things I felt insecure about didn't even register to the doctor! Until recently, very recently actually, I still felt like I was supposed to be in the Botox bunch, paralyzing the parts of my face that prove that I am not a 20 year old girl. I was trying to get over my repulsion of having to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to smooth out lines a few times a year for the rest of my life. Or maybe I just needed bangs to cover up the two lines between my eyes, the dreaded 11's that run deep in my family. 

Yet, I never took the time to think about WHY I felt that I needed that. Why does it bother me? Does it bother me? Where is the line between being authentic, as we were made to be, and being something augmented in order to keep the illusion of what we were?

The truth is that our faces are currency, especially for women. When the face starts to show experience, the collective regards it as less valuable. Is it simply the effect of recognizing that the female may be less viable as a fertile mate? To be honest, how many of us women are interested in being said 'fertile mate'? 

We've been watching old Sophia Loren Italian movies from the 1950's, and damn if she isn't sexually harassed the whole time by EVERY man possible, regardless of age or station. That's all she's allowed to be, despite her being intelligent, resourceful, and clever. She's beautiful, no doubt. Young, too, giving ALL the signs of viable fertile female mate. And it is a skeleton key, being young and beautiful, to a lot of locked doors.  However, it is a key, like the plastic ones you get from the hotels, that eventually expires, and those doors will no longer open. 

I was watching an interview with the current version of Sophia Loren, in her late 80's, and the interviewer told her to button her top. She was showing TOO much skin. Hmmmm...don't think that would have been the case for 22 year old Sophia Loren. Guess what she did? She looked incredulously at the off screen request and said, "Troppo decolletage?" (too much cleavage?), and rolled those beautiful eyes of hers as she buttoned the top. She saw the irony. Her age flipped the script. Nobody wants to see old cleavage, even formerly exalted and very famous cleavage apparently. 

Things have gotten extreme in the past few decades as fillers and Botox, alongside all other types of augmentation of face and body have not only become accepted, but expected. It's a king tide, sucking us all in, and exacerbating the so-called flaws of those who don't 'get something done'. It's a low level sad all the time, especially in this time of social media where we are inundated with images of the ideal. Even the most beautiful people in the celebrity world have tweaked their minor flaws to level up to God/Goddess beauty. They aren't even real. It goes all the way back to Marilyn Monroe, up to Angelina Jolie, and beyond to the countless young stars that get things done in their teens. 

Megan Fox (subtle) and Nicole Kidman (pushing the boundary)

But this is where things start looking up. Remember Justine Bateman? Mallory from the show Family Ties is her most famous role, but she's also an accomplished director and author. Recently she came out with a book called FACE. She details forty-three vignettes about real women's experiences with aging, ranging from a first grader to an octogenarian, with most of the stories hitting in the 40-50 age range (where the transition tends to get real personal). Honestly, it is an empowering movement, and it literally flipped my mind, giving me permission to dump that concept of augmenting the reality of our faces.  The experiences detailed in the book were another story. They were overwhelmingly real, and sad. At one point I had trouble moving on with the book, but also couldn't stop reading it, because of the raw reality of how shitty things are. Just when females have gotten to a place where they have insight, experience, success, something really great to offer, it coincides with the currency of the flawless face crashing like the stock market in 1929. 

This is a REAL face. This is what a 55 year old woman looks like without any 'fixes'. Trust me, she has taken so much crap for just being a naturally aging woman in Hollywood, and it is evident that she isn't going to take it lying down. Her heroes, even as a young and very famous actress, were the complex faces of the European Cinema like these:

I'll agree with Justine - these women are amazing, authentic and beautiful:  Anna Magnani and Charlotte Rampling

When I was growing up, the most famous shows on television were led by women in their 60's! The Golden Girls, and Murder She Wrote (Angela Lansberry), were across the board popular, and led by authentically aging women. I remember being 8 years old, and really looking forward to being like them when I got 'old'. That's some good role modeling right there.

Bea Arthur and Betty White were 63, Estelle Getty was 62, and Rue McClanahan was 51 (yes, that is what a real 51 year old looks like! She's four years older than Tori Spelling from above). They were all younger than Christie Brinkley, who is 67 years old in this picture below. Does Brinkley look good? Yes, I would say she does! But she has a lot to lose by not being beautiful, a long way to fall from that chariot up on high. I can see how the limelight puts a truckload more pressure on aging female celebrities, and I get why they do it, especially with the viciousness of the judgmental internet Orc/Troll army out there. My issue is that she's not free to let that beauty evolve, But it wasn't always like that. We had the Golden Girl Goddesses once, fully accepted, fully real.

In my online classes, we have zoom cameras on the other students who choose to show their faces. There is one lady in my class, she's likely in her late 60's or 70's, and she is so boss. I've never heard her speak, but her face is REAL and serene, and just exudes confidence, kindness and a life lived. I LOVE real and aged faces, turning my eye to them as the actual truth, not ironed out and washed away smiles, frowns, sorrows, days in the sun, love, and living. Holy cow, it's empowering just switching that one little switch. So in celebration, here are some other naturally evolving faces I celebrate (ditching the word aging - it's so convoluted and has too much baggage). 

Drew Barrymore - famously turning away any augmentation 

Maya Anglou - just stunning and Emma Thompson, a hero of authenticity and power. 

And from my own life, these are my beautiful grandmothers both in their 90's. Real faces, untouched by anything other than life and reality. 

And one more of me, no filters, make up or augmentation - just the real deal, a life being lived, and a face naturally evolving towards a wise one someday, with luck. I'm just grateful to be free to do this without the scrutiny the celebrity women have. Let's be kind to everyone, no matter what their choices. My hope is that this frees someone else from the scrutiny of their own face, and the feeling that they are inferior or have to change in order to be validated.  

Peace, love, and happiness.

~L