'Aging gracefully'. I was a ballet dancer for many years and was often called graceful. The word was always used to imply that the way I moved and stood seemed to lack effort, when in fact it took thousands of hours of effort. Male dancers, curiously, were not called graceful to my memory, but things like 'skilled'. Which implies effort, and acknowledges the extraordinary amount of time (and physical pain) one must invest to move like that.
I do think there are tropes of male effortlessness as well, words that reduce their efforts to naught. There is an example of this that I heard recently on the podcast Articles of Interest in which Jason Jules (famously well dressed author of 'Black Ivy') says that he is often called 'cool'. He feels that this term is dismissive, and often applied to POC to imply that if they look good, it's natural. No effort, study, labor, etc. involved. He drew a comparison to the word 'Athletic' often being assigned to prolific black athletes (who obviously aren't just naturally athletic but spend many thousands of hours honing those skills).
Anyway. I think it's really useful to notice these things! How our ideas about effort reinforce our ideas about race, sex, gender, etc. Thanks Jessica. Terrific piece.
I am always grateful for your take on these cultural phenomenons. My guess is that Madonna went overboard w the facial alterations and then decided she would be “subversive” by going even more overboard. It’s not subversive. I agree that it would have been truly subversive for her to age naturally. Every time I see iconic people aging without modification I am so enthralled by their beauty- the complexity of their aging, how it’s unique for everyone, like a fingerprint, and how every bit of age on someone’s face and body represents experiences and expressions. Madonna seems to be erasing herself. I’d love to see some features of ppl aging naturally! Like, just a bunch of pics of actual natural aging.
Thank you!! I'm dying to see more aging faces too. Have you read Justine Bateman's book or any of her essays about aging? She's such a great example in this space
I’m doing it and I’m a political Tiktok creator. I LOVE it. Apparently a few people, at least, can tolerate watching a 54-year old with no Botox (or even makeup LOL) talking about something relatively substantive. I didn’t set out to be subversive by doing this but more and more I feel I am. Although even tiktok defaults to a beauty filter. Crazy. No one wants to just see a human.
Yes!!! I’m 42 and have done zero anything to my face or body. I always picture the people I know and admire when I start wondering if I should try some sort of age-hating tactic. And I do feel like it is totally subversive to let myself age and let my life be marked upon me.
I work on a college campus where there are any number of young women who look, due to their age, like it seems that Madonna wanted to look. They are fresh-faced and supple and dewy and EIGHTEEN FREAKING YEARS OLD. They also display all the other attributes of being 18. They are often clueless, lack common sense, and are a touch narcissistic. (They are also any number of wonderful things. Don't let me be accused of hating on young people.) But I just can't quite wrap my head around the bizarre expectation that we somehow look like them but not act like them. Or maybe the culture doesn't care if we act like them as long as we look like them?
Madonna seems to be trying to offer a caricature of that dewy youthfulness while claiming the wisdom of age, but it's just not working. She's not wise, she's, as you say, complicit.
From my perspective, the look of being young and behavior of being young seem inextricably linked and there's no amount you could pay me to go back to *being* 18, so I'll just get old over here, thank you very much.
Oh for sure. I don't think it's accidental that the idealized point of peak "beauty" in a woman's life is when she's young, inexperienced, & pliable, with a not-fully-developed pre-frontal cortex.
Well this just led to me going down a weird rabbit hole of reading all of the product descriptions on the MDNA site. Her Reinvention cream says it "helps... promote a look of resilience" and "protect the skin’s moisture barrier from external aggressors for a strengthened appearance." What is a look of resilience? Who are the external aggressors????
Lolll the "look of resilience" and "strengthened appearance" get me. Lots of beauty brands and dermatologists and even scientific studies use the term "external aggressors" to mean sunlight, environmental pollutants, etc.
Ha can you tell I don’t buy many beauty products? “External aggressor” sounds like, I dunno, someone who’s just done a hit and run. I’m just imagining the sun being like “bitch, I’m going to AGE you”
I saw a post about this where someone was saying “body shaming someone for plastic surgery is no different than body shaming someone for aging” re: Madonna which I found totally mind blowing. It’s not that I’m promoting “shaming” but discussing a public figure’s actions and statements is…not shaming. And it’s wild to conflate aging and cosmetic surgery in this way. First, plastic surgery is a choice and aging is not. Second, getting/promoting cosmetic procedures contributes to the collective shame against aging, while people just aging (aka living) doesn’t affect anyone else…! It’s this type of mainstream feminism where the most important consideration is whether someone’s feelings get hurt instead of any kind of meaningful feminist political analysis. Thank you Jessica, love your work!
Such an anti-intellectual take!! It's also like... nothing in this particular article I wrote is shaming. It's simply telling the truth about the mechanics of beauty culture and how actions like Madonna's affect the collective, based on history and research lol. We can hold these two things at the same time: Madonna can do whatever she wants to her face AND what Madonna does to her face affects the culture, in ways that are very damaging to women collectively. We're part of this! We have the right to discuss it!!
Thank you for writing this. I’m a few years younger than Madonna, and I remember my friends and me in our twenties watching Madonna’s career. In the 1980s, she strove to be subversive with her art. As she continued to create new projects and expand her career in the 1990s (we remember her book and movie roles) and experiment with new styles in her music, we watched with hope.* Was she going to change the norm of women aging in pop music?
Seeing the photos of her today just makes me sad, for all the reasons you’ve discussed. The discourse focused on either her bodily autonomy or mocking her just makes me sadder.
*Please don’t read this as an endorsement of everything she’s done!
I would love your take on what a feminist, anti-capitalist version of “aging gracefully” might look like and whether it is possible. That’s what got my wheels turning. The religious concept of grace seems like a beautiful gift to me. It’s a shame the word has become so gendered to refer to a specific kind of feminine self-discipline.
The feminist, anti-capitalist version is just AGING! Haha. The use of any adverb (here, "gracefully") is prescriptive and controlling — it instructs us on *how* to age. It implies the aging process should happen in a particular way, and that in order to ensure that particular outcome, the aging process needs to necessarily be controlled. It doesn't! We need to be allowed to simply age, whatever it looks like (and it will look different for everyone).
You're so good at articulating what frustrates me about modern discourse regarding these topics. I think people tend to defend women targeted by misogynistic comments (like some of the comments about Madonna aging/her looks) by arguing that the woman being criticized is ACTUALLY being feminist, but a woman doesn't have to act in a feminist way to be targeted by misogyny. Everyone gets targeted by misogyny for anything at all; it doesn't make the misogyny ok, but it doesn't make every single thing women do a feminist act, either. Two things can be true at once!
As a lifelong Madonna fan, I struggled with this so much, until my friends and I mutually and grudgingly decided that we ,,lost" her. It sounds melodramatic, but she lifted my whole generation up to be better, stronger, more capable women - and by now, her path is one that we don't understand and certainly don't want to follow. Of course, her reply would be f* you, I'll do what I want. Okay, fine.
I feel this! I'm not trying to say she shouldn't do what she wants to her face or doesn't have the right to do it. But her aesthetic actions affect the collective via beauty culture, and so we have the right to discuss the implications of her aesthetic actions too.
I agree with all your arguments, believe me. And maybe I AM saying that she should cherish her face more and not mess with it. On top of being a role model, she was so loved! For being HER!
The wildest part of Jennifer Weiner's op-ed in the Times was when she used Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, and 1950s hair-dye as examples of "invisible beauty." Three of the most brazenly (and purposefully) artificial beauty trends! Clearly coming from a person who isn't actually aware of this history.
OMG I know. This is the dangerous thing about beauty writing! Because we all (mostly) participate in beauty culture to some degree, we all feel like we know what we're talking about. Most people are not experts! Most people have no clue what they're talking about re: beauty! Most people know the basics and manipulate that into a nice little narrative that excuses their participation own in a shitty, oppressive system. It's so frustrating to see high-profile pieces like this come from people who have clearly never studied or really even thought about the expansive history of beauty standards and beauty culture and how it's negatively affected women politically, economically, socially, physically, psychologically... ugh.
It’s like, nearly any woman is a qualified beauty culture expert and thus can write about it, by dint of being a woman. Can’t decide if it’s positive or negative that there’s an acknowledges that beauty culture is like oxygen that we’re all breathing.
“Unfortunately, the fluffy form of pop feminism that dominates today’s media landscape tells us that when we call out women who perpetuate misogynistic beauty beliefs — like the idea that the unmodified, aging female face is unsightly and should be avoided at all costs — we’re the ones Doing A Misogyny™. This is a tactic employed by people who would like to preserve the aspects of the patriarchy that benefit them.”
'Aging gracefully'. I was a ballet dancer for many years and was often called graceful. The word was always used to imply that the way I moved and stood seemed to lack effort, when in fact it took thousands of hours of effort. Male dancers, curiously, were not called graceful to my memory, but things like 'skilled'. Which implies effort, and acknowledges the extraordinary amount of time (and physical pain) one must invest to move like that.
I do think there are tropes of male effortlessness as well, words that reduce their efforts to naught. There is an example of this that I heard recently on the podcast Articles of Interest in which Jason Jules (famously well dressed author of 'Black Ivy') says that he is often called 'cool'. He feels that this term is dismissive, and often applied to POC to imply that if they look good, it's natural. No effort, study, labor, etc. involved. He drew a comparison to the word 'Athletic' often being assigned to prolific black athletes (who obviously aren't just naturally athletic but spend many thousands of hours honing those skills).
Anyway. I think it's really useful to notice these things! How our ideas about effort reinforce our ideas about race, sex, gender, etc. Thanks Jessica. Terrific piece.
Thank you so much for adding this to the conversation! Such great points.
I am always grateful for your take on these cultural phenomenons. My guess is that Madonna went overboard w the facial alterations and then decided she would be “subversive” by going even more overboard. It’s not subversive. I agree that it would have been truly subversive for her to age naturally. Every time I see iconic people aging without modification I am so enthralled by their beauty- the complexity of their aging, how it’s unique for everyone, like a fingerprint, and how every bit of age on someone’s face and body represents experiences and expressions. Madonna seems to be erasing herself. I’d love to see some features of ppl aging naturally! Like, just a bunch of pics of actual natural aging.
Thank you!! I'm dying to see more aging faces too. Have you read Justine Bateman's book or any of her essays about aging? She's such a great example in this space
YES. Her quote "There's nothing wrong with your face. There's never been anything wrong with your face."
No! I am going to check that out right now...
I’m doing it and I’m a political Tiktok creator. I LOVE it. Apparently a few people, at least, can tolerate watching a 54-year old with no Botox (or even makeup LOL) talking about something relatively substantive. I didn’t set out to be subversive by doing this but more and more I feel I am. Although even tiktok defaults to a beauty filter. Crazy. No one wants to just see a human.
Yes!!! I’m 42 and have done zero anything to my face or body. I always picture the people I know and admire when I start wondering if I should try some sort of age-hating tactic. And I do feel like it is totally subversive to let myself age and let my life be marked upon me.
What’s your TikTok?
I work on a college campus where there are any number of young women who look, due to their age, like it seems that Madonna wanted to look. They are fresh-faced and supple and dewy and EIGHTEEN FREAKING YEARS OLD. They also display all the other attributes of being 18. They are often clueless, lack common sense, and are a touch narcissistic. (They are also any number of wonderful things. Don't let me be accused of hating on young people.) But I just can't quite wrap my head around the bizarre expectation that we somehow look like them but not act like them. Or maybe the culture doesn't care if we act like them as long as we look like them?
Madonna seems to be trying to offer a caricature of that dewy youthfulness while claiming the wisdom of age, but it's just not working. She's not wise, she's, as you say, complicit.
From my perspective, the look of being young and behavior of being young seem inextricably linked and there's no amount you could pay me to go back to *being* 18, so I'll just get old over here, thank you very much.
Oh for sure. I don't think it's accidental that the idealized point of peak "beauty" in a woman's life is when she's young, inexperienced, & pliable, with a not-fully-developed pre-frontal cortex.
Well this just led to me going down a weird rabbit hole of reading all of the product descriptions on the MDNA site. Her Reinvention cream says it "helps... promote a look of resilience" and "protect the skin’s moisture barrier from external aggressors for a strengthened appearance." What is a look of resilience? Who are the external aggressors????
Lolll the "look of resilience" and "strengthened appearance" get me. Lots of beauty brands and dermatologists and even scientific studies use the term "external aggressors" to mean sunlight, environmental pollutants, etc.
Ha can you tell I don’t buy many beauty products? “External aggressor” sounds like, I dunno, someone who’s just done a hit and run. I’m just imagining the sun being like “bitch, I’m going to AGE you”
The people creating this marketing language. 🤣
What if we were encouraged to build ACTUAL resilience and strength instead of the appearance of them on our face?!
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but it routinely enrages me how much our society just wants dumb, weak, pretty, infantile women. 🤦🏻♀️
The external aggressor? Patriarchy
I love this thought: “She can say her performance of perma-youth subverts expectations, but if Madonna really wanted to be subversive? She’d age.”
Thank you Stephen!
I saw a post about this where someone was saying “body shaming someone for plastic surgery is no different than body shaming someone for aging” re: Madonna which I found totally mind blowing. It’s not that I’m promoting “shaming” but discussing a public figure’s actions and statements is…not shaming. And it’s wild to conflate aging and cosmetic surgery in this way. First, plastic surgery is a choice and aging is not. Second, getting/promoting cosmetic procedures contributes to the collective shame against aging, while people just aging (aka living) doesn’t affect anyone else…! It’s this type of mainstream feminism where the most important consideration is whether someone’s feelings get hurt instead of any kind of meaningful feminist political analysis. Thank you Jessica, love your work!
Such an anti-intellectual take!! It's also like... nothing in this particular article I wrote is shaming. It's simply telling the truth about the mechanics of beauty culture and how actions like Madonna's affect the collective, based on history and research lol. We can hold these two things at the same time: Madonna can do whatever she wants to her face AND what Madonna does to her face affects the culture, in ways that are very damaging to women collectively. We're part of this! We have the right to discuss it!!
your points about how our beauty labor should be invisible to be "good" ARE SO RIGHT ON.
Thank you!!
Thank you for writing this. I’m a few years younger than Madonna, and I remember my friends and me in our twenties watching Madonna’s career. In the 1980s, she strove to be subversive with her art. As she continued to create new projects and expand her career in the 1990s (we remember her book and movie roles) and experiment with new styles in her music, we watched with hope.* Was she going to change the norm of women aging in pop music?
Seeing the photos of her today just makes me sad, for all the reasons you’ve discussed. The discourse focused on either her bodily autonomy or mocking her just makes me sadder.
*Please don’t read this as an endorsement of everything she’s done!
I would love your take on what a feminist, anti-capitalist version of “aging gracefully” might look like and whether it is possible. That’s what got my wheels turning. The religious concept of grace seems like a beautiful gift to me. It’s a shame the word has become so gendered to refer to a specific kind of feminine self-discipline.
The feminist, anti-capitalist version is just AGING! Haha. The use of any adverb (here, "gracefully") is prescriptive and controlling — it instructs us on *how* to age. It implies the aging process should happen in a particular way, and that in order to ensure that particular outcome, the aging process needs to necessarily be controlled. It doesn't! We need to be allowed to simply age, whatever it looks like (and it will look different for everyone).
You're so good at articulating what frustrates me about modern discourse regarding these topics. I think people tend to defend women targeted by misogynistic comments (like some of the comments about Madonna aging/her looks) by arguing that the woman being criticized is ACTUALLY being feminist, but a woman doesn't have to act in a feminist way to be targeted by misogyny. Everyone gets targeted by misogyny for anything at all; it doesn't make the misogyny ok, but it doesn't make every single thing women do a feminist act, either. Two things can be true at once!
Yes!
I’m so glad you wrote about this. When I read that NYT piece my head almost exploded. JFC.
Thank you! I almost didn't because after reading that I was like... I have no words
Oh my God that last line. If Madonna really wanted to be subversive she would age. Yes!
As a lifelong Madonna fan, I struggled with this so much, until my friends and I mutually and grudgingly decided that we ,,lost" her. It sounds melodramatic, but she lifted my whole generation up to be better, stronger, more capable women - and by now, her path is one that we don't understand and certainly don't want to follow. Of course, her reply would be f* you, I'll do what I want. Okay, fine.
I feel this! I'm not trying to say she shouldn't do what she wants to her face or doesn't have the right to do it. But her aesthetic actions affect the collective via beauty culture, and so we have the right to discuss the implications of her aesthetic actions too.
I agree with all your arguments, believe me. And maybe I AM saying that she should cherish her face more and not mess with it. On top of being a role model, she was so loved! For being HER!
The wildest part of Jennifer Weiner's op-ed in the Times was when she used Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, and 1950s hair-dye as examples of "invisible beauty." Three of the most brazenly (and purposefully) artificial beauty trends! Clearly coming from a person who isn't actually aware of this history.
OMG I know. This is the dangerous thing about beauty writing! Because we all (mostly) participate in beauty culture to some degree, we all feel like we know what we're talking about. Most people are not experts! Most people have no clue what they're talking about re: beauty! Most people know the basics and manipulate that into a nice little narrative that excuses their participation own in a shitty, oppressive system. It's so frustrating to see high-profile pieces like this come from people who have clearly never studied or really even thought about the expansive history of beauty standards and beauty culture and how it's negatively affected women politically, economically, socially, physically, psychologically... ugh.
It’s like, nearly any woman is a qualified beauty culture expert and thus can write about it, by dint of being a woman. Can’t decide if it’s positive or negative that there’s an acknowledges that beauty culture is like oxygen that we’re all breathing.
Doing a Misogyny 😂😂😂
“Unfortunately, the fluffy form of pop feminism that dominates today’s media landscape tells us that when we call out women who perpetuate misogynistic beauty beliefs — like the idea that the unmodified, aging female face is unsightly and should be avoided at all costs — we’re the ones Doing A Misogyny™. This is a tactic employed by people who would like to preserve the aspects of the patriarchy that benefit them.”
🤯🤯👏