March 1, 2024 • 34 mins
And what does that even mean? In this episode, Susie and Jess unpack how ageism has been used to diminish women for generations and their own complicated feelings about aging.
FOR MORE:
- I Refuse the Graceful Slide Into Cultural Irrelevance (by Jessica, NYT)
- Don Lemon Regrets Calling Nikki Haley ‘Past Her Prime’ (AP)
- Michelle Yeoh Is Right – A Woman Is Never ‘Past Her Prime’ (The Guardian)
- E. Jean Carroll and the Audacity of a Woman ‘Past Her Prime’ (by Jessica, NYT)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We're not just talking about physical aging, right, We're not
talking about just how your face looks.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're talking about how.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Susie Benacerum and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a cultural moment that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Usually we zero in on a particular moment from the past,
but today we want to talk about what happens when
the past catches up with you and your face. So,
jess today I want to talk about something that I
feel like is coming up a lot these days when
you and I talk, just like more often when we're
on the phone late at night.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
When you forcibly call me on the phone in a variable.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Assault of my millennialness.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, listen, First of all, I know you like talking
to me. Stop pretending like you hate it.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Can it be said in a text mess?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I know, I know you would always prefer to be.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Texting in a studio with you all day long.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I mean, listen, stop pretending like you don't love me
and you don't want to talk to me all the time. No,
I mean, I get it, Jess really does hat phone calls.
I insist on them because I'm the older ones. But
also it takes forever to type things out. So now
I've just like resorted to voice memos with you.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Actually, that I think is a good compromise.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That's a good compromise.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Okay, so we're we're we've settled on voice memos for us.
But I think that actually gets to this idea of aging.
I'm a little bit older than you, so I definitely
have some habits that are slightly different. And I think
one interesting thing is that, you know, my relationship to
aging is changing because of this podcast in some ways,
(01:40):
Like we are taking a lot of pictures, we are
doing a lot more public appearances, and I think I
have started to examine my face for signs of aging
in a way that I did not used to do
or just like really hadn't thought about.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Well. Also, because traditionally you've been running things behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, I've been very invisible, and I think that's been
very deliberate for me, Like I never wanted to be
on camera, and so it's been a bit of.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A weird experience.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And I think you and I've talked about this a lot,
Like I got botox for the first time recently, congratulation,
thank you. I just really yeah, maybe it's first botox.
I was really like kind of afraid of it, and
it was totally fine. But that experience also made me
more self conscious in a way because I don't know
about you, but the woman who does my botox, she
(02:30):
requires you to take like a picture of your face,
like a close up without makeup and send it to her,
and then when you do the botox, she takes pictures
and then in a month you take more pictures.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
To share to the promress to examine it.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you're just like looking at your face.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So I feel like now I'm like slathering more things
off my face, Like I'm like fighting this thing that
I didn't know I needed to fight, right, So I'm
trying to kind of readjust that thinking back to a
normal way of experiencing my face, which is it's fine.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You know, nobody is like care if I have a
few wrinkles.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But a thing that made me think about this also
is there's this recent Vogue cover where the supermodels of
the nineties, this group of women who were just like
hugely famous during our childhood graced the cover and they
released a documentary on Apple Plus about their.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Fame and how they experienced that as a group.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And the supermodels I'm talking about are, of course, Cindy Crawford,
Christy Turlington now known as Christy Burns.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Do we're all in their fifties now?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Who are all in their fifties now? Do you have
a memory of the supermodel era in the nineties?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean, of course I remember Cindy Crawford in
like those pepsi ads, and I remember that George Michael
music video that they were all in that. I think
you have a lot to say about. Yeah, But wasn't
the whole thing with this cover that they were in
their fifties now, they were reflecting back on their careers,
and yet they looked they appeared utterly ageless on that cover.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So there's a little bit of a distinction between how
they look on this Vogue cover and the documentary that presumably.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
This cover is promoting.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
In the documentary, they are seen much more just like
going about their business. But it is interesting that there
was a bit of a backlash to the cover because
they had been so airbrushed, as is vogues want to do,
and so there was the sense of, like, why weren't
they embracing.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Their more natural beauty?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But I think that's a really high expectation, right, Like
I think it expects a lot of women to sort
of just like embrace aging when society is so clear
that aging is a woman is seen as a negative.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So these women all became really famous when they were teenagers,
except for Sidney Crawford, who was twenty I think when
she really arrived on the New York modeling scene.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And even that is interesting to me, like.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I really have a clear recollection of them, like I
can kind of close my eyes and see each of
them in their most famous moments. And Cindy Crawford especially,
I just loved Cyndy Crawford. And you know, I did
not think of them as young. I mean, I think
that's what's interesting. They were so larger than life. It
seemed like to me, I would have told you they
(05:15):
were in their thirties, which is crazy, like no models
start in their thirties, right, But I was a teenager,
so to me, they seemed like impossibly sophisticated and cool,
and so you know, these are women who were children
when they were revered, and you know, have to varying
degrees embraced getting older. But it's a lot to ask
(05:37):
of them to sort of just like show up on
Vogue bear face. They're not going to do that, I think,
unless they are extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And one thing that.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Occurs to me when I look at this cover is
that actually the way we think about magazine covers has changed.
Right Like, when we were growing up, these were the
women who were on fashion magazines, they were extremely young.
But sometime in the late nineties, fashion magazines very deliberately
moved towards putting celebrities on the cover incentive models. They
(06:09):
just found that it sold more magazines. So we do
actually see older women on covers now, just much more regularly,
Like we're just exposed to more beauty that's not twenty
Like the cover right before this one was Angelina Jolie,
who is forty eight. So it's not such a big
deal to have women in their fifties on the cover
of a magazine anymore. Like there was a time when
(06:30):
that would have been just like wild.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But it's like, did they look fifty?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well, that's the interesting thing in general, is what we
consider looking fifty and what fifty looks like now. I
feel like, especially celebrities of fifty is so different. Like
if you think about what Jlo looks like, that is
not what I in my mind, as a teenager, would
have pictured a woman in her forties or fifties looking like. Right,
Because there's so much you can do now to fight
(06:57):
the aging process.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
There's so much as expected of you.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Right, I mean, Botox just celebrated it's twentyth anniversary.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So for twenty years now.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
People have been getting botox, and all of the different
procedures have only progressed and become more sophisticated since then.
But didn't Linda Evangelista actually have a terrible plastic surgery experience?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Did she talk about that in the cover story at all?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So she didn't talk about it herself, I don't think,
but they did touch on it because it's become sort
of a big story that surrounded her in the last
couple of years. You know, she had done this procedure
called cool sculpting, and she alleges that as a result
of that procedure, she was in her own words, disfigured
by it, and where she was trying to remove fat,
(07:43):
which is what cool sculpting does. It's like non invasive
removal of fat. She'd actually developed hard pockets of fat,
which does sound terrible, like I would be really traumatized
by that too, And she did settle a lawsuit against
the company, so I know what the company admitted or
didn't admit to, But it certainly is an example of
(08:05):
the fact that there are so many procedures that are
going on now that just haven't been around that long, right,
So there are consequences to this, Like I think botox
might be twenty years old, but it's certainly really in
the last ten years that it's become just very common
to use fillers and things that freeze your face that
just didn't exist in the cultural space in.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
The same way it does now.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I think partially because of the Kardashians, Like they do
so much to themselves and it becomes so normalized, and
I think influencers do so much to themselves.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, what plastic surgery used to be something that you
hid and now it is something that you.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Talk about, well, in some cases you brag about, right,
like I think a certain kind of influencer wants to
be like, I'm rich or famous enough to need this.
So there's like a kind of different relationship to plastic surgery.
And certainly, you know, I think we just are more
aware that that is a common tool that everyone uses,
or a lot of people use. I shouldn't say everyone,
(09:02):
because I think outside of New York and LA maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It's not quite as common.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But here, I was really shocked when I started to
think about getting botox to find that like every woman
I knew had essentially done it already, and I was
the last of my friends.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Okay, but back to this cover for a second. Did
they actually talk about the aging process or that's not
what it's about.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It just that became the backlash to it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, so it's not really what it's about.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Actually, So the documentary itself is really about retelling their stories.
These four women became incredibly close. They sort of represented
a time in modeling that doesn't exist anymore, like this
era of the supermodel, and this was a very nineties
cultural phenomenon. They became celebrities in their own right.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
They were all in that George Michael music video.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right in some ways, I think that video really cemented
their fame and is like a sort of a bookend,
one of the bookends to the beginning of the height
of their famous the song Freedom.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
The song Freedom.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
This is this like very famous George Michael video, which
you know he doesn't appear in because he's starting to
have a relationship with fame.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That's complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
For those who don't know, George Michael was gay and
not out of the closet. So he talked about how
he wanted to start deconstructing.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
His image as a sex symbol.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
But his music really was very sexy, like he literally
had a song called I Want Your Sex, so to
replace himself, he asks these four models to be in
the video and the models are all lip syncing to
his song and they're in various states of undress, and
this video played all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It was a huge hit for.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
MTV, and it became such a huge thing that a
year later, versauced his fashion show. The finale look was
these four women coming out to the song Freedom, and
that is in many ways scene as like the moment
that put supermodels on the map. So you know, this
(11:13):
cover is really about that. But I just naturally assumed.
I mean, these are four women in their fifties who
made their living off of beauty standards, so I assume
there just would be a lot of conversation about it.
And Linda Evangelisa does talk about it a little bit,
but basically she's the only one in the Vogue piece
at least, and she says, you know, I don't mind aging.
(11:37):
It's like, you know, a sign that we're growing and
I want to grow old and I want to stick around.
And that's, you know, obviously, how we all feel. I'm
sure it's better to age than not age, right, the
alternative isn't great. But I think as women, there's just
a lot of evidence that aging is not, you know, something.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
That helps your career or helps how you're seen by the.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
World world, Like you just lose cultural currency in our world.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Everything you're saying here is really reminding me of a
thing that happened last year involving former CNN host Don Lemon,
who I believe this contributed in a part to his firing,
or at least allegedly so, in which he noted that
a woman of a certain age is quote past her prime.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, so he was talking about NICKI Haley, who by
the way, is fifty one, like not past her prime
by any definition I would use. Apparently it's a definition
Don Lemon would use. Will play it so you can
hear it for yourself.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
NICKI Haley isn't a ener prime. Sorry, when a woman
is considered being a prime in her twenties and thirties
and maybe forties, that's not according to merime for what
it depends, And it's just like prime. If you look
it up, it'll if you if you google when is
a woman in a prime, it'll say twenties, thirties, and forties.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I don't miss forty, So I got nothing I agree
with that.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
So I think she has to be careful about saying
that politicians aren't in their prime.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
We need to qualify. You're talking about prime for like
child boring or are you talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And this is so awkward because he's talking to Poppy
Harlowe who is in her forties. Okay, it is crazy
that he's using sort of like the definition of child
bearing years for being president. I mean, he was suspended
for this and he did apologize for it. But I
think this really speaks to.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
How men think about women in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well, by the way, Don Lemon is fifty seven. But yeah,
I think what you're getting at is this is not
just among men, but there is a belief, there's a
societal belief, and it is backed up by research and
data and economics and everything else that when women age,
they somehow lose their cachet, they lose their currency, they
(13:50):
past their prime, they become old hags, and when managed,
they are distinguished and wise. And for politics, you literally
can't run for office until you're thirty five years old.
So actually, Nicki Haley, for what it's worth, is literally
in her political prime.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Whatever you think of her.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, And what's interesting is that what Don Lemon is
responding to the reason he says this about Nicki Haley
is because she has made a comment about Joe Biden
being too old to be president, Like she's essentially saying
that she should be the candidate because you know, both
Biden and Trump are too old, and you know they're
in their eighties, Like right. The idea that you would
compare a woman who's fifty one to men in their
(14:30):
eighties and be like it's the same, so she shouldn't
comment on their age like that is a wild reach
on his part.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Well, what you're getting at, I mean, and what this
clip and this exchange and all of it crystallizes is really.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
An age old belief that a.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Woman can read past her prime and that there's this
enduring double standard when it comes to women in age.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah. Actually, what's so interesting is when I was doing
research for this, I was looking up the Supermodel documentary
and I came across this documentary from twenty twelve actually
that had aired on HBO that was literally about supermodels
and aging.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's kind of what I thought this was.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And there's this wild quote in the New York Times
piece about it from Sheila and Evans, who at the
time was running HBO documentary films, and she's promoting the film,
so she obviously thinks these women are interesting and have value.
But what she says when she's describing the film is
beautiful women getting older women who decay. That's always intriguing.
(15:31):
Like decay is so wild in this context to me.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
I mean, I'm sure she'd probably use that word for
men too, are you, Like, are you think about I
guess in a way you are also, I just like, I.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Don't know why that word is so vivid to me,
like I would never.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Just humans as decaying.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
It's just like evokes like a picture of a mummy
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
And you know, I think that is so ingrained.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's like, I'm sure she wasn't saying this to be insulting, right,
Like she goes on to say, you know, they are
their own instruments. Would you do when you're a strativarius?
That's losing your strings? Right, So she's essentially saying these
supermodels have lost their tools when they become older, right,
which I mean fair given how people feel about older women, right.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
And I mean, honestly, you probably don't even need me
to give these statistics because maybe it's so known at
this point that agism exists and that there is a
double standard for women. But I've actually done a lot
of writing on this subject, and a few years ago,
when I was at Newsweek, we actually conducted this major
survey looking at hiring managers and agism in the workplace.
And this now I think is probably not so surprising,
(16:40):
but eighty four percent of managers said that they'd hesitate
and that other employers would hesitate in hiring someone who
is a visibly older candidate, so like, yeah, this is
very real.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, that feels very real. Is a woman?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I know that it is going to be harder for
me to get jobs the older. I guess that's how
I feel about it, certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And it's not how you feel.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's literally a fact, yeah, I mean fair, it is
literally a fat yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So I mean I think ageism exists across the board,
but especially for women, And like, what we do is
a job that requires some access to cultural currency, right,
and women are seen as having less access to that
as they get older. Like I run digital newsrooms, I'm
not going to be seen as being able to kind
of think of the right stories or have a sense
(17:29):
of the right cultural moments, which I think is absolute bullshit,
but something I'm very aware of the older I get,
and I've become more resistant to telling people my age.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Actually I thought I would become more.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Willing as I got older, because when I was younger,
it was almost like you're too young, you look too
young for this job. Like I remember getting a lot
of feedback that I was like, are you old enough?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Like whatever.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's actually a really good point.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So I think what you're describing and being a leader,
especially in newsrooms, as you age where you're expected to
know like what the kids are doing, you can be penalized.
And I think that's probably true for anyone. But as women,
you spend like the first ten years of your career
trying to convince everyone that you're not too young to
be experienced or have wisdom at all, and then there's
(18:17):
like this maybe couple year blip when like you're okay,
and then suddenly you're too old.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, it's like instant, like one night you're one thing,
the next night you're the other one.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
And I don't think that that is true or to
the same extent for most men.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I mean definitely not, because most of the newsrooms I've
worked in have had older men in charge, and no
one asks if Marty Barron knows what the kids are doing,
you know what I mean, Like everyone just assumes that
he's a man who's earned his position and he knows
how to hire people who know what the kids are doing.
But there's just more of an expectation of women that
you're supposed to be all the things, and if you
(18:51):
really want to stay relevant, you better look like you
are not that old.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
The other thing that is confusing about all of this
is that nobody looked their age anymore.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like what even is that?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
So do you remember in twenty twenty when Jlo and
Shakira did the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Yeah,
and they were in there, like you know, leotards or whatever.
Jla was fifty at the time, Shakira was forty three,
and they were dancing and they were singing and did
this amazing act and people were like, oh my god,
they're incredible, like they have more stamina and athleticism than
(19:41):
some of the guys on the field, which like, yes,
they absolutely did, and like power to them, snaps to that.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
But I remember looking at Jalaen thing is that what
fifty looks like?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean, how many people can look like Jlo?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
She looks amazing And so I don't know that too.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
It's like, so, on the one hand, you have a
fifty year old who shows no visible signs of aging.
I mean maybe if you were to see her face
to face she would, but certainly not in any of
the public platforms. Yeah, and then you have Pamela Anderson.
This is another semi recent example where she was at
fashion Week in Paris and she went totally makeup free. Yeah, amazing.
(20:20):
She's in her fifties. She looked incredible.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
She looked basically her age, and everyone's saying like, oh
my god, this is a rebellion. This is so brave,
and you kind of want to be like, is.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That really brave?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Like is that what bravery is? And I get it
on what I thought. I mean, Malala is brave?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Right, you know, yeah, I guess it is sort of
brave to go out without a made up face when
you're a person whose appearance has been the entirety of
your career and you're a woman.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
But by the same token, Like, is that what we
call bravery?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Now? Like I can think of a few things that
are a little bit more. Actually, this is my whole
thing about linguistic Like can we not call it brave
if it's not?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Actually, yeah, it's actually interesting, right because I just said
when you talk about Jaylo j Loo looks amazing, but
I also think Pam Anderson looks amazing and one of
those women looks her age, right, I think Pam Anderson
has just embraced a more natural approach to aging.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
And by the way, for.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
People listening who may not have seen her recently, yeah,
she has. She really does go makeup free. She hasn't
done any plastic surgery in a long time, but.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Of course the early years of her career she.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Admitted openly that she did tones plus yes choice. So
and I mean that too in and of itself is
like an irony. It's like, so we're now we're hailing
the person who in.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Fact created the unreal standarday.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Standards as being so brave for now tearing them down.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, And I want to be clear, like I have
no judgment actually about plastic surgery, Like I obviously just
admitted that I got botox, and if I want to
do some nipsyn tucks, I'm not going to feel any
kind of way about that. The truth is, we live
in a society that's going to judge me based on
how I look, and if I have to do things
to feel more comfortable or confident, I don't feel any.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Career or better in my career. I screwed up hard
about it, Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Feel shame about that, and I don't shame anyone else
for it. But you know, there's one person who I
do sort of feel a little bit conflicted about this
on because I love her so much, which is Madonna?
You know, to me, Madonna is the icon of the
eighties and nineties. Like I just worshiped Madonna when I
was a kid, and I felt like she.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Broke so many boundaries.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
She really showed us that you could be a woman
who owned her sexuality, who owned her ambition, who was
willing to be entirely herself and didn't feel all this
pressure to conform. But you know the way her plastic
surgery looks now, and you know, maybe this is unfair
because it's just like I don't like what she's chosen
(22:45):
to do, Like j Loo looks good to me.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So I accept the choices she's made.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
But you know, there was this recent fear last year
about the Grammys. You know, she's just gotten a lot
of filler and her face looks really puffy. She just
isn't recognizable physically, Like she doesn't it like herself, yes,
and not in a way that's flattering, unfortunately. And you know,
she's talked about how hard it was to hear that feedback.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I mean people really openly talk.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
That's just so the thing that confused me is like, yeah,
if you've seen Madonna in the last few years, like
this is what she looks like, So why is everyone
suddenly now upset? But people were up in arms. Everyone
was criticizing her. It was like in every single tabloid,
it was all over the internet. And I don't know,
we live in a culture that makes women do this
and then you're gonna pounce on her for doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, I mean, and she's sixty four, right, so she
is doing what she feels she needs to do to
continue to stay in the spotlight. And I do think
like social media makes this so that she must also
be looking at her face all the time.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, she has to do Instagram, she has to do.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
All these things that maybe wouldn't have put as much
pressure on her.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
But in my fantasy of Madonna, because I also love
her and thinks she's incredible, she was doing this as
affect you.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
To everyone else, she was like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
This is what I look like. You might not like it.
This is what women have to do, Like I'm going
to put it in your face.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And she actually has said that, right.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
She responded to this by saying it was ageism and misogyny,
and she said I think she said something like I
look forward to many more years of subversive behavior, pushing boundaries.
But I think this sort of gets back to what
you were saying about Pam. What feels like more subversive
behavior in this world is actually allowing yourself to age, right, ye,
And so that is a little bit of the conflict.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It's like, I'm not at all surprised that Madonna feels pressure.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
To look young, right, but I wish that she felt
about it the same way she felt about a lot
of other things in her career, which is, fuck the
standards everyone else is setting. I'm going to be the
person I choose to be. And you know, she's saying
that this is that, and so I want to take
her at her word. But it is interesting that it
brings up something for me, right, Like, I feel a
certain way about the choices she's making.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Clearly other people and so many other people do.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
And I mean, yeah, it's easy to say we wish
that she could age naturally and still be doing what
she does. But would the culture let her, would music
executives let her, would the Grammys let her?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't know, Well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I mean Pam and Erson's a great example, right, like,
she is doing that and it's it's working for her.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She's actually she's not in a show.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
She's like a tending fashion a make of her own
accord without a stylist, just as like a private citizen.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I mean it's really hard to know what you
can and can't get away with.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
We should also mention too, by the way, Yeah, so
botox has been around for years. Like in general, all
of these procedures have increased, but they've increased more for
men than they have for women. I'm not saying that
more men are doing them than women now, but I
believe the data would show that increase has been higher
for men because it's now becoming normalized for men to
do it too.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Oh one hundred percent. I mean, I think it's so interesting.
I actually remember the first time I realized men in
the spotlight got blostic surgery. I was working with a
very well known woman in the public eye. Mean, I
just won't out her for this, and we were watching
just randomly an Oprah show. It was on in the
(26:08):
background in the newsroom, and she looked up and it
was Tom Cruise being interviewed by Oprah. Not the famous
Tom Cruise, like a previous Tom Cruise apear not the
jumping on the couch, and she said to me, Wow,
his work is so good.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I wonder who he's using. And I was like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Like I did not realize that Tom Cruise in his
forties was getting work done.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know. To me, that was like a real revelation.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And you know, as I was in the TV business longer,
I realized a lot of male anchors were getting plastic surgery.
But I think it used to be something that men
in the public I did and hid. But now we're
pretty aware of the fact that, like everyone kind of
knows right that Joe Biden is getting facelifts and using botox.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Like we just expected it now. I don't know how
you could not know it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I mean, the man is eighty with the skin of
a fifty year old man.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I mean, have you looked at a picture of him?
What a picture of Joe Biden right now?
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Skin looks anyway? Yeah, I of course would not be surprised.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Well, and I think Joe Biden has to write because
if he looked as.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
If the major criticism against him in this moment of
City's tool.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right, and then like you look at someone like Nancy Pelosi,
Nancy Pelosi has obviously also had a lot of work
done to maintain the appearance of youth to some degree, right, Like,
she doesn't look like she's thirty, but she certainly looks
younger than her years, because you know, I think just
being in the public eye forces you to look a
certain way, and we have a different expectation of what
(27:42):
ages are supposed to look like now because the needle
has moved so much, we don't actually know what eighty
is really.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Supposed to look like a thing.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
I mean, look, this is all really complex. Even Gloria
Steinem has admitted to having some work done.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
So how are you supposed to think about it?
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Like, it would be great if everyone age naturally and
we could all just like look like our actual normal cells.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
But we're too far past that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
At this point, when I was reading up on this
subject a little bit and trying to remind myself what
I had written in the past, I was rereading this
essay that Deborah Sparr, who used to be the president
of Barnard where you went to college.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I'm familiar with them.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
For the Airtimes, and she was talking about the kind
of feminist conundrum of getting work done and how she
and her peers had done everything right, like they had
worked their way up in their careers. They'd found partners
who were going to change the diapers and support them.
They put off their fertility so that they could establish
their careers in time, and then they hit a certain
(28:40):
point and suddenly they're like all getting work done, but
then lying about.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It or like trying to hide it. And I think
that's an enduring thing.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
I mean, that was written I think in twenty sixteen,
and I think people are talking more openly about it now.
But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I mean, I don't know what the solution is. I
know that for me, my job, which is in many
ways my.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Livelihood, is very intimately connected with the ability to understand
what's happening in the culture. And oftentimes the people that
are creating the most interesting culture are young people, and
so you.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Have to know about that. So is you know, getting
a bunch of work done to look younger going to
do that for me?
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Like? No, But we're living in this interesting period I
think now where the Internet.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Has allowed people of every.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Age to consume the same things. So on some level,
it's like we're listening to Olivia Rodrigu and like in
the shower while doing so. And the teenagers that I
document in my reporting or my students in the class
I teach are all wearing the clothes that I literally
wore when I was like getting my first period at
(29:55):
age thirteen at Washington Middle School in Seattle. And so
there's like this weird flat of culture that's occurring, and it's.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Like who's young, who's old? How do we tell?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Like, I don't look my age, neither does anyone else.
Young people are doing makeup tutorials on TikTok that make
them look so old.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Like well, also there's skills, people are dying.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
There are gray now as like a fashion trend, right,
which I mean, I guess that's not now, that's been
around for a couple of years. But this gets to
something I think that's interesting, which is, we're not just
talking about physical aging, right, We're not talking about just
how your face looks.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
We're talking about how.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I mean, yes, that is, and how do you
communicate that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Well, you have this interesting piece in the Times about
what it feels like to no longer be the group
that everyone is courting, right, Yeah, And I think that
that's also interesting, right that there is this thing that
happens as you get older, which is that you start
to feel like you're not as relevant to the conversation
because the conversation is no longer directed towards you.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Well, So, I mean I I entered my career at
a time when everyone was desperate to figure out millennials. Yeah,
so it was like every headline was asking about millennials.
People were always coming to me at my various jobs
where I was like an intern or whatever, being like, so,
what are like the kids doing? And there was a
full year after I moved to New York after college
(31:18):
where I was working in a bar and I was
taking market research surveys online where the only requirement was
that I had to be a millennial, and I would
just answer questions about like whatever random thing because they
just valued my opinion as.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
A millennial so much.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
And so you start to feel like the center of
the generational universe and you get.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Used to that.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
So I think I did get used to that a
little bit, Like I was, Yeah, I was the cool one.
I was the one that was telling people what was
happening on the Internet. I started my career at a
time when people didn't care about the web, but they
simultaneously knew that they needed to understand it. And how
are they going to understand it? They were going to
ask me.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I love that you referred to it as a web.
I mean, I think you started a time when we
called it the web. Right, we don't call it that.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Anymore, but you know, truly, I think it's like you've
been replaced by gen Z, which is now the sort
of age group that advertisers are starting and everyone wants
to understand. And so I think this is just a
natural progression, like it is time to pass on the
baton in some ways. But also there is one thing
(32:24):
I came across in the research that I've actually been
trying to really absorb for myself, which is that you know,
I told you I found that older Supermodel movie from
twenty twelve, and in it, Carol Alt, who was also
a very famous model in.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Her time, said something that I think.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Is true and that it's easy to forget, which, as
she said, aging isn't necessarily bad, and this was her quote,
there comes a point at which you are a precious
commodity because there is nobody else like you, and I
think that's an important thing that we should all really
try and take to heart. There's value in aging, and
we forget that lot in this particular society. But it's
(33:03):
real and I'm not looking to be twenty again for.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Sure, Susie.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
I want to quickly tease our next episode, which actually
pairs nicely with this idea of aging.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Ooh, is it about botox?
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It's not about botox.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
It's about American Pie, which can you believe is twenty.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Five years old this year?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Oh no, And it's also about how that movie popularized
the mill bil Bil Hell.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
You can also find this on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stem.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
We are also executive producers.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
For even more, check out inretropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
See you next week.
We're not just talking about physical aging, right, We're not
talking about just how your face looks.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're talking about how.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Susie Benacerum and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
a cultural moment that shaped.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Usually we zero in on a particular moment from the past,
but today we want to talk about what happens when
the past catches up with you and your face. So,
jess today I want to talk about something that I
feel like is coming up a lot these days when
you and I talk, just like more often when we're
on the phone late at night.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
When you forcibly call me on the phone in a variable.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Assault of my millennialness.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, listen, First of all, I know you like talking
to me. Stop pretending like you hate it.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Can it be said in a text mess?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I know, I know you would always prefer to be.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Texting in a studio with you all day long.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I mean, listen, stop pretending like you don't love me
and you don't want to talk to me all the time. No,
I mean, I get it, Jess really does hat phone calls.
I insist on them because I'm the older ones. But
also it takes forever to type things out. So now
I've just like resorted to voice memos with you.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Actually, that I think is a good compromise.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
That's a good compromise.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Okay, so we're we're we've settled on voice memos for us.
But I think that actually gets to this idea of aging.
I'm a little bit older than you, so I definitely
have some habits that are slightly different. And I think
one interesting thing is that, you know, my relationship to
aging is changing because of this podcast in some ways,
(01:40):
Like we are taking a lot of pictures, we are
doing a lot more public appearances, and I think I
have started to examine my face for signs of aging
in a way that I did not used to do
or just like really hadn't thought about.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Well. Also, because traditionally you've been running things behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, I've been very invisible, and I think that's been
very deliberate for me, Like I never wanted to be
on camera, and so it's been a bit of.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A weird experience.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And I think you and I've talked about this a lot,
Like I got botox for the first time recently, congratulation,
thank you. I just really yeah, maybe it's first botox.
I was really like kind of afraid of it, and
it was totally fine. But that experience also made me
more self conscious in a way because I don't know
about you, but the woman who does my botox, she
(02:30):
requires you to take like a picture of your face,
like a close up without makeup and send it to her,
and then when you do the botox, she takes pictures
and then in a month you take more pictures.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
To share to the promress to examine it.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you're just like looking at your face.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So I feel like now I'm like slathering more things
off my face, Like I'm like fighting this thing that
I didn't know I needed to fight, right, So I'm
trying to kind of readjust that thinking back to a
normal way of experiencing my face, which is it's fine.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You know, nobody is like care if I have a
few wrinkles.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But a thing that made me think about this also
is there's this recent Vogue cover where the supermodels of
the nineties, this group of women who were just like
hugely famous during our childhood graced the cover and they
released a documentary on Apple Plus about their.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Fame and how they experienced that as a group.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And the supermodels I'm talking about are, of course, Cindy Crawford,
Christy Turlington now known as Christy Burns.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Do we're all in their fifties now?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Who are all in their fifties now? Do you have
a memory of the supermodel era in the nineties?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean, of course I remember Cindy Crawford in
like those pepsi ads, and I remember that George Michael
music video that they were all in that. I think
you have a lot to say about. Yeah, But wasn't
the whole thing with this cover that they were in
their fifties now, they were reflecting back on their careers,
and yet they looked they appeared utterly ageless on that cover.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So there's a little bit of a distinction between how
they look on this Vogue cover and the documentary that presumably.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
This cover is promoting.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
In the documentary, they are seen much more just like
going about their business. But it is interesting that there
was a bit of a backlash to the cover because
they had been so airbrushed, as is vogues want to do,
and so there was the sense of, like, why weren't
they embracing.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Their more natural beauty?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But I think that's a really high expectation, right, Like
I think it expects a lot of women to sort
of just like embrace aging when society is so clear
that aging is a woman is seen as a negative.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So these women all became really famous when they were teenagers,
except for Sidney Crawford, who was twenty I think when
she really arrived on the New York modeling scene.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And even that is interesting to me, like.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I really have a clear recollection of them, like I
can kind of close my eyes and see each of
them in their most famous moments. And Cindy Crawford especially,
I just loved Cyndy Crawford. And you know, I did
not think of them as young. I mean, I think
that's what's interesting. They were so larger than life. It
seemed like to me, I would have told you they
(05:15):
were in their thirties, which is crazy, like no models
start in their thirties, right, But I was a teenager,
so to me, they seemed like impossibly sophisticated and cool,
and so you know, these are women who were children
when they were revered, and you know, have to varying
degrees embraced getting older. But it's a lot to ask
(05:37):
of them to sort of just like show up on
Vogue bear face. They're not going to do that, I think,
unless they are extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And one thing that.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Occurs to me when I look at this cover is
that actually the way we think about magazine covers has changed.
Right Like, when we were growing up, these were the
women who were on fashion magazines, they were extremely young.
But sometime in the late nineties, fashion magazines very deliberately
moved towards putting celebrities on the cover incentive models. They
(06:09):
just found that it sold more magazines. So we do
actually see older women on covers now, just much more regularly,
Like we're just exposed to more beauty that's not twenty
Like the cover right before this one was Angelina Jolie,
who is forty eight. So it's not such a big
deal to have women in their fifties on the cover
of a magazine anymore. Like there was a time when
(06:30):
that would have been just like wild.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But it's like, did they look fifty?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well, that's the interesting thing in general, is what we
consider looking fifty and what fifty looks like now. I
feel like, especially celebrities of fifty is so different. Like
if you think about what Jlo looks like, that is
not what I in my mind, as a teenager, would
have pictured a woman in her forties or fifties looking like. Right,
Because there's so much you can do now to fight
(06:57):
the aging process.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
There's so much as expected of you.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Right, I mean, Botox just celebrated it's twentyth anniversary.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So for twenty years now.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
People have been getting botox, and all of the different
procedures have only progressed and become more sophisticated since then.
But didn't Linda Evangelista actually have a terrible plastic surgery experience?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Did she talk about that in the cover story at all?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So she didn't talk about it herself, I don't think,
but they did touch on it because it's become sort
of a big story that surrounded her in the last
couple of years. You know, she had done this procedure
called cool sculpting, and she alleges that as a result
of that procedure, she was in her own words, disfigured
by it, and where she was trying to remove fat,
(07:43):
which is what cool sculpting does. It's like non invasive
removal of fat. She'd actually developed hard pockets of fat,
which does sound terrible, like I would be really traumatized
by that too, And she did settle a lawsuit against
the company, so I know what the company admitted or
didn't admit to, But it certainly is an example of
(08:05):
the fact that there are so many procedures that are
going on now that just haven't been around that long, right,
So there are consequences to this, Like I think botox
might be twenty years old, but it's certainly really in
the last ten years that it's become just very common
to use fillers and things that freeze your face that
just didn't exist in the cultural space in.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
The same way it does now.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I think partially because of the Kardashians, Like they do
so much to themselves and it becomes so normalized, and
I think influencers do so much to themselves.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, what plastic surgery used to be something that you
hid and now it is something that you.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Talk about, well, in some cases you brag about, right,
like I think a certain kind of influencer wants to
be like, I'm rich or famous enough to need this.
So there's like a kind of different relationship to plastic surgery.
And certainly, you know, I think we just are more
aware that that is a common tool that everyone uses,
or a lot of people use. I shouldn't say everyone,
(09:02):
because I think outside of New York and LA maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It's not quite as common.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But here, I was really shocked when I started to
think about getting botox to find that like every woman
I knew had essentially done it already, and I was
the last of my friends.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Okay, but back to this cover for a second. Did
they actually talk about the aging process or that's not
what it's about.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It just that became the backlash to it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, so it's not really what it's about.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Actually, So the documentary itself is really about retelling their stories.
These four women became incredibly close. They sort of represented
a time in modeling that doesn't exist anymore, like this
era of the supermodel, and this was a very nineties
cultural phenomenon. They became celebrities in their own right.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
They were all in that George Michael music video.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right in some ways, I think that video really cemented
their fame and is like a sort of a bookend,
one of the bookends to the beginning of the height
of their famous the song Freedom.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
The song Freedom.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
This is this like very famous George Michael video, which
you know he doesn't appear in because he's starting to
have a relationship with fame.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That's complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
For those who don't know, George Michael was gay and
not out of the closet. So he talked about how
he wanted to start deconstructing.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
His image as a sex symbol.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
But his music really was very sexy, like he literally
had a song called I Want Your Sex, so to
replace himself, he asks these four models to be in
the video and the models are all lip syncing to
his song and they're in various states of undress, and
this video played all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It was a huge hit for.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
MTV, and it became such a huge thing that a
year later, versauced his fashion show. The finale look was
these four women coming out to the song Freedom, and
that is in many ways scene as like the moment
that put supermodels on the map. So you know, this
(11:13):
cover is really about that. But I just naturally assumed.
I mean, these are four women in their fifties who
made their living off of beauty standards, so I assume
there just would be a lot of conversation about it.
And Linda Evangelisa does talk about it a little bit,
but basically she's the only one in the Vogue piece
at least, and she says, you know, I don't mind aging.
(11:37):
It's like, you know, a sign that we're growing and
I want to grow old and I want to stick around.
And that's, you know, obviously, how we all feel. I'm
sure it's better to age than not age, right, the
alternative isn't great. But I think as women, there's just
a lot of evidence that aging is not, you know, something.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
That helps your career or helps how you're seen by the.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
World world, Like you just lose cultural currency in our world.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Everything you're saying here is really reminding me of a
thing that happened last year involving former CNN host Don Lemon,
who I believe this contributed in a part to his firing,
or at least allegedly so, in which he noted that
a woman of a certain age is quote past her prime.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, so he was talking about NICKI Haley, who by
the way, is fifty one, like not past her prime
by any definition I would use. Apparently it's a definition
Don Lemon would use. Will play it so you can
hear it for yourself.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
NICKI Haley isn't a ener prime. Sorry, when a woman
is considered being a prime in her twenties and thirties
and maybe forties, that's not according to merime for what
it depends, And it's just like prime. If you look
it up, it'll if you if you google when is
a woman in a prime, it'll say twenties, thirties, and forties.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I don't miss forty, So I got nothing I agree
with that.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
So I think she has to be careful about saying
that politicians aren't in their prime.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
We need to qualify. You're talking about prime for like
child boring or are you talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And this is so awkward because he's talking to Poppy
Harlowe who is in her forties. Okay, it is crazy
that he's using sort of like the definition of child
bearing years for being president. I mean, he was suspended
for this and he did apologize for it. But I
think this really speaks to.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
How men think about women in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well, by the way, Don Lemon is fifty seven. But yeah,
I think what you're getting at is this is not
just among men, but there is a belief, there's a
societal belief, and it is backed up by research and
data and economics and everything else that when women age,
they somehow lose their cachet, they lose their currency, they
(13:50):
past their prime, they become old hags, and when managed,
they are distinguished and wise. And for politics, you literally
can't run for office until you're thirty five years old.
So actually, Nicki Haley, for what it's worth, is literally
in her political prime.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Whatever you think of her.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, And what's interesting is that what Don Lemon is
responding to the reason he says this about Nicki Haley
is because she has made a comment about Joe Biden
being too old to be president, Like she's essentially saying
that she should be the candidate because you know, both
Biden and Trump are too old, and you know they're
in their eighties, Like right. The idea that you would
compare a woman who's fifty one to men in their
(14:30):
eighties and be like it's the same, so she shouldn't
comment on their age like that is a wild reach
on his part.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Well, what you're getting at, I mean, and what this
clip and this exchange and all of it crystallizes is really.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
An age old belief that a.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Woman can read past her prime and that there's this
enduring double standard when it comes to women in age.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah. Actually, what's so interesting is when I was doing
research for this, I was looking up the Supermodel documentary
and I came across this documentary from twenty twelve actually
that had aired on HBO that was literally about supermodels
and aging.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's kind of what I thought this was.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And there's this wild quote in the New York Times
piece about it from Sheila and Evans, who at the
time was running HBO documentary films, and she's promoting the film,
so she obviously thinks these women are interesting and have value.
But what she says when she's describing the film is
beautiful women getting older women who decay. That's always intriguing.
(15:31):
Like decay is so wild in this context to me.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
I mean, I'm sure she'd probably use that word for
men too, are you, Like, are you think about I
guess in a way you are also, I just like, I.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Don't know why that word is so vivid to me,
like I would never.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Just humans as decaying.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
It's just like evokes like a picture of a mummy
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
And you know, I think that is so ingrained.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's like, I'm sure she wasn't saying this to be insulting, right,
Like she goes on to say, you know, they are
their own instruments. Would you do when you're a strativarius?
That's losing your strings? Right, So she's essentially saying these
supermodels have lost their tools when they become older, right,
which I mean fair given how people feel about older women, right.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
And I mean, honestly, you probably don't even need me
to give these statistics because maybe it's so known at
this point that agism exists and that there is a
double standard for women. But I've actually done a lot
of writing on this subject, and a few years ago,
when I was at Newsweek, we actually conducted this major
survey looking at hiring managers and agism in the workplace.
And this now I think is probably not so surprising,
(16:40):
but eighty four percent of managers said that they'd hesitate
and that other employers would hesitate in hiring someone who
is a visibly older candidate, so like, yeah, this is
very real.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, that feels very real. Is a woman?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I know that it is going to be harder for
me to get jobs the older. I guess that's how
I feel about it, certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And it's not how you feel.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's literally a fact, yeah, I mean fair, it is
literally a fat yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So I mean I think ageism exists across the board,
but especially for women, And like, what we do is
a job that requires some access to cultural currency, right,
and women are seen as having less access to that
as they get older. Like I run digital newsrooms, I'm
not going to be seen as being able to kind
of think of the right stories or have a sense
(17:29):
of the right cultural moments, which I think is absolute bullshit,
but something I'm very aware of the older I get,
and I've become more resistant to telling people my age.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Actually I thought I would become more.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Willing as I got older, because when I was younger,
it was almost like you're too young, you look too
young for this job. Like I remember getting a lot
of feedback that I was like, are you old enough?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Like whatever.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's actually a really good point.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So I think what you're describing and being a leader,
especially in newsrooms, as you age where you're expected to
know like what the kids are doing, you can be penalized.
And I think that's probably true for anyone. But as women,
you spend like the first ten years of your career
trying to convince everyone that you're not too young to
be experienced or have wisdom at all, and then there's
(18:17):
like this maybe couple year blip when like you're okay,
and then suddenly you're too old.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, it's like instant, like one night you're one thing,
the next night you're the other one.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
And I don't think that that is true or to
the same extent for most men.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I mean definitely not, because most of the newsrooms I've
worked in have had older men in charge, and no
one asks if Marty Barron knows what the kids are doing,
you know what I mean, Like everyone just assumes that
he's a man who's earned his position and he knows
how to hire people who know what the kids are doing.
But there's just more of an expectation of women that
you're supposed to be all the things, and if you
(18:51):
really want to stay relevant, you better look like you
are not that old.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
The other thing that is confusing about all of this
is that nobody looked their age anymore.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like what even is that?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
So do you remember in twenty twenty when Jlo and
Shakira did the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Yeah,
and they were in there, like you know, leotards or whatever.
Jla was fifty at the time, Shakira was forty three,
and they were dancing and they were singing and did
this amazing act and people were like, oh my god,
they're incredible, like they have more stamina and athleticism than
(19:41):
some of the guys on the field, which like, yes,
they absolutely did, and like power to them, snaps to that.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
But I remember looking at Jalaen thing is that what
fifty looks like?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean, how many people can look like Jlo?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
She looks amazing And so I don't know that too.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
It's like, so, on the one hand, you have a
fifty year old who shows no visible signs of aging.
I mean maybe if you were to see her face
to face she would, but certainly not in any of
the public platforms. Yeah, and then you have Pamela Anderson.
This is another semi recent example where she was at
fashion Week in Paris and she went totally makeup free. Yeah, amazing.
(20:20):
She's in her fifties. She looked incredible.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
She looked basically her age, and everyone's saying like, oh
my god, this is a rebellion. This is so brave,
and you kind of want to be like, is.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That really brave?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Like is that what bravery is? And I get it
on what I thought. I mean, Malala is brave?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Right, you know, yeah, I guess it is sort of
brave to go out without a made up face when
you're a person whose appearance has been the entirety of
your career and you're a woman.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
But by the same token, Like, is that what we
call bravery?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Now? Like I can think of a few things that
are a little bit more. Actually, this is my whole
thing about linguistic Like can we not call it brave
if it's not?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Actually, yeah, it's actually interesting, right because I just said
when you talk about Jaylo j Loo looks amazing, but
I also think Pam Anderson looks amazing and one of
those women looks her age, right, I think Pam Anderson
has just embraced a more natural approach to aging.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
And by the way, for.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
People listening who may not have seen her recently, yeah,
she has. She really does go makeup free. She hasn't
done any plastic surgery in a long time, but.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Of course the early years of her career she.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Admitted openly that she did tones plus yes choice. So
and I mean that too in and of itself is
like an irony. It's like, so we're now we're hailing
the person who in.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Fact created the unreal standarday.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Standards as being so brave for now tearing them down.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, And I want to be clear, like I have
no judgment actually about plastic surgery, Like I obviously just
admitted that I got botox, and if I want to
do some nipsyn tucks, I'm not going to feel any
kind of way about that. The truth is, we live
in a society that's going to judge me based on
how I look, and if I have to do things
to feel more comfortable or confident, I don't feel any.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Career or better in my career. I screwed up hard
about it, Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Feel shame about that, and I don't shame anyone else
for it. But you know, there's one person who I
do sort of feel a little bit conflicted about this
on because I love her so much, which is Madonna?
You know, to me, Madonna is the icon of the
eighties and nineties. Like I just worshiped Madonna when I
was a kid, and I felt like she.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Broke so many boundaries.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
She really showed us that you could be a woman
who owned her sexuality, who owned her ambition, who was
willing to be entirely herself and didn't feel all this
pressure to conform. But you know the way her plastic
surgery looks now, and you know, maybe this is unfair
because it's just like I don't like what she's chosen
(22:45):
to do, Like j Loo looks good to me.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So I accept the choices she's made.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
But you know, there was this recent fear last year
about the Grammys. You know, she's just gotten a lot
of filler and her face looks really puffy. She just
isn't recognizable physically, Like she doesn't it like herself, yes,
and not in a way that's flattering, unfortunately. And you know,
she's talked about how hard it was to hear that feedback.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I mean people really openly talk.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
That's just so the thing that confused me is like, yeah,
if you've seen Madonna in the last few years, like
this is what she looks like, So why is everyone
suddenly now upset? But people were up in arms. Everyone
was criticizing her. It was like in every single tabloid,
it was all over the internet. And I don't know,
we live in a culture that makes women do this
and then you're gonna pounce on her for doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, I mean, and she's sixty four, right, so she
is doing what she feels she needs to do to
continue to stay in the spotlight. And I do think
like social media makes this so that she must also
be looking at her face all the time.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, she has to do Instagram, she has to do.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
All these things that maybe wouldn't have put as much
pressure on her.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
But in my fantasy of Madonna, because I also love
her and thinks she's incredible, she was doing this as
affect you.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
To everyone else, she was like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
This is what I look like. You might not like it.
This is what women have to do, Like I'm going
to put it in your face.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And she actually has said that, right.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
She responded to this by saying it was ageism and misogyny,
and she said I think she said something like I
look forward to many more years of subversive behavior, pushing boundaries.
But I think this sort of gets back to what
you were saying about Pam. What feels like more subversive
behavior in this world is actually allowing yourself to age, right, ye,
And so that is a little bit of the conflict.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It's like, I'm not at all surprised that Madonna feels pressure.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
To look young, right, but I wish that she felt
about it the same way she felt about a lot
of other things in her career, which is, fuck the
standards everyone else is setting. I'm going to be the
person I choose to be. And you know, she's saying
that this is that, and so I want to take
her at her word. But it is interesting that it
brings up something for me, right, Like, I feel a
certain way about the choices she's making.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Clearly other people and so many other people do.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
And I mean, yeah, it's easy to say we wish
that she could age naturally and still be doing what
she does. But would the culture let her, would music
executives let her, would the Grammys let her?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't know, Well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I mean Pam and Erson's a great example, right, like,
she is doing that and it's it's working for her.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
She's actually she's not in a show.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
She's like a tending fashion a make of her own
accord without a stylist, just as like a private citizen.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I mean it's really hard to know what you
can and can't get away with.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
We should also mention too, by the way, Yeah, so
botox has been around for years. Like in general, all
of these procedures have increased, but they've increased more for
men than they have for women. I'm not saying that
more men are doing them than women now, but I
believe the data would show that increase has been higher
for men because it's now becoming normalized for men to
do it too.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Oh one hundred percent. I mean, I think it's so interesting.
I actually remember the first time I realized men in
the spotlight got blostic surgery. I was working with a
very well known woman in the public eye. Mean, I
just won't out her for this, and we were watching
just randomly an Oprah show. It was on in the
(26:08):
background in the newsroom, and she looked up and it
was Tom Cruise being interviewed by Oprah. Not the famous
Tom Cruise, like a previous Tom Cruise apear not the
jumping on the couch, and she said to me, Wow,
his work is so good.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I wonder who he's using. And I was like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Like I did not realize that Tom Cruise in his
forties was getting work done.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know. To me, that was like a real revelation.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
And you know, as I was in the TV business longer,
I realized a lot of male anchors were getting plastic surgery.
But I think it used to be something that men
in the public I did and hid. But now we're
pretty aware of the fact that, like everyone kind of
knows right that Joe Biden is getting facelifts and using botox.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Like we just expected it now. I don't know how
you could not know it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I mean, the man is eighty with the skin of
a fifty year old man.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I mean, have you looked at a picture of him?
What a picture of Joe Biden right now?
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Skin looks anyway? Yeah, I of course would not be surprised.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Well, and I think Joe Biden has to write because
if he looked as.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
If the major criticism against him in this moment of
City's tool.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right, and then like you look at someone like Nancy Pelosi,
Nancy Pelosi has obviously also had a lot of work
done to maintain the appearance of youth to some degree, right, Like,
she doesn't look like she's thirty, but she certainly looks
younger than her years, because you know, I think just
being in the public eye forces you to look a
certain way, and we have a different expectation of what
(27:42):
ages are supposed to look like now because the needle
has moved so much, we don't actually know what eighty
is really.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Supposed to look like a thing.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
I mean, look, this is all really complex. Even Gloria
Steinem has admitted to having some work done.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
So how are you supposed to think about it?
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Like, it would be great if everyone age naturally and
we could all just like look like our actual normal cells.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
But we're too far past that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
At this point, when I was reading up on this
subject a little bit and trying to remind myself what
I had written in the past, I was rereading this
essay that Deborah Sparr, who used to be the president
of Barnard where you went to college.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I'm familiar with them.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
For the Airtimes, and she was talking about the kind
of feminist conundrum of getting work done and how she
and her peers had done everything right, like they had
worked their way up in their careers. They'd found partners
who were going to change the diapers and support them.
They put off their fertility so that they could establish
their careers in time, and then they hit a certain
(28:40):
point and suddenly they're like all getting work done, but
then lying about.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It or like trying to hide it. And I think
that's an enduring thing.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
I mean, that was written I think in twenty sixteen,
and I think people are talking more openly about it now.
But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I mean, I don't know what the solution is. I
know that for me, my job, which is in many
ways my.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Livelihood, is very intimately connected with the ability to understand
what's happening in the culture. And oftentimes the people that
are creating the most interesting culture are young people, and
so you.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Have to know about that. So is you know, getting
a bunch of work done to look younger going to
do that for me?
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Like? No, But we're living in this interesting period I
think now where the Internet.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Has allowed people of every.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Age to consume the same things. So on some level,
it's like we're listening to Olivia Rodrigu and like in
the shower while doing so. And the teenagers that I
document in my reporting or my students in the class
I teach are all wearing the clothes that I literally
wore when I was like getting my first period at
(29:55):
age thirteen at Washington Middle School in Seattle. And so
there's like this weird flat of culture that's occurring, and it's.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Like who's young, who's old? How do we tell?
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Like, I don't look my age, neither does anyone else.
Young people are doing makeup tutorials on TikTok that make
them look so old.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Like well, also there's skills, people are dying.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
There are gray now as like a fashion trend, right,
which I mean, I guess that's not now, that's been
around for a couple of years. But this gets to
something I think that's interesting, which is, we're not just
talking about physical aging, right, We're not talking about just
how your face looks.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
We're talking about how.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
You communicate or indicate that you are not past your prime.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I mean, yes, that is, and how do you
communicate that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Well, you have this interesting piece in the Times about
what it feels like to no longer be the group
that everyone is courting, right, Yeah, And I think that
that's also interesting, right that there is this thing that
happens as you get older, which is that you start
to feel like you're not as relevant to the conversation
because the conversation is no longer directed towards you.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Well, So, I mean I I entered my career at
a time when everyone was desperate to figure out millennials. Yeah,
so it was like every headline was asking about millennials.
People were always coming to me at my various jobs
where I was like an intern or whatever, being like, so,
what are like the kids doing? And there was a
full year after I moved to New York after college
(31:18):
where I was working in a bar and I was
taking market research surveys online where the only requirement was
that I had to be a millennial, and I would
just answer questions about like whatever random thing because they
just valued my opinion as.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
A millennial so much.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
And so you start to feel like the center of
the generational universe and you get.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Used to that.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
So I think I did get used to that a
little bit, Like I was, Yeah, I was the cool one.
I was the one that was telling people what was
happening on the Internet. I started my career at a
time when people didn't care about the web, but they
simultaneously knew that they needed to understand it. And how
are they going to understand it? They were going to
ask me.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I love that you referred to it as a web.
I mean, I think you started a time when we
called it the web. Right, we don't call it that.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Anymore, but you know, truly, I think it's like you've
been replaced by gen Z, which is now the sort
of age group that advertisers are starting and everyone wants
to understand. And so I think this is just a
natural progression, like it is time to pass on the
baton in some ways. But also there is one thing
(32:24):
I came across in the research that I've actually been
trying to really absorb for myself, which is that you know,
I told you I found that older Supermodel movie from
twenty twelve, and in it, Carol Alt, who was also
a very famous model in.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Her time, said something that I think.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Is true and that it's easy to forget, which, as
she said, aging isn't necessarily bad, and this was her quote,
there comes a point at which you are a precious
commodity because there is nobody else like you, and I
think that's an important thing that we should all really
try and take to heart. There's value in aging, and
we forget that lot in this particular society. But it's
(33:03):
real and I'm not looking to be twenty again for.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Sure, Susie.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
I want to quickly tease our next episode, which actually
pairs nicely with this idea of aging.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Ooh, is it about botox?
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It's not about botox.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
It's about American Pie, which can you believe is twenty.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Five years old this year?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Oh no, And it's also about how that movie popularized
the mill bil Bil Hell.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
You can also find this on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan
Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stem.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
We are also executive producers.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
For even more, check out inretropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
See you next week.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com