I was scrolling through Instagram in June when my eyes landed on a photo of the three remaining members of the And Just Like That/Sex and the City crew, linking arms on the roof of a building in Brooklyn. The rest of the photo faded into the grey skyline of New York City in the distance, but holy hell –what the devil, Charlotte?
Before you think I am going to rip another woman for her divergent choices in facial rejuvenation, I will inform you that this is not that kind of party. I am not going to be some kind of Plastic Surgery Karen who thinks they have the right to say one thing about what it takes to be an actress of a certain age today. I am only going to say that this photo made me as mad as a hornet.
It’s no one’s fault, but it’s everyone’s fault. I know this because even I went through a crisis when I turned 45 and suddenly couldn’t bear to look at my skinny turkey neck on one more FaceTime call. After the neck, I started seeing the bubble nose that recalled my ex-boxer grandfather, the “elevens” between my eyebrows that made me look permanently ripshit, and the uneven lip line where gloss seemed to slosh over the edge and bleed out through the surrounding tributaries.
I know that this is normal aging. Yet, somehow, I got the idea that there was something decidedly abnormal about it. Then I remembered that I hadn’t seen a single face age naturally since probably before the Clinton administration, so what did I expect? Every celebrity since then has done some kind of alteration to their face to the point that we don’t even know what real faces look like anymore. Worse, we expect them to do it now and get a visceral reaction when we see faces that don’t look they’ve been sucking down shots of hyaluronic acid with a Botox chaser.
I needed a reset. I needed to look at faces that made sense before everyone started getting whacked by drive-by filler, so I did some research. Do you know how hard it was to find women who I remembered as being beautiful, but who hadn’t eventually caved into face futzing? It was impossible. Yet, there were a few, I think. I say “I think” because I am not an expert on this stuff. It’s possible that someone on the list that you will see below has, in fact, resized their pixels and I’m just too naive to see it. However, I am attempting to share a list of fabulous women who I think were, and still are absolutely amazing. I know I can probably do this for men, also, but they typically get by on much less in terms of physical acceptability as an emblem of success. I mean, have you seen congress?
Let’s have a look at some gorgeous faces.
I Gotta’ Start With Jamie Lee
Holy moly, where do I begin? It’s hard for me to talk about Jamie Lee without veering into full-on objectification, but I kind of think that was on-brand for her back then, so I don’t feel bad about it. Have you seen the movie Perfect? It was literally about people who were physically perfect and if you’re Jamie Lee Curtis in 1985 when this movie came out, I don’t think you’re going to protest. She’s still is magic. Yet, all you have to do is find the pic of her in a Google image search where she is wearing the cross-chest red bandeau/booby-slingshot thingy and my point is made.
If you see Jamie Lee now, she looks like herself, just older. She’s still hot. She still has those cheekbones, but now she’s a bombshell in a silver foxy, you-will-get-the-business-end-of-my-beauty way. Multiple news outlets have described her vision of aging on her own terms like a goddamned punk and I love it. Let’s all be her.
Grace Jones
Grace Jones is iconic for many reasons. She was a singer, a Bond girl, a model, an actress, and the absolute best thing about the 1992 film Boomerang, starring Eddie Murphy. The moment that should be crystallized in your memory is the one where she, as the eccentric goddess Strangé, removes and then shoves her black thong underwear in the face of a perfumier to encourage his understanding of the essence of sex. When she laughs and smiles that gorgeous smile, her energy lights up the room that contained a pre-plastic-surgery Halle Berry and a post-Mike-Tyson Robin Givens. Grace was a force in this movie and in everything else she did. I think there are other women out there that try to embody her vibe, or at least steal from it, but no one comes close. If you image search The Lady Ms. Jones, and I hope you do, clock that smile or those mischievous eyes and tell me she needs to have three rounds of Juvederm to look better. I dare you.
Don’t Deny Diane Keaton
I know that most people currently think that Diane Keaton is the human manifestation of every character in a Roald Dahl book, but her unwavering commitment to her own “look” has to be deeply admired. From the baby-faced Kay in The Godfather to the quirky beauty of Annie Hall, from the sexy MILF of Something’s Gotta’ Give to the joyful mamma dancing with her son, the Biebs, in the music video for Ghost, Diane is rockin’. It honestly doesn’t look like she’s done anything beyond staying out of the sun and using a good moisturizer, but I think something else is going on here.
Have you ever seen Diane Keaton not smiling and laughing? I watched a recent clip of her on the Ellen show and she starts off with “I know you think I’m crazy and you’re right.” Lord, let me live long enough to have this phrase as my personal calling card. I think we’re talking about a woman who is beautiful because she has let life in. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s been able to make out with the likes of Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Mel Gibson before he was creepy, and everyone’s #1 crush/forever hall pass, Keanu Reeves. If it works for Diane (and Keanu), it works for me.
Rita Moreno is a Muppet Magnet
Look, there just aren’t any good photos for public use out there that show the full-on Rita awesomeness. This was the best I could do.
Yes, West Side Story. Yes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yes, the EGOT. But, what burns Rita into my head is the two-minute video of her singing “Fever” on the Muppet show in 1976. Go right now and watch this woman sing, act, and make you laugh your ass off in two languages while wearing a halter-neck dress, gold bangles, and a mane of hair that has “Clairol Hot Rollers” written all over it. She is absolutely stunning and oozes talent to the point that you can’t take your eyes off her–though Animal on the drums is tough competition. Through the years, she let her hair be curly in a sea of blow-outs, then let it go gray when everyone was covering it up. She has said that she’s surprised that she looks as good as she does since she sat in the sun until she was crispy as a bacon bit. This gives me hope that my years of Hawaiian Tropic SPF 2 will be kind.
Andie MacDowell
There are probably a few other women I can add to this list, of course. The internet had a collective orgasm when it caught sight of Andie MacDowell at Cannes this year with her wild grey hair and glittery eyeshadow that had miraculously not settled into the creases in her eyelids (by the way, girl, what brand is that?). I might be able to add Sigourney Weaver and maybe Alfre Woodard, but I get confused after a while and can’t decide if people are injecting or just really have a thing for green juice.
Sigourney Weaver
I do feel that I’ve been reset. After spending time with these women, scrolling through today’s social media is jarring. I am not sure if I am looking at real human faces or filters in most cases and I recognize that it’s going to be constant work to adjust my brain to the difference. I want to reiterate that I don’t care what other people do. I just want to remind myself of what it looks like to not “do”.
The most enlightening part of this exploration was training myself to find what made these women beautiful when I couldn’t rely on the classic visual representation of lineless, ageless, flawless beauty. I saw talent, humour, intelligence, sexiness, grace, style, joie de vivre. I saw everything I want to be as I age and none of it required syringes. All I can say is, sign me up.
