{"id":70281,"date":"2014-04-24T16:38:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T20:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=70281"},"modified":"2014-04-24T19:09:05","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T23:09:05","slug":"the-aulds-have-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/24\/the-aulds-have-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aulds Have It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jolie\/Laide is a series that seeks the beautiful and the ugly in unexpected places.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"lansbury<\/a>

Angela Lansbury in Terry Richardson\u2019s iconic cover shot for The Gentlewoman<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Continue to present yourself as a woman of loveliness and dignity, a woman who feels good and knows she\u2019s looking her best<\/em>. \u2014Angela Lansbury, The Gentlewoman<\/em>, Autumn\/Winter 2012<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I was a little girl, I had no reason not to follow my parents\u2019 edict to respect my elders, especially when it came to my female elders. My mother was stunning. I\u2019d watch, mesmerized, while she applied her makeup, spritzed her Chloe perfume, and put on her latest Valentino or Ungaro ensemble before an evening out with my father. I thought her mother, my grandmother, was the epitome of elegance in her Upper East Side tweed uniform. Flipping through my mother\u2019s latest issue of Vogue<\/em>, I saw a photo of Sophia Loren in glasses. \u201cThis woman looks like mom when she wears her glasses,\u201d I announced. \u201cI do not <\/em>look like Sophia Loren, but I thank you for the compliment,\u201d my mom said.<\/p>\n

At the time\u2014the eighties\u2014Sophia was in her early fifties. The mask of fright she now wears, courtesy of an aggressive plastic surgery regimen, had not yet been donned. During that period, I also saw pictures of Audrey Hepburn, who was ten years Loren\u2019s senior, and I thought she, too, was beautiful. Of plastic surgery, she once said, \u201cI think it\u2019s a marvelous thing, done in small doses, very expertly, so that no one notices.\u201d <\/p>\n

In those photos, Hepburn and Loren seemed to play the role of the approachable patrician; to \u201cgrow old gracefully,\u201d a phrase that Oil of Olay would soon borrow for an ad campaign in which women who appeared to be in their late thirties declared they did not<\/em> intend to do something so silly, but would, instead, \u201cfight it\u201d\u2014growing old\u2014every step of the way. Maybe that was when the fight against aging began in earnest<\/a>; when we gave beauty an expiration date that would encroach further into youth over the ensuing decades.<\/p>\n

Actresses of a \u201ccertain age\u201d\u2014turning forty was career suicide\u2014were boxed out of the box office. At first, they disappeared from the screen entirely<\/a>. When they returned it was to play the mothers of women old enough to be their younger sisters, and they did so significantly altered.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the precedent provided by Loren and Hepburn was supplanted by Botox and lip plumpers, people injecting bum fat into their other cheeks. This new breed of mature woman looked alien, generic, one shiny creature indistinguishable from the next; at their worst, they resembled leonine gargoyles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These women were supposed to show their younger counterparts how to behave, how to age with dignity and, yes, grace. Instead, they had let us down, and, even worse, were trying to look like the people they should have been setting examples for. The result: twenty-something women hooked on Restalyne and the rise of the cougar, sex-crazed women pursuing men young enough to be their sons.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum, just as depressing, we\u2019ve seen an uptick in the eccentric grandmother, the kooky matron. Today\u2019s Demi Moore is tomorrow\u2019s Baby Jane Hudson; twenty-nine years after playing Mrs. Robinson, Anne Bancroft took on the role of the archetypal loony old bat, Miss Havisham. The eternally jilted bride, I\u2019ve noticed, has been cast younger and younger, and she\u2019s played these days with a subtle, disquieting hint of licentiousness; I give you Charlotte Rampling, Gillian Anderson, and Helena Bonham Carter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over all of these women there looms a shadow of decadence: the decay of the body, the corruption of morality, the disintegration of reason. With age, they seem to suggest, come vanity and folly.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d begun to despair of ever having role models. And then Penny Martin\u2014the editor-in-chief of The Gentlewoman<\/em>, that \u201cfabulous biannual magazine for modern women of style and purpose<\/a>\u201d\u2014put the timeless, tasteful, and outspoken eighty-six-year-old Dame Angela Lansbury on the cover of the 2012 Autumn\/Winter issue. Yes, the most famous portrayer of Sweeney Todd<\/em>\u2019s Mrs. Lovett\u2014something of a cougar herself, and most certainly unhinged\u2014was the cover girl of the publication for the thinking chic woman. \u201cShe was on my list when I went for the job interview and I feel it was important for a number of reasons,\u201d Martin said of the decision. \u201cTo have a woman of her age on the cover<\/a> of a magazine when it\u2019s not an \u2018Age Issue,\u2019 it clearly spoke to a lot of people.\u201d Lansbury did not look like an alien, or a withering hag. She was every inch the dignified octogenarian: she was unfussy and glamorous. Smartly clad in a (peachy rose-colored) silk shirt with a strand of (red) beads around her neck, and a streak of lipstick to match, there Dame Angela was in black and white; her signature (since 1966) \u201cboyish golden crop\u201d gone silver-white, she wore the trademark glasses of her photographer, Terry Richardson\u2014he of the creepy predilection<\/a> for young models\u2014of all people. Hers is a stylishness based in pragmatism\u2014she shops, we\u2019re told, at Gap and Uniqlo for her daily uniform of \u201cshirts and trousers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although her presence on that cover could be taken as an ironic statement, the irony was not at the expense of its subject. She speaks openly about how her looks didn\u2019t measure up to the movie industry\u2019s standard of beauty\u2014\u201cAll I could do as an actress was give the illusion of being a much more beautiful woman than I am \u2026 I don\u2019t think my appearance was ever in any way responsible for my success as an actress.\u201d She is equally, if not more, candid on the subject of sex as she challenges the \u201csexual invisibility\u201d associated with women over fifty. Lansbury\u2019s theory is that instead of being preyed upon or ensnared by older women, younger men are naturally drawn to the more senior option.<\/p>\n

During the years when younger women are hoping to find the man who\u2019s going to marry them and give them a family, they\u2019re unsure of their own sexuality and their ability to attract and to hold a man \u2026 The hopes and expectations they bring become a burden, and men feel the weight of it. Whereas I think women who have settled those questions in their own minds don\u2019t present such an enigma to a young man. Because they are what they are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Angela is what she is, no pretense or vanity. That\u2019s why Martin\u2019s dedicating an issue of the magazine to the actress had an impact. It\u2019s not just that this women is old; she\u2019s real<\/em>\u2014not an airbrushed character.<\/p>\n

Soon after, Jackie Onassis\u2019s sister\u2014Lee Radziwill, age seventy-nine, a princess of Poland, Andy Warhol\u2019s best friend, Truman Capote\u2019s swan\u2014appeared on the front of the February 2013 issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine<\/em>. It marked a cultural transition away from one Kennedy-related trope\u2014Grey Gardens\u2014to another\u2014the regal dowager.<\/p>\n

From there, a crop of memoirs followed: from Diane Keaton and Angelica Huston, from Patti Smith, from the fashion legend Grace Coddington. Joan Rivers and Elaine Stritch are the subjects of new documentaries. Last year, at eighty, Cicely Tyson won a Tony Award for her turn as Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful<\/em>, while the relatively unknown eighty-four-year-old actress June Squibb was nominated for an Oscar. Lena Dunham cast Squibb in Girls<\/em> along with Louise Lasser, who, up until that turn, was best known for her roles in the Woody Allen films of the late sixties and early seventies.<\/p>\n

Biddies are trending, that much is clear. And this particular strain has a few defining traits: She is not a conventional beauty, and has, despite that fact\u2014and sometimes because of it\u2014carved out a successful career in the limelight. She has not been overzealous in her visit to the plastic surgeon (except Joan, whose aggressive program has become integral to her schtick) and she hasn\u2019t attempted to hide her age from her audience. Like Lansbury, she is what she is and works hard, \u201cevery day,\u201d as Brubach wrote of the Dame.<\/p>\n

\"diane<\/a>Keaton, for one, continues to sign on for film roles and, next week, has a second book out. In Let\u2019s Just Say It Wasn\u2019t Pretty<\/em>, the actress challenges her industry\u2019s cookie-cutter definition of and obsession with beauty, freely cops to her own related insecurities, and, ultimately, celebrates her flaws (and defends her love of turtlenecks):<\/p>\n

I tell myself I\u2019m free to do whatever the hell I want with my body. Why not? I may be a caricature of my former self; I\u2019m still wearing wide-belted plaid coats, horn-rimmed glasses, and turtlenecks in the summertime. So what? Nobody cares but me. I don\u2019t see anything wrong with face-lifts or Botox or fillers. They just erase the hidden battle scars. I intend to wear mine, sort of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keaton speaks for \u201ca group of sixty-five and older show business folk,\u201d but she also identifies with a larger contingent. \u201cI\u2019m a post-World War II demographic,\u201d she writes. \u201cI\u2019m one of the seventy-six million American children born between 1946 and 1964.\u201d That\u2019s quite a large market share, even if we\u2019re only talking about the women in it. Based on today\u2019s extended average human life expectancy, at sixty-eight, even the oldest of boomers have got a lot of livin\u2019 to do<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Two decades ahead of Keaton, Lansbury proves there\u2019s life in the old girl yet. She likes to remind us that older women are sexually visible; the fact that she\u2019s still appearing on the stage and screen reminds us that they are professionally visible, too. Women over sixty-five have acquired a pop cultural relevance they haven\u2019t always had, because they\u2019ve been able to contribute more in the workplace and take on higher profile jobs. They\u2019re also living longer, which means they can continue to accomplish more over an extended period of time; sometimes, they don\u2019t have a choice. For many, retirement is a luxury\u2014or else, a resignation to mortality.<\/p>\n

Look at the woman who put a controversially pretty face on the feminist movement. At eighty, most of what Gloria Steinem does, according to New York Times<\/em> columnist Gail Collins, who interviewed the activist right before her birthday last month, \u201cinvolves moving the movement forward. Speech to meeting to panel to fund-raiser.\u201d As Collins points out, \u201cvery few women have aged as publicly\u201d as Steinem has. Most of those who have don\u2019t choose to do so without a nip or tuck. All Gloria\u2019s done is dye her hair, which, Nora Ephron posited in her 2005 essay \u201cOn Maintenance,\u201d is not only \u201cthe most powerful weapon older women have against youth culture,\u201d but also \u201cactually succeeds at stopping the clock \u2026 makes women far more open to drastic procedures (like face-lifts).\u201d<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, when Ephron put that theory forward, she used Gloria Steinem\u2019s now famous response to turning forty\u2014\u201cThis is what forty looks like\u201d\u2014as a segue. Steinem, who has not succumbed to \u201cdrastic procedures,\u201d has now become a poster woman for what eighty looks like<\/a>. And, as Collins writes, \u201cActually, she doesn\u2019t look terrible at all. She looks great. She looks exactly the way you would want to imagine Gloria Steinem looking at 80.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think she looks great, too, and I\u2019m not alone<\/a>. Steinem looks exactly the way I\u2019d want to imagine Audrey Hepburn to look at eighty-five, which she would be on May 4, had she lived; she looks the way I\u2019d want to imagine Diane Keaton to look when she\u2019s in her eighties, and she looks the way I already know Angela Lansbury looks at eighty-eight. Steinem looks like a vibrant, confident\u2014and stylish\u2014elder stateswoman, 2014 edition.<\/p>\n

For whatever moment they\u2019re enjoying in the cultural spotlight, I\u2019m thankful, because they\u2019re active and actively aging; they\u2019re putting the cougars and Havishams to shame. They provide women younger than they are with something to look forward to\u2014and something to live up to.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Druckman\u00a0is a journalist and editor whose food writing has appeared in the\u00a0<\/i>Wall Street Journal, <\/i>T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and\u00a0<\/i>Bon Appetit. She is also the author of\u00a0<\/i>Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat & Staying in the Kitchen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jolie\/Laide is a series that seeks the beautiful and the ugly in unexpected places. Continue to present yourself as a woman of loveliness and dignity, a woman who feels good and knows she\u2019s looking her best. \u2014Angela Lansbury, The Gentlewoman, Autumn\/Winter 2012 When I was a little girl, I had no reason not to follow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":675,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13410],"tags":[8769,13670,5820,4875,538,13672,13671,232,13673],"class_list":["post-70281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jolielaide","tag-aging","tag-angela-lansbury","tag-beauty","tag-diane-keaton","tag-fashion","tag-older-women","tag-sophia-loren","tag-style","tag-the-gentlewoman"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Aulds Have It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Charlotte Druckman on Angela Lansbury, Diane Keaton, and women aging gracefully.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/24\/the-aulds-have-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Aulds Have It by Charlotte Druckman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 24, 2014 \u2013 Jolie\/Laide is a series that seeks the beautiful and the ugly in unexpected places. 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