I should say at the outset that I am on Nicole Kidman’s side. Always have been, always will be. We all have our movie star. The one who would be our best friend if only we could chain her to the radiator until she loved us. For me, it’s Nicole. That said, could also be Sandra Bullock. I’m not picky.
Put another way, I’ve been waiting for Practical Magic 2 since the Dolby Sound insignia rolled on Practical Magic.
So the other day, with a genuine thrill, a gallon of popcorn, and my 17-year-old daughter, I went to see the sequel at the least moody place on earth: The Grove in Los Angeles. Outside, legions of women in pastel Alo yoga tops photographed candy-colored smoothies in this Potemkin Village of an outdoor mall. Inside, we were whisked away to a world of rain and candles and velvet and creepy houses and stormy, witchy gloom. (The movie itself is terrible but that’s not the point; I still loved it in every way.)
And then our heroines walk onscreen. Heaven. I mean, the hair! The bodies! The linelessness! Or, depending on your point of view: The extensions! The surgery! The Botox! I have come to realize that one woman’s heaven is the internet’s garbage dump.
In case you missed the haters, the argument goes roughly like this: Kidman, 59, and Bullock, 62, look too good. Too young. Not enough sag. There have been 28 years between the two films, but in the narrative of the fictitious Owens sisters, only about 10 years should have passed. Which means the actors who played Bullock’s daughters in the originals are now too old to plausibly play college-ish. So new actors were cast as the kids, and the same actors play the adults, and the world wide web lost its fact-checking mind. How could someone in her seventh decade pretend to be 40-whatever? Suddenly their beauty was an affront.
To the haters—you know who you are, but in case you don’t, if you think you might be, you are—I have a few questions: Have you ever used concealer and been called a liar? Swiped on mascara and felt the cold sting of accusing fingers? Worn self-tanner and been denounced a fraud?
Fine. New rule. Every time you put on your Spanx you have to wear a disclaimer across your torso: “The following has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this .”
My point is that we have arrived at a fake (and highly specific) moral high ground that determines what’s okay. Creams, gels, ointments, healthy living: Cheers to you, Meryls of the world! Scalpels, stitches, suction tubes: character flaws. These vitamins have been approved by the public, those injections have not. Give up pasta, take your peptides, do a HIIT class every day, and spend $800 on a serum made from the tears of a Balinese orchid, and we marvel. We nod our heads and ask for links. But one syringe too many and it’s The Scarlet Letter. A for Allergan.
While we’re on the subject of feminism, because duh, we are: Is a 60ish year-old woman who looks ohmygodsoinsanelygorgeous inspiring or intimidating? Is she furthering the cause of feminism because, fuck it, why should an older woman be put out to pasture? Or is she betraying the sisterhood of wiry hair, crepey skin, and lost waistlines?
At what age does wanting to look good stop being self-care and become a crime against feminism? Why are we threatened by beautiful older women regardless of how they came about their beauty? And, sorry for all the questions but here’s another: Who is on the judgement committee? Because I have some questions about their qualifications.
