Helen Mirren – realistic beauty ideal?
It’s often younger women who are thought of as under fierce pressure from the media, beauty and fashion industries to conform to a prescribed ideal of beauty.
With their peers thrust before them as pert-breasted, dewy-skinned Page 3 girls or stick insect thin catwalk models, and berated if they’re celebrities who dare to put on weight, cry in public or have a wardrobe malfunction, it’s easy to see how tough you have to be to wave off the pressure.
But Equalist contributor Jane Taylor explores how things have changed for an older generation – who once looked forward to retirement age as a chance to rebel and shrug off the pressure to conform to beauty ideals, but now often have to face up to new challenges.
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go…”
…the beginning lines of the well-known poem Warning by Jenny Joseph. How we laughed, my friends and I, when we first came across it in our early thirties.
It spoke to us of colourfulness, rebellion and not conforming. We all saw ourselves in the future as eccentric, wonderful old women, without a care for how we looked or came across. The pressures of society on women to conform and to change as we aged from one norm of womanhood to another was not for us.
We were feminists and could wear what we liked, now and in the future! Not for us the prospect of fading as we grew older into pale shadows of our former selves, nor that of moving on gracefully into genteel, non-threatening, invisible creatures. We were the generation who would be loud and funny and bright.
That was thirty years ago and in our hopeful optimism, we didn’t foresee that feminism and our reasoned debates about equality would become effectively marginalised and that we would end up sidelined as scary, hairy, bra-burning caricatures who hated men holding doors open for us. Though frankly, nothing wrong with being comfortable and, sometimes, in us taking a turn holding doors open for men.
We were trying to get over an important message about the reality of the pressure on women to conform to a certain ideal of femininity whatever the cost, even if it involved physically twisting ourselves into so-called acceptable shapes of womanhood, whether through bone-crunching corsets, foot binding or genital mutilation. How come saying a woman had a right to feel comfortable and free in her body could turn into something so embarrassing that the women who followed on from us decided they would rather not be called feminists, or if they were, it would be preferable to be known as post-feminists?
Over the years, the march of consumerism and the growth of the media have worked hand in glove to turn up the volume on the message to women to live up to socially constructed stereotypes of femininity. Women are encouraged to feel dissatisfied with the way they look in order to stoke up an insatiable appetite for spending a shedload of cash on the latest beauty products, the newest fashions, the tightest control underwear, the craziest diets and of course the most potent and painful tool for changing how you look – plastic surgery.
Somehow the message about choice got turned on its head and instead became a message to look good! Or else Trinny and Susannah, Gok and Nicky will get you, or heaven forbid if you’re famous, the Daily Mail certainly will.
The volume on this message has become so loud and all-pervading and has reached out its tentacles to include anyone with spending power. So now, those in their 50s and 60s and beyond are fair game.
Our pampered contemporaries in the public eye are singled out and paraded before us as examples of splendid women, who have made an effort and are to be congratulated on their good looks, their fabulous hairstyles, their well-toned bodies, their wonderful wardrobes and lovely complexions.
These gorgeous women protest that they embrace their wrinkles, despite little evidence of their presence. They declare ‘I never have plastic surgery…well maybe the odd bit of botox,’ that they are just ‘born lucky’ and happen to have mothers with wonderful bone structure or good skin. They announce that some sensible eating and exercise are all that it takes.
What this means is that us normal grey-haired wrinklies can no longer fade into invisibility, even if we wanted to. The mirror is held up for us too and if we don’t live up to form, then we have ‘let ourselves go’ – but beware if we try too hard we are ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.
Faced with all this confusing additional pressure, do I dare to wear purple, now I am old?
Well, dressing up, wearing make-up, playing with your hair can still be fun, but it doesn’t feel necessary. My friends and I can equally be comfortable and relaxed about how we look.
Sometimes the subliminal messages to conform can feel difficult to resist, but usually we just like to be ourselves and care more about having fun and being there for each other.
We even sometimes wear purple and I am especially fond of my new lavender nail varnish. I am not sure that anyone has a red hat!
The Equalist 