AND ANOTHER THING …
‘Itimes, but happy at all times.” By throwing her hands up at the ageist pressures of Hollywood, Hayek was simply going with the zeitgeist and ensuring her voice chimed in with the chorus of showbusiness women “refusing to conform” to some unrealistic and archaic ideal of female perfection; women who are playing the female empowerment card as though their careers depend on it.
Which they do, it now being a requirement for any woman in public life who wants to be liked with a million digital hearts to speak out regularly about the appalling lookist bullying they have suffered at the hands of men and/or large companies headed by men – and how they’re happy “as they are”.
I’ve put this loud “refusal to conform” in quotation marks because once the cameras and Dictaphones have been turned off, conforming is all most of these women do. There will be daily conforming sessions with nutritionists and trainers, as they try to mould their bodies into unrealistic and crucially indistinguishable shapes (try covering up the faces of A-list actresses in those dress line-ups in fashion magazines: headless, they are the same woman). They’ll conform invasively and non-invasively with the same top dermatologists, hair and make-up artists and stylists, only stopping to Tweet and give rabble-rousing speeches on the importance of “not being defined by others”, “loving yourself as a woman,” and “the beauty of imperfections”.
So pervasive is the female self-empowerment movement that diet companies are finding it impossible to get celebrity endorsement these days.
“It’s so off-message that we can’t get any famous women to front our campaigns any more – or even let us use their names,” one well-known weight loss company executive told me.
“And yet we’ve got more clients than ever.” So someone’s telling porky pies? They sure as hell aren’t eating them. And as with all feminist stances cynically adopted for self-promotional purposes, it’s the fundamental dishonesty that’s most jarring. A dishonesty Hayek, in all fairness, won’t buy into. Because that feminist “why do I have to look good at 50?” battle cry?
It was followed up with: “I already got my guy! But then, I don’t want to lose the guy, either.”
And nothing could be more deliciously off-message than that.
Hollywood ageism
Can we believe celebrity women who don’t ‘conform’?
‘I’m at the limit of chubbiness at all times, but happy at all times’