In a recent feature from AARP Magazine, called “What Women Want,” Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Betty White talk “sex, love, and…staying hot!” The ladies comment on the fact that our society’s blatant ageism has caused people to desperately cling to their youth, even if it means going to drastic measures to do so.
Good Genes and Bad Plastic Surgery (from AARP.org)
Curtis: There’s a reason why there is only one Betty White. [Speaking to Betty] You’ve navigated this magnificently and had good health and fantastic opportunities, and you’ve knocked them out of the ballpark. There are people who, when you see them on the screen, there’s an audible gasp of “Oh my God.” They look terrible — or they’ve done something to themselves and now look like freaks. Then there are people who age beautifully. There is one Meryl Streep and one Sigourney Weaver. But I could name 30 other actresses in their [age] groups who aren’t working today. Me, I’m getting my ass out of this business in a few years because genetically it’s not going to work for me. And I’m not saying this so you guys say, “Oh, you’re so pretty.” I’m talking about aging and genetics.
White: I wish you would take your shirt off. This one [pointing to Curtis] has arms.
Bell: You have a hot body and everybody knows it.
Curtis: [Pointing to White] She’s 88 and hotter in Hollywood than anyone I know except maybe Justin Bieber!
Bell: Why are we all playing this gigantic game trying to be who we were five years ago?
Curtis: Because everybody is saying that to get jobs you have to dye your hair and get injectables. It’s a conspiracy, a complete catastrophe, a surgical-industrial complex. Somehow we are being fed this belief that to continue on we have to do this. Yet people are being disfigured. It’s shocking what people are doing to their faces.
Personally, I think we could all take a page from Betty White. At 88, she is graceful, hilarious, and comfortable with her age, and therefore earns my utmost respect. As popular culture becomes more and more invasive in our lives, through Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, etc., it seems that our desire to look and act like the celebrities we revere in the media becomes an even stronger and uncontrollable urge. As Jamie Lee Curtis insists, we need to learn to accept the natural aging process with open arms, instead of turning to our local plastic surgeons to remedy our “problem areas.” It’s truly amazing to me that Curtis is genuinely afraid of a potential lack of work in her future when, in my opinion, she still looks amazing!
It’s time that we, as a culture of women, begin to embrace our age and turn the focus towards health and away from nips and tucks.
-Lauranium
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