Speaker 1: We're not just talking about physical aging, right, We're not
Speaker 1: talking about just how your face looks.
Speaker 2: We're talking about how.
Speaker 1: You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 2: I'm Susie Benacerum and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment that shaped.
Speaker 3: Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Usually we zero in on a particular moment from the past,
Speaker 1: but today we want to talk about what happens when
Speaker 1: the past catches up with you and your face. So,
Speaker 1: jess today I want to talk about something that I
Speaker 1: feel like is coming up a lot these days when
Speaker 1: you and I talk, just like more often when we're
Speaker 1: on the phone late at night.
Speaker 4: When you forcibly call me on the phone in a variable.
Speaker 3: Assault of my millennialness.
Speaker 1: Okay, listen, First of all, I know you like talking
Speaker 1: to me. Stop pretending like you hate it.
Speaker 3: Can it be said in a text mess?
Speaker 2: I know, I know you would always prefer to be.
Speaker 3: Texting in a studio with you all day long.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, stop pretending like you don't love me
Speaker 1: and you don't want to talk to me all the time. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I get it, Jess really does hat phone calls.
Speaker 1: I insist on them because I'm the older ones. But
Speaker 1: also it takes forever to type things out. So now
Speaker 1: I've just like resorted to voice memos with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, that I think is a good compromise.
Speaker 2: That's a good compromise.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're we're we've settled on voice memos for us.
Speaker 1: But I think that actually gets to this idea of aging.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older than you, so I definitely
Speaker 1: have some habits that are slightly different. And I think
Speaker 1: one interesting thing is that, you know, my relationship to
Speaker 1: aging is changing because of this podcast in some ways,
Speaker 1: Like we are taking a lot of pictures, we are
Speaker 1: doing a lot more public appearances, and I think I
Speaker 1: have started to examine my face for signs of aging
Speaker 1: in a way that I did not used to do
Speaker 1: or just like really hadn't thought about.
Speaker 4: Well. Also, because traditionally you've been running things behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been very invisible, and I think that's been
Speaker 1: very deliberate for me, Like I never wanted to be
Speaker 1: on camera, and so it's been a bit of.
Speaker 2: A weird experience.
Speaker 1: And I think you and I've talked about this a lot,
Speaker 1: Like I got botox for the first time recently, congratulation,
Speaker 1: thank you. I just really yeah, maybe it's first botox.
Speaker 1: I was really like kind of afraid of it, and
Speaker 1: it was totally fine. But that experience also made me
Speaker 1: more self conscious in a way because I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but the woman who does my botox, she
Speaker 1: requires you to take like a picture of your face,
Speaker 1: like a close up without makeup and send it to her,
Speaker 1: and then when you do the botox, she takes pictures
Speaker 1: and then in a month you take more pictures.
Speaker 3: To share to the promress to examine it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just like looking at your face.
Speaker 1: So I feel like now I'm like slathering more things
Speaker 1: off my face, Like I'm like fighting this thing that
Speaker 1: I didn't know I needed to fight, right, So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to kind of readjust that thinking back to a
Speaker 1: normal way of experiencing my face, which is it's fine.
Speaker 2: You know, nobody is like care if I have a
Speaker 2: few wrinkles.
Speaker 1: But a thing that made me think about this also
Speaker 1: is there's this recent Vogue cover where the supermodels of
Speaker 1: the nineties, this group of women who were just like
Speaker 1: hugely famous during our childhood graced the cover and they
Speaker 1: released a documentary on Apple Plus about their.
Speaker 2: Fame and how they experienced that as a group.
Speaker 1: And the supermodels I'm talking about are, of course, Cindy Crawford,
Speaker 1: Christy Turlington now known as Christy Burns.
Speaker 2: Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista.
Speaker 3: Do we're all in their fifties now?
Speaker 1: Who are all in their fifties now? Do you have
Speaker 1: a memory of the supermodel era in the nineties?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, of course I remember Cindy Crawford in
Speaker 4: like those pepsi ads, and I remember that George Michael
Speaker 4: music video that they were all in that. I think
Speaker 4: you have a lot to say about. Yeah, But wasn't
Speaker 4: the whole thing with this cover that they were in
Speaker 4: their fifties now, they were reflecting back on their careers,
Speaker 4: and yet they looked they appeared utterly ageless on that cover.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of a distinction between how
Speaker 1: they look on this Vogue cover and the documentary that presumably.
Speaker 3: This cover is promoting.
Speaker 1: In the documentary, they are seen much more just like
Speaker 1: going about their business. But it is interesting that there
Speaker 1: was a bit of a backlash to the cover because
Speaker 1: they had been so airbrushed, as is vogues want to do,
Speaker 1: and so there was the sense of, like, why weren't
Speaker 1: they embracing.
Speaker 2: Their more natural beauty?
Speaker 1: But I think that's a really high expectation, right, Like
Speaker 1: I think it expects a lot of women to sort
Speaker 1: of just like embrace aging when society is so clear
Speaker 1: that aging is a woman is seen as a negative.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So these women all became really famous when they were teenagers,
Speaker 1: except for Sidney Crawford, who was twenty I think when
Speaker 1: she really arrived on the New York modeling scene.
Speaker 2: And even that is interesting to me, like.
Speaker 1: I really have a clear recollection of them, like I
Speaker 1: can kind of close my eyes and see each of
Speaker 1: them in their most famous moments. And Cindy Crawford especially,
Speaker 1: I just loved Cyndy Crawford. And you know, I did
Speaker 1: not think of them as young. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's what's interesting. They were so larger than life. It
Speaker 1: seemed like to me, I would have told you they
Speaker 1: were in their thirties, which is crazy, like no models
Speaker 1: start in their thirties, right, But I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: so to me, they seemed like impossibly sophisticated and cool,
Speaker 1: and so you know, these are women who were children
Speaker 1: when they were revered, and you know, have to varying
Speaker 1: degrees embraced getting older. But it's a lot to ask
Speaker 1: of them to sort of just like show up on
Speaker 1: Vogue bear face. They're not going to do that, I think,
Speaker 1: unless they are extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 2: And one thing that.
Speaker 1: Occurs to me when I look at this cover is
Speaker 1: that actually the way we think about magazine covers has changed.
Speaker 1: Right Like, when we were growing up, these were the
Speaker 1: women who were on fashion magazines, they were extremely young.
Speaker 1: But sometime in the late nineties, fashion magazines very deliberately
Speaker 1: moved towards putting celebrities on the cover incentive models. They
Speaker 1: just found that it sold more magazines. So we do
Speaker 1: actually see older women on covers now, just much more regularly,
Speaker 1: Like we're just exposed to more beauty that's not twenty
Speaker 1: Like the cover right before this one was Angelina Jolie,
Speaker 1: who is forty eight. So it's not such a big
Speaker 1: deal to have women in their fifties on the cover
Speaker 1: of a magazine anymore. Like there was a time when
Speaker 1: that would have been just like wild.
Speaker 3: But it's like, did they look fifty?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the interesting thing in general, is what we
Speaker 1: consider looking fifty and what fifty looks like now. I
Speaker 1: feel like, especially celebrities of fifty is so different. Like
Speaker 1: if you think about what Jlo looks like, that is
Speaker 1: not what I in my mind, as a teenager, would
Speaker 1: have pictured a woman in her forties or fifties looking like. Right,
Speaker 1: Because there's so much you can do now to fight
Speaker 1: the aging process.
Speaker 2: There's so much as expected of you.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, Botox just celebrated it's twentyth anniversary.
Speaker 3: So for twenty years now.
Speaker 4: People have been getting botox, and all of the different
Speaker 4: procedures have only progressed and become more sophisticated since then.
Speaker 4: But didn't Linda Evangelista actually have a terrible plastic surgery experience?
Speaker 3: Did she talk about that in the cover story at all?
Speaker 1: So she didn't talk about it herself, I don't think,
Speaker 1: but they did touch on it because it's become sort
Speaker 1: of a big story that surrounded her in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. You know, she had done this procedure
Speaker 1: called cool sculpting, and she alleges that as a result
Speaker 1: of that procedure, she was in her own words, disfigured
Speaker 1: by it, and where she was trying to remove fat,
Speaker 1: which is what cool sculpting does. It's like non invasive
Speaker 1: removal of fat. She'd actually developed hard pockets of fat,
Speaker 1: which does sound terrible, like I would be really traumatized
Speaker 1: by that too, And she did settle a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: the company, so I know what the company admitted or
Speaker 1: didn't admit to, But it certainly is an example of
Speaker 1: the fact that there are so many procedures that are
Speaker 1: going on now that just haven't been around that long, right,
Speaker 1: So there are consequences to this, Like I think botox
Speaker 1: might be twenty years old, but it's certainly really in
Speaker 1: the last ten years that it's become just very common
Speaker 1: to use fillers and things that freeze your face that
Speaker 1: just didn't exist in the cultural space in.
Speaker 2: The same way it does now.
Speaker 1: I think partially because of the Kardashians, Like they do
Speaker 1: so much to themselves and it becomes so normalized, and
Speaker 1: I think influencers do so much to themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what plastic surgery used to be something that you
Speaker 4: hid and now it is something that you.
Speaker 1: Talk about, well, in some cases you brag about, right,
Speaker 1: like I think a certain kind of influencer wants to
Speaker 1: be like, I'm rich or famous enough to need this.
Speaker 1: So there's like a kind of different relationship to plastic surgery.
Speaker 1: And certainly, you know, I think we just are more
Speaker 1: aware that that is a common tool that everyone uses,
Speaker 1: or a lot of people use. I shouldn't say everyone,
Speaker 1: because I think outside of New York and LA maybe.
Speaker 2: It's not quite as common.
Speaker 1: But here, I was really shocked when I started to
Speaker 1: think about getting botox to find that like every woman
Speaker 1: I knew had essentially done it already, and I was
Speaker 1: the last of my friends.
Speaker 4: Okay, but back to this cover for a second. Did
Speaker 4: they actually talk about the aging process or that's not
Speaker 4: what it's about.
Speaker 3: It just that became the backlash to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not really what it's about.
Speaker 1: Actually, So the documentary itself is really about retelling their stories.
Speaker 1: These four women became incredibly close. They sort of represented
Speaker 1: a time in modeling that doesn't exist anymore, like this
Speaker 1: era of the supermodel, and this was a very nineties
Speaker 1: cultural phenomenon. They became celebrities in their own right.
Speaker 3: They were all in that George Michael music video.
Speaker 1: Right in some ways, I think that video really cemented
Speaker 1: their fame and is like a sort of a bookend,
Speaker 1: one of the bookends to the beginning of the height
Speaker 1: of their famous the song Freedom.
Speaker 2: The song Freedom.
Speaker 1: This is this like very famous George Michael video, which
Speaker 1: you know he doesn't appear in because he's starting to
Speaker 1: have a relationship with fame.
Speaker 2: That's complicated.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, George Michael was gay and
Speaker 1: not out of the closet. So he talked about how
Speaker 1: he wanted to start deconstructing.
Speaker 2: His image as a sex symbol.
Speaker 1: But his music really was very sexy, like he literally
Speaker 1: had a song called I Want Your Sex, so to
Speaker 1: replace himself, he asks these four models to be in
Speaker 1: the video and the models are all lip syncing to
Speaker 1: his song and they're in various states of undress, and
Speaker 1: this video played all the time.
Speaker 2: It was a huge hit for.
Speaker 1: MTV, and it became such a huge thing that a
Speaker 1: year later, versauced his fashion show. The finale look was
Speaker 1: these four women coming out to the song Freedom, and
Speaker 1: that is in many ways scene as like the moment
Speaker 1: that put supermodels on the map. So you know, this
Speaker 1: cover is really about that. But I just naturally assumed.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are four women in their fifties who
Speaker 1: made their living off of beauty standards, so I assume
Speaker 1: there just would be a lot of conversation about it.
Speaker 1: And Linda Evangelisa does talk about it a little bit,
Speaker 1: but basically she's the only one in the Vogue piece
Speaker 1: at least, and she says, you know, I don't mind aging.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, a sign that we're growing and
Speaker 1: I want to grow old and I want to stick around.
Speaker 1: And that's, you know, obviously, how we all feel. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's better to age than not age, right, the
Speaker 1: alternative isn't great. But I think as women, there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that aging is not, you know, something.
Speaker 2: That helps your career or helps how you're seen by the.
Speaker 1: World world, Like you just lose cultural currency in our world.
Speaker 4: Everything you're saying here is really reminding me of a
Speaker 4: thing that happened last year involving former CNN host Don Lemon,
Speaker 4: who I believe this contributed in a part to his firing,
Speaker 4: or at least allegedly so, in which he noted that
Speaker 4: a woman of a certain age is quote past her prime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was talking about NICKI Haley, who by
Speaker 1: the way, is fifty one, like not past her prime
Speaker 1: by any definition I would use. Apparently it's a definition
Speaker 1: Don Lemon would use. Will play it so you can
Speaker 1: hear it for yourself.
Speaker 5: NICKI Haley isn't a ener prime. Sorry, when a woman
Speaker 5: is considered being a prime in her twenties and thirties
Speaker 5: and maybe forties, that's not according to merime for what
Speaker 5: it depends, And it's just like prime. If you look
Speaker 5: it up, it'll if you if you google when is
Speaker 5: a woman in a prime, it'll say twenties, thirties, and forties.
Speaker 1: I don't miss forty, So I got nothing I agree
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 5: So I think she has to be careful about saying
Speaker 5: that politicians aren't in their prime.
Speaker 3: We need to qualify. You're talking about prime for like
Speaker 3: child boring or are you talking about.
Speaker 1: And this is so awkward because he's talking to Poppy
Speaker 1: Harlowe who is in her forties. Okay, it is crazy
Speaker 1: that he's using sort of like the definition of child
Speaker 1: bearing years for being president. I mean, he was suspended
Speaker 1: for this and he did apologize for it. But I
Speaker 1: think this really speaks to.
Speaker 2: How men think about women in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: Well, by the way, Don Lemon is fifty seven. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I think what you're getting at is this is not
Speaker 4: just among men, but there is a belief, there's a
Speaker 4: societal belief, and it is backed up by research and
Speaker 4: data and economics and everything else that when women age,
Speaker 4: they somehow lose their cachet, they lose their currency, they
Speaker 4: past their prime, they become old hags, and when managed,
Speaker 4: they are distinguished and wise. And for politics, you literally
Speaker 4: can't run for office until you're thirty five years old.
Speaker 4: So actually, Nicki Haley, for what it's worth, is literally
Speaker 4: in her political prime.
Speaker 3: Whatever you think of her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what's interesting is that what Don Lemon is
Speaker 1: responding to the reason he says this about Nicki Haley
Speaker 1: is because she has made a comment about Joe Biden
Speaker 1: being too old to be president, Like she's essentially saying
Speaker 1: that she should be the candidate because you know, both
Speaker 1: Biden and Trump are too old, and you know they're
Speaker 1: in their eighties, Like right. The idea that you would
Speaker 1: compare a woman who's fifty one to men in their
Speaker 1: eighties and be like it's the same, so she shouldn't
Speaker 1: comment on their age like that is a wild reach
Speaker 1: on his part.
Speaker 4: Well, what you're getting at, I mean, and what this
Speaker 4: clip and this exchange and all of it crystallizes is really.
Speaker 3: An age old belief that a.
Speaker 4: Woman can read past her prime and that there's this
Speaker 4: enduring double standard when it comes to women in age.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually, what's so interesting is when I was doing
Speaker 1: research for this, I was looking up the Supermodel documentary
Speaker 1: and I came across this documentary from twenty twelve actually
Speaker 1: that had aired on HBO that was literally about supermodels
Speaker 1: and aging.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what I thought this was.
Speaker 1: And there's this wild quote in the New York Times
Speaker 1: piece about it from Sheila and Evans, who at the
Speaker 1: time was running HBO documentary films, and she's promoting the film,
Speaker 1: so she obviously thinks these women are interesting and have value.
Speaker 1: But what she says when she's describing the film is
Speaker 1: beautiful women getting older women who decay. That's always intriguing.
Speaker 1: Like decay is so wild in this context to me.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm sure she'd probably use that word for
Speaker 4: men too, are you, Like, are you think about I
Speaker 4: guess in a way you are also, I just like, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know why that word is so vivid to me,
Speaker 2: like I would never.
Speaker 3: Just humans as decaying.
Speaker 1: It's just like evokes like a picture of a mummy
Speaker 1: in my mind.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that is so ingrained.
Speaker 1: That's like, I'm sure she wasn't saying this to be insulting, right,
Speaker 1: Like she goes on to say, you know, they are
Speaker 1: their own instruments. Would you do when you're a strativarius?
Speaker 1: That's losing your strings? Right, So she's essentially saying these
Speaker 1: supermodels have lost their tools when they become older, right,
Speaker 1: which I mean fair given how people feel about older women, right.
Speaker 4: And I mean, honestly, you probably don't even need me
Speaker 4: to give these statistics because maybe it's so known at
Speaker 4: this point that agism exists and that there is a
Speaker 4: double standard for women. But I've actually done a lot
Speaker 4: of writing on this subject, and a few years ago,
Speaker 4: when I was at Newsweek, we actually conducted this major
Speaker 4: survey looking at hiring managers and agism in the workplace.
Speaker 4: And this now I think is probably not so surprising,
Speaker 4: but eighty four percent of managers said that they'd hesitate
Speaker 4: and that other employers would hesitate in hiring someone who
Speaker 4: is a visibly older candidate, so like, yeah, this is
Speaker 4: very real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that feels very real. Is a woman?
Speaker 1: I know that it is going to be harder for
Speaker 1: me to get jobs the older. I guess that's how
Speaker 1: I feel about it, certainly.
Speaker 3: And it's not how you feel.
Speaker 4: That's literally a fact, yeah, I mean fair, it is
Speaker 4: literally a fat yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean I think ageism exists across the board,
Speaker 1: but especially for women, And like, what we do is
Speaker 1: a job that requires some access to cultural currency, right,
Speaker 1: and women are seen as having less access to that
Speaker 1: as they get older. Like I run digital newsrooms, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be seen as being able to kind
Speaker 1: of think of the right stories or have a sense
Speaker 1: of the right cultural moments, which I think is absolute bullshit,
Speaker 1: but something I'm very aware of the older I get,
Speaker 1: and I've become more resistant to telling people my age.
Speaker 2: Actually I thought I would become more.
Speaker 1: Willing as I got older, because when I was younger,
Speaker 1: it was almost like you're too young, you look too
Speaker 1: young for this job. Like I remember getting a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback that I was like, are you old enough?
Speaker 2: Like whatever.
Speaker 3: That's actually a really good point.
Speaker 4: So I think what you're describing and being a leader,
Speaker 4: especially in newsrooms, as you age where you're expected to
Speaker 4: know like what the kids are doing, you can be penalized.
Speaker 4: And I think that's probably true for anyone. But as women,
Speaker 4: you spend like the first ten years of your career
Speaker 4: trying to convince everyone that you're not too young to
Speaker 4: be experienced or have wisdom at all, and then there's
Speaker 4: like this maybe couple year blip when like you're okay,
Speaker 4: and then suddenly you're too old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like instant, like one night you're one thing,
Speaker 1: the next night you're the other one.
Speaker 4: And I don't think that that is true or to
Speaker 4: the same extent for most men.
Speaker 1: I mean definitely not, because most of the newsrooms I've
Speaker 1: worked in have had older men in charge, and no
Speaker 1: one asks if Marty Barron knows what the kids are doing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like everyone just assumes that
Speaker 1: he's a man who's earned his position and he knows
Speaker 1: how to hire people who know what the kids are doing.
Speaker 1: But there's just more of an expectation of women that
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be all the things, and if you
Speaker 1: really want to stay relevant, you better look like you
Speaker 1: are not that old.
Speaker 4: The other thing that is confusing about all of this
Speaker 4: is that nobody looked their age anymore.
Speaker 3: Like what even is that?
Speaker 4: So do you remember in twenty twenty when Jlo and
Speaker 4: Shakira did the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and they were in there, like you know, leotards or whatever.
Speaker 4: Jla was fifty at the time, Shakira was forty three,
Speaker 4: and they were dancing and they were singing and did
Speaker 4: this amazing act and people were like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: they're incredible, like they have more stamina and athleticism than
Speaker 4: some of the guys on the field, which like, yes,
Speaker 4: they absolutely did, and like power to them, snaps to that.
Speaker 3: But I remember looking at Jalaen thing is that what
Speaker 3: fifty looks like?
Speaker 2: I mean, how many people can look like Jlo?
Speaker 3: She looks amazing And so I don't know that too.
Speaker 4: It's like, so, on the one hand, you have a
Speaker 4: fifty year old who shows no visible signs of aging.
Speaker 4: I mean maybe if you were to see her face
Speaker 4: to face she would, but certainly not in any of
Speaker 4: the public platforms. Yeah, and then you have Pamela Anderson.
Speaker 4: This is another semi recent example where she was at
Speaker 4: fashion Week in Paris and she went totally makeup free. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4: She's in her fifties. She looked incredible.
Speaker 3: She looked basically her age, and everyone's saying like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this is a rebellion. This is so brave,
Speaker 3: and you kind of want to be like, is.
Speaker 2: That really brave?
Speaker 3: Like is that what bravery is? And I get it
Speaker 3: on what I thought. I mean, Malala is brave?
Speaker 4: Right, you know, yeah, I guess it is sort of
Speaker 4: brave to go out without a made up face when
Speaker 4: you're a person whose appearance has been the entirety of
Speaker 4: your career and you're a woman.
Speaker 3: But by the same token, Like, is that what we
Speaker 3: call bravery?
Speaker 4: Now? Like I can think of a few things that
Speaker 4: are a little bit more. Actually, this is my whole
Speaker 4: thing about linguistic Like can we not call it brave
Speaker 4: if it's not?
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, it's actually interesting, right because I just said
Speaker 1: when you talk about Jaylo j Loo looks amazing, but
Speaker 1: I also think Pam Anderson looks amazing and one of
Speaker 1: those women looks her age, right, I think Pam Anderson
Speaker 1: has just embraced a more natural approach to aging.
Speaker 2: And by the way, for.
Speaker 4: People listening who may not have seen her recently, yeah,
Speaker 4: she has. She really does go makeup free. She hasn't
Speaker 4: done any plastic surgery in a long time, but.
Speaker 3: Of course the early years of her career she.
Speaker 4: Admitted openly that she did tones plus yes choice. So
Speaker 4: and I mean that too in and of itself is
Speaker 4: like an irony. It's like, so we're now we're hailing
Speaker 4: the person who in.
Speaker 3: Fact created the unreal standarday.
Speaker 4: Standards as being so brave for now tearing them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want to be clear, like I have
Speaker 1: no judgment actually about plastic surgery, Like I obviously just
Speaker 1: admitted that I got botox, and if I want to
Speaker 1: do some nipsyn tucks, I'm not going to feel any
Speaker 1: kind of way about that. The truth is, we live
Speaker 1: in a society that's going to judge me based on
Speaker 1: how I look, and if I have to do things
Speaker 1: to feel more comfortable or confident, I don't feel any.
Speaker 3: Career or better in my career. I screwed up hard
Speaker 3: about it, Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Feel shame about that, and I don't shame anyone else
Speaker 1: for it. But you know, there's one person who I
Speaker 1: do sort of feel a little bit conflicted about this
Speaker 1: on because I love her so much, which is Madonna?
Speaker 1: You know, to me, Madonna is the icon of the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. Like I just worshiped Madonna when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and I felt like she.
Speaker 2: Broke so many boundaries.
Speaker 1: She really showed us that you could be a woman
Speaker 1: who owned her sexuality, who owned her ambition, who was
Speaker 1: willing to be entirely herself and didn't feel all this
Speaker 1: pressure to conform. But you know the way her plastic
Speaker 1: surgery looks now, and you know, maybe this is unfair
Speaker 1: because it's just like I don't like what she's chosen
Speaker 1: to do, Like j Loo looks good to me.
Speaker 2: So I accept the choices she's made.
Speaker 1: But you know, there was this recent fear last year
Speaker 1: about the Grammys. You know, she's just gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of filler and her face looks really puffy. She just
Speaker 1: isn't recognizable physically, Like she doesn't it like herself, yes,
Speaker 1: and not in a way that's flattering, unfortunately. And you know,
Speaker 1: she's talked about how hard it was to hear that feedback.
Speaker 2: I mean people really openly talk.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 4: That's just so the thing that confused me is like, yeah,
Speaker 4: if you've seen Madonna in the last few years, like
Speaker 4: this is what she looks like, So why is everyone
Speaker 4: suddenly now upset? But people were up in arms. Everyone
Speaker 4: was criticizing her. It was like in every single tabloid,
Speaker 4: it was all over the internet. And I don't know,
Speaker 4: we live in a culture that makes women do this
Speaker 4: and then you're gonna pounce on her for doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and she's sixty four, right, so she
Speaker 1: is doing what she feels she needs to do to
Speaker 1: continue to stay in the spotlight. And I do think
Speaker 1: like social media makes this so that she must also
Speaker 1: be looking at her face all the time.
Speaker 2: Right, she has to do Instagram, she has to do.
Speaker 1: All these things that maybe wouldn't have put as much
Speaker 1: pressure on her.
Speaker 4: But in my fantasy of Madonna, because I also love
Speaker 4: her and thinks she's incredible, she was doing this as
Speaker 4: affect you.
Speaker 3: To everyone else, she was like, yeah.
Speaker 4: This is what I look like. You might not like it.
Speaker 4: This is what women have to do, Like I'm going
Speaker 4: to put it in your face.
Speaker 2: And she actually has said that, right.
Speaker 1: She responded to this by saying it was ageism and misogyny,
Speaker 1: and she said I think she said something like I
Speaker 1: look forward to many more years of subversive behavior, pushing boundaries.
Speaker 1: But I think this sort of gets back to what
Speaker 1: you were saying about Pam. What feels like more subversive
Speaker 1: behavior in this world is actually allowing yourself to age, right, ye,
Speaker 1: And so that is a little bit of the conflict.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm not at all surprised that Madonna feels pressure.
Speaker 1: To look young, right, but I wish that she felt
Speaker 1: about it the same way she felt about a lot
Speaker 1: of other things in her career, which is, fuck the
Speaker 1: standards everyone else is setting. I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: person I choose to be. And you know, she's saying
Speaker 1: that this is that, and so I want to take
Speaker 1: her at her word. But it is interesting that it
Speaker 1: brings up something for me, right, Like, I feel a
Speaker 1: certain way about the choices she's making.
Speaker 2: Clearly other people and so many other people do.
Speaker 4: And I mean, yeah, it's easy to say we wish
Speaker 4: that she could age naturally and still be doing what
Speaker 4: she does. But would the culture let her, would music
Speaker 4: executives let her, would the Grammys let her?
Speaker 3: I don't know, Well.
Speaker 1: I mean Pam and Erson's a great example, right, like,
Speaker 1: she is doing that and it's it's working for her.
Speaker 3: She's actually she's not in a show.
Speaker 4: She's like a tending fashion a make of her own
Speaker 4: accord without a stylist, just as like a private citizen.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's really hard to know what you
Speaker 1: can and can't get away with.
Speaker 4: We should also mention too, by the way, Yeah, so
Speaker 4: botox has been around for years. Like in general, all
Speaker 4: of these procedures have increased, but they've increased more for
Speaker 4: men than they have for women. I'm not saying that
Speaker 4: more men are doing them than women now, but I
Speaker 4: believe the data would show that increase has been higher
Speaker 4: for men because it's now becoming normalized for men to
Speaker 4: do it too.
Speaker 1: Oh one hundred percent. I mean, I think it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I actually remember the first time I realized men in
Speaker 1: the spotlight got blostic surgery. I was working with a
Speaker 1: very well known woman in the public eye. Mean, I
Speaker 1: just won't out her for this, and we were watching
Speaker 1: just randomly an Oprah show. It was on in the
Speaker 1: background in the newsroom, and she looked up and it
Speaker 1: was Tom Cruise being interviewed by Oprah. Not the famous
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise, like a previous Tom Cruise apear not the
Speaker 1: jumping on the couch, and she said to me, Wow,
Speaker 1: his work is so good.
Speaker 2: I wonder who he's using. And I was like, what
Speaker 2: do you mean?
Speaker 1: Like I did not realize that Tom Cruise in his
Speaker 1: forties was getting work done.
Speaker 2: You know. To me, that was like a real revelation.
Speaker 1: And you know, as I was in the TV business longer,
Speaker 1: I realized a lot of male anchors were getting plastic surgery.
Speaker 1: But I think it used to be something that men
Speaker 1: in the public I did and hid. But now we're
Speaker 1: pretty aware of the fact that, like everyone kind of
Speaker 1: knows right that Joe Biden is getting facelifts and using botox.
Speaker 2: Like we just expected it now. I don't know how
Speaker 2: you could not know it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the man is eighty with the skin of
Speaker 1: a fifty year old man.
Speaker 2: I mean, have you looked at a picture of him?
Speaker 2: What a picture of Joe Biden right now?
Speaker 4: Skin looks anyway? Yeah, I of course would not be surprised.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think Joe Biden has to write because
Speaker 1: if he looked as.
Speaker 4: If the major criticism against him in this moment of
Speaker 4: City's tool.
Speaker 1: Right, and then like you look at someone like Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi has obviously also had a lot of work
Speaker 1: done to maintain the appearance of youth to some degree, right, Like,
Speaker 1: she doesn't look like she's thirty, but she certainly looks
Speaker 1: younger than her years, because you know, I think just
Speaker 1: being in the public eye forces you to look a
Speaker 1: certain way, and we have a different expectation of what
Speaker 1: ages are supposed to look like now because the needle
Speaker 1: has moved so much, we don't actually know what eighty
Speaker 1: is really.
Speaker 3: Supposed to look like a thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, this is all really complex. Even Gloria
Speaker 4: Steinem has admitted to having some work done.
Speaker 3: So how are you supposed to think about it?
Speaker 4: Like, it would be great if everyone age naturally and
Speaker 4: we could all just like look like our actual normal cells.
Speaker 3: But we're too far past that.
Speaker 4: At this point, when I was reading up on this
Speaker 4: subject a little bit and trying to remind myself what
Speaker 4: I had written in the past, I was rereading this
Speaker 4: essay that Deborah Sparr, who used to be the president
Speaker 4: of Barnard where you went to college.
Speaker 2: I'm familiar with them.
Speaker 4: For the Airtimes, and she was talking about the kind
Speaker 4: of feminist conundrum of getting work done and how she
Speaker 4: and her peers had done everything right, like they had
Speaker 4: worked their way up in their careers. They'd found partners
Speaker 4: who were going to change the diapers and support them.
Speaker 4: They put off their fertility so that they could establish
Speaker 4: their careers in time, and then they hit a certain
Speaker 4: point and suddenly they're like all getting work done, but
Speaker 4: then lying about.
Speaker 3: It or like trying to hide it. And I think
Speaker 3: that's an enduring thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, that was written I think in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: and I think people are talking more openly about it now.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know what the solution is. I
Speaker 3: know that for me, my job, which is in many
Speaker 3: ways my.
Speaker 4: Livelihood, is very intimately connected with the ability to understand
Speaker 4: what's happening in the culture. And oftentimes the people that
Speaker 4: are creating the most interesting culture are young people, and
Speaker 4: so you.
Speaker 3: Have to know about that. So is you know, getting
Speaker 3: a bunch of work done to look younger going to
Speaker 3: do that for me?
Speaker 4: Like? No, But we're living in this interesting period I
Speaker 4: think now where the Internet.
Speaker 3: Has allowed people of every.
Speaker 4: Age to consume the same things. So on some level,
Speaker 4: it's like we're listening to Olivia Rodrigu and like in
Speaker 4: the shower while doing so. And the teenagers that I
Speaker 4: document in my reporting or my students in the class
Speaker 4: I teach are all wearing the clothes that I literally
Speaker 4: wore when I was like getting my first period at
Speaker 4: age thirteen at Washington Middle School in Seattle. And so
Speaker 4: there's like this weird flat of culture that's occurring, and it's.
Speaker 3: Like who's young, who's old? How do we tell?
Speaker 4: Like, I don't look my age, neither does anyone else.
Speaker 4: Young people are doing makeup tutorials on TikTok that make
Speaker 4: them look so old.
Speaker 3: Like well, also there's skills, people are dying.
Speaker 1: There are gray now as like a fashion trend, right,
Speaker 1: which I mean, I guess that's not now, that's been
Speaker 1: around for a couple of years. But this gets to
Speaker 1: something I think that's interesting, which is, we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about physical aging, right, We're not talking about just
Speaker 1: how your face looks.
Speaker 2: We're talking about how.
Speaker 1: You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yes, that is, and how do you
Speaker 3: communicate that.
Speaker 1: Well, you have this interesting piece in the Times about
Speaker 1: what it feels like to no longer be the group
Speaker 1: that everyone is courting, right, Yeah, And I think that
Speaker 1: that's also interesting, right that there is this thing that
Speaker 1: happens as you get older, which is that you start
Speaker 1: to feel like you're not as relevant to the conversation
Speaker 1: because the conversation is no longer directed towards you.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, So, I mean I I entered my career at
Speaker 4: a time when everyone was desperate to figure out millennials. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it was like every headline was asking about millennials.
Speaker 4: People were always coming to me at my various jobs
Speaker 4: where I was like an intern or whatever, being like, so,
Speaker 4: what are like the kids doing? And there was a
Speaker 4: full year after I moved to New York after college
Speaker 4: where I was working in a bar and I was
Speaker 4: taking market research surveys online where the only requirement was
Speaker 4: that I had to be a millennial, and I would
Speaker 4: just answer questions about like whatever random thing because they
Speaker 4: just valued my opinion as.
Speaker 3: A millennial so much.
Speaker 4: And so you start to feel like the center of
Speaker 4: the generational universe and you get.
Speaker 2: Used to that.
Speaker 4: So I think I did get used to that a
Speaker 4: little bit, Like I was, Yeah, I was the cool one.
Speaker 4: I was the one that was telling people what was
Speaker 4: happening on the Internet. I started my career at a
Speaker 4: time when people didn't care about the web, but they
Speaker 4: simultaneously knew that they needed to understand it. And how
Speaker 4: are they going to understand it? They were going to
Speaker 4: ask me.
Speaker 2: I love that you referred to it as a web.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you started a time when we
Speaker 2: called it the web. Right, we don't call it that.
Speaker 1: Anymore, but you know, truly, I think it's like you've
Speaker 1: been replaced by gen Z, which is now the sort
Speaker 1: of age group that advertisers are starting and everyone wants
Speaker 1: to understand. And so I think this is just a
Speaker 1: natural progression, like it is time to pass on the
Speaker 1: baton in some ways. But also there is one thing
Speaker 1: I came across in the research that I've actually been
Speaker 1: trying to really absorb for myself, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: I told you I found that older Supermodel movie from
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, and in it, Carol Alt, who was also
Speaker 1: a very famous model in.
Speaker 2: Her time, said something that I think.
Speaker 1: Is true and that it's easy to forget, which, as
Speaker 1: she said, aging isn't necessarily bad, and this was her quote,
Speaker 1: there comes a point at which you are a precious
Speaker 1: commodity because there is nobody else like you, and I
Speaker 1: think that's an important thing that we should all really
Speaker 1: try and take to heart. There's value in aging, and
Speaker 1: we forget that lot in this particular society. But it's
Speaker 1: real and I'm not looking to be twenty again for.
Speaker 3: Sure, Susie.
Speaker 4: I want to quickly tease our next episode, which actually
Speaker 4: pairs nicely with this idea of aging.
Speaker 2: Ooh, is it about botox?
Speaker 3: It's not about botox.
Speaker 4: It's about American Pie, which can you believe is twenty.
Speaker 3: Five years old this year?
Speaker 4: Oh no, And it's also about how that movie popularized
Speaker 4: the mill bil Bil Hell.
Speaker 2: This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 6: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 6: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 6: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 6: which we may or may not.
Speaker 1: You can also find this on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 1: Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 6: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 6: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 6: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Speaker 6: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stem.
Speaker 2: And Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
Speaker 1: your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 3: We are also executive producers.
Speaker 6: For even more, check out inretropod dot com.
Speaker 3: See you next week.