From Here to Eternity

There was a commentary piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday stemming from the recent death of Deborah Kerr. The author talked about scrutinizing a recent photo of the eighty-something actress trying to find traces of the beautiful woman she had been so long ago. She went on to wonder why it is that male actors are allowed to basically decay in the public eye via their film work while women are considered used up commodities when they reach their forties. As an example she used compared actors like Jack Nicholson being a leading man still despite the fact that he is physically an old man whereas Ms. Kerr “retired” from acting essentially when she turned forty. It gets back to, naturally, the double-standard when it comes to men and women and aging. A standard that exists, I think, for two reasons. One being that it is a man’s world. They have always made the rules and the rules have always favored them. The second reason is that we women go along with this by willingly buying into the notion that as we lose our youth to the years and the mileage, we become less beautiful. The latter, and the former really as well, is crap.

If I could, I would show you a picture of myself at eighteen and one now and you would have to admit I am much better looking now. I am the proverbial ugly duckling that age and wisdom have transformed into, if I must so say myself, a damn fine swan. I can’t pretend that I am happy with wrinkles or gray hairs or the fact that I must work longer to get into a healthy physical state, but I am much better looking than many of male peers. The article I read talked about how advances in cosmetic surgery have helped women stay at par with their same age brethren, and though I am grateful for the advances in medicine that help those people who have been ill or badly injured avoid some of the physical stigma, I am not so sure that cosmetic surgery has been a good thing overall for my gender or that without it we wouldn’t be “at par”. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t think that the majority of men fare any better against the ravages of time time than women do. They get just as fat. flabby, gray and wizened as we do when we don’t take the time ti eat properly and take care of ourselves. Having just been at my 25th high school reunion I can say that by and large the mid-forties is not what it was a half-century ago when people that age seemed to look so much older than we do now. Hair coloring has something to do with this as does the advent of birth control which allowed women to control to some extent the ravages of childbearing on their bodies. Mainly though, we live less physically demanding lives.

Still, it hasn’t changed the perception that forty is old for a woman and prime for a man. Not fair but we women don’t do ourselves favors by buying into such nonsense.