angels?

This is Helen Mirren at the 55th annual Emmy awards last Sunday, 27 August. According to the IMDB, Ms Mirren was born in 1945, which would make her around 61. She looks lovely here, I think. The tan is lovely. The buttercream color of her gown is lovely, as is the gentle blonde of her hair. She is clearly happy, radiant even, upon winning her award for her role in the BBC/HBO production Elizabeth I. (Click on the photo if you want to embiggen it.)

These are the original Charlie’s Angels, Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith, in a picture taken the same night at the same event. From left to right, the years of their birth are 1947, 1948 and 1945, making each of these women Ms Mirren’s contemporaries.

These women don’t look quite so radiant, in no small part due to the fact that they weren’t there to win awards; rather, they were there to pay tribute to Aaron Spelling, who gave each of them a start in television. They, unlike the sunny Ms Mirren, are dressed in somber shades of black and brown. And they, unlike the glowing Ms Mirren, have had what could really only be termed buttloads of plastic surgery.

Kate Jackson’s eyes no longer match; one is slightly rounded, the other oddly triangular. Farrah Fawcett’s ever-slimming nose is dwindling to a Michelle Pfeiffer/Michael Jackson slenderness. Jaclyn Smith’s face has a kind of waxed-fruit fecundity; there is a strange immobility to her shiny, full features, as if she has been sculpted by the masters at Madame Tussaud’s. Each of them has that taut fixed expression that registers as something between mild surprise and total enlightenment. Each of them has been nipped, poked, tucked, implanted and tweaked within an inch of their lives.

In pointing out these pictures, I don’t intend to take a broad swipe at plastic surgery. For one thing, that would be redundant—it’s altogether too easy to turn a page and find writers dissing plastic beauty and touting the natural kind. For another, it would be hypocritical. I have breast implants and I love them (they are fake and they are spectacular). I believe that the first thing we own is our bodies and that we have the inalienable right to do what we want to them, as long as we aren’t hurting others in the process.

I will champion to the ends of this expanding galaxy Jocelyn Wildenstein’s right to spend her hard-won money on multiple surgeries to make herself look like a cat, or The Enigma’s right to turn himself slowly blue as a smurf, or the rights of vampire fetishists to sharpen their teeth to Dracula points, or whatever anyone wants to do to his or her body because to make those choices is a basic human right.

But even if I support these personal freedoms, it doesn’t mean I have to like the results of them.

Because, frankly, I wish the Angels had had a little more Mirren in them. And a little less Botox, Restylane and Collagen.

Looking at the three of them, I have to wonder, how bad would it have been to let their eyes droop a bit? How bad would it have been to let their lives line their faces like well-traveled maps? How bad would it have been to abandon the hair of their twenties? How bad would it have been to let themselves grow up?

In short, I wonder, how bad was it for them to get old? Because frankly, at 43, I’m soon on the verge of getting old myself, and these women are up there on that bright-lit stage in full post-surgical tweak silently shouting that it’s pretty fucking bad. If it’s better to have mismatched eyes and melting noses and frozen faces and preternaturally burnished cheekbones, getting old must pretty fucking bad indeed.

I don’t mean to judge the Angels. I know that each of them have had multiple personal trials—Kate Jackson alone spent a decade battling breast cancer. I don’t mean to suggest that this inviolable will to lift and inject and separate and implant is merely their vanity walking the vanity walk, or that they are superficial people. They may be; they may not be. I don’t know them, and I wouldn’t presume a fulsome understanding of their decisions.

I do think, though, as the glaring differences between Helen Mirren’s and the Angels’ visages suggest, that we Americans have a fucked set of expectations for our female celebrities. Clearly, Helen Mirren and the Angels trio are not exactly equal. Ms Mirren is a Serious Actress, and she is British. She may have been good-looking—she certainly is now—but she was never a Total Babe. Her career was comprised of stage and film. The Angels, however, were Total Television Babes. They adorned the insides of lockers. They posed in red bathing suits and in shorts and knee-socks and on roller-skates. They are icons, and whatever Ms Mirren may or may not be, she is not an icon, not in the same way that Ms Fawcett is.

Fewer are the people who have wanked to Helen Mirren; many are those who have jacked off to Farrah Fawcett.

And stubbornly, we don’t want our Total Babes to age. Perhaps their crumbling faces and portly bodies might remind us of our own decrepitude. Perhaps their decay would uncomfortably make us think of our own demise. Or perhaps it’s something else.

There are lots of European actresses who made the transition from Total Babe to Serious Actress. Sophia Loren. Catherine Deneuve. Monica Bellucci. Diana Rigg. Anita Eckberg. Anouk Aimée. Audrey Tatou.

For some reason, it seems more acceptable for European women to be beautiful and intelligent and powerful. It seems more acceptable for them to grow up.

Sure, Sophia Loren has had a lot of surgical help. So has Catherine Deneuve (rumors are that her face rests on tiny gold filaments threaded under her skin). And yet, these women have matured. Neither of them has held on to their youth with the kind of white-knuckled ferocity seen in American ex-starlets. But then they, like Ms Mirren, were all film stars, not television babes.

Maybe, then, it’s a problem with television. We Americans treat our televisions with the care and attention we treat pets. We grow up with them, we are on intimate terms with them. Their stars are not ten feet high and luminous, untouchable as gods. Movie stars are unreachable and distant galaxies. Television stars are tinier than we are; they are wee. They are freely available every week, and if they are in syndication, they may be infinitely accessible. Hot and cold running Seinfeld. Free-flowing Friends. An infinite tap of Cheers.

Maybe it is the intimacy of this genre that makes us want to freeze-frame our stars, to keep them coppered like baby booties, to make sure that no matter how we change, no matter how we grow or move or sag or droop, they at least will carry on, maintaining that home-like utopia, and the warm glowing, glowing warmth of nostalgia. Maybe we find their intransigence comforting. Our worlds will not falter as long as Farrah still has layers and a gravity-defying bosom.

Looking at the Angels, though, I can’t help but wish that they had accepted going gently into that good night, that they had not raged quite so hard and so long, cut by knives, wrapped in gauze, stuck by needles and buffed by acids, against the dying of their light. I wish that they had found a way to like what they saw in the mirror just a bit more so that they could do to themselves just a bit less.

I wish that they had been a bit more fearless, and a bit less ageless.

I wonder if I can find a poster of Helen Mirren. Because she’s my hero.

------------------------------------------

If you enjoyed this feminist musing, you might enjoy this piece on women, culture and weight.

Comments

[efg]

Her ass over tit comment about the shoes she was wearing as Ms. Mirren was climbing the stairs was, for me, was also so refreshing.

[Elexus]

Perhaps it's the syndication and mass-availability that does it, as the lovely Barbara Feldon (http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/3670/Events/3670/BarbaraFel_Mazur_448708_400.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0058805) has aged with honest beauty, if not quite so honest as Ms Mirren, who is about 10 years her junior.

It's not quite a poster, but I'll trade you this (http://www.moviemarket.co.uk/Photos/P201408_C39308.html) for this (http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1064/Mptv/1064/5651-0070.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Feldon,%20Barbara).

-Lexi

P.S. Sorry for all the urls; I wasn't sure if html was allowed.

[chelsea girl]

Oh, HTML is allowed, baby. It is so allowed, it's wanted.

kissykiss,
cg

[figleaf]

Thanks for the totally there post, CG. I *think* what's going on isn't so much that being *old* sucks as much as *being over 23* sucks. People panic into early surgery, and however well or poorly our natural bodies age, reconstructed flesh ages even more poorly. Once you start, collagen here or an eyelid there, you're sort of screwed.

figleaf

[Autumn]

Fabulous piece.

You know, it's my luck to have friends like you and EM at this point in my life. When I was young I thought 30 was OLD. Now I look at my friends who are 40-ish, of which I have a few who I love dearly, and I see so much energy, life and dreams, that I don't even think of 40 as "getting old". I look forward to the the next fifteen years, because if being 40 means being as beautiful, intelligent, wise and vibrant as you two are then it is something to look forward too.

[S.P.]

Ah, yes, we've noted mutual admiration for Helen before... It's that "head held high, honest smile, twinkle in the eyes" self-confidence that makes all the difference.

Another contemporary of Ms. Mirren's is Dame Judi Dench -- who, in most films I've seen her in, portrays a character who is fierce/stern/cold/resentful (Chocolat, Shakespeare In Love, etc.). However, have you seen her in the 2005 film "Mrs. Henderson Presents"? There's something very sexy, there... and I found myself surprisingly aroused, never having been such before by the good Dame...

S.P.

[Viviane]

It's sad to see actresses nowadays...and they are unrecognizable because of the work they have had done.

I saw Barbara Feldon at a Proust Day reading last year. I was maybe 10 feet away from her. And we admired her beauty and how she had not mucked it up by getting work done. Then we looked up her age on IMDB and marveled even more.

[The Minstrel Boy]

one of my hollywood heroes is john barrymore. he was in the twilight of his career just as plastic surgery was gaining a grip on an already visually obsessed town and asked if he was considering a lift or something to which he replied sardonically:

No, I think I deserve this face.

[Danielle]

The natural aging process is beautiful. Great post.

[J Morgan]

Style or Substance ?

I would offer for example Robin Weigert who plays the character of Calamity Jane, on the HBO series Deadwood. I could never see a Farrah Fawcett, Loni Anderson, or that ilk playing such a character.
Secondly there is in that series actors and actresses who break the mold, actresses such as Claudia Ettinger, and Molly Brown are not only great performers, but just incredibly sophisticated and classy.

[chelsea girl]

See, J. Morgan, I'd like to see more style and substance together, holding hands, singing gleefully. Helen Mirren did, of course, star on television in the Brit show Prime Suspect. I would love to see more actresses here who are like her, like Barbara Feldon, like Candace Bergen (and I know, she's had work done, and I know her belt and blouse at the Emmies were just awful, but in general she is all about style and substance), like Lorraine Bracco, like Debbie Mazar, like all the actresses who have somehow strode/are striding the line between Total Babe and Serious Actress, between Style and Substance.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

[J Morgan]

Right....Edie Falco, Judy Davis, Sarah Paulson, Joan Allen. and in a different vein Amy Goodman. All percoloate intelligence, beauty, and a sexuality that lights me up from head to toe.

[Traboyk]

It is sad to see women having to protray a younger look. Then again, we as a culture love our men to be distinguished, refined, and all that bs. Perhaps it's a evolutionary trait we posses, but it's a glaring problem. The other thing is rather simple: Sexy is Sexy, regardless of age.

[paul nagy]

You forgot Juliet Binoche.

[bulls_bollocks]

Helen Mirren. Charlotte Rampling. I would go with either one forever.

[Alana]

Hey Hey Hey wait a minute right there. Okay, Helen Mirren was foxy in the Cold War drama White Nights. She is just so stunning and beautiful it's insane.

She plays a great character, with fabulous clothes, still deeply in love with Barishnikov's (spelling whatever) character, but accepting of who she is and what he is even though it is so painful.

It's a pretty movie anyway, but she is a strong and beautiful female character. I believe she's russian.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Sorry to Rant. I just love Helen Mirren.

P.S. She was 40 when she did White Nights.

[Alana]

Hi CG,

What do you think would have become of Marilyn Monroe if she'd lived long enough to age? Would she have gone gracefully? Would Marilyn have ever grown up?

This morning, I found an ENORMOUS cardboard poster of Marilyn in a dumpster. I pulled her out, a tiny bit frayed around the edges, and then balancing her above my head with both hands, carried her home.

She was surprisingly weighty.

Once inside out apartment, I took a few moments to consider where I could put her. I decided on right above the couch: She fills the entire wall there, in black-and-white, dabbing herself at the neck with Chanel perfume, one strap of her dress slipping down her plump creamy shoulder, cleavage showing, head tilted back, and her eyes closed. Her hair shines as brightly as a halo. Seriously.

Marilyn Monroe has always made me cry----catch my breath, and then I cry. Marilyn has struck me, always, as a ten-year-old girl with big boobs, a child trapped inside a woman's wrappings. Like her soul couldn't keep up with her body.

Strangely enough, Eva Braun strikes me the same way.

So does Farrah Fawcett.

Is this innate or imposed?

It's a mystery I ponder a lot.

Peace,
A

[chelsea girl]

Alana,

I've written on Marilyn here on my pretty dumb things, and if I had any facility with code, which I do not, I'd plunk that link right in here.

I regret you'll have to do the searching work, but it's there--two pieces, actually, one on Marilyn Monroe and one on Marilyn Munster, my Maralynities.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

ps. And Eva Braun makes you cry? For real?

[Neil]

Great post. And I think Helen Mirren looks terrific. And she is -- and was -- a babe.

[BDGurl]

CG:

Thanks for this post. As a POST-menopausal over-educated strumpet, I am aspiring to become what psychiatrist and author Jean Shinoda Bolen calls a "juicy crone."

"To be involved and engaged in life is a juicy proposition. Every juicy crone taps into a wellspring or a deep aquifer of meaning in her psyche."

Juicy crones are smart, compassionate, courageous and humorous. They are also unafraid of aging and of being who they are.

Helen Mirren is a juicy crone.

Cheers!

bdg

[Henry]

I'd actually disagree with your assessment of Helen Mirren. She was extremely beautiful in her youth. Check out this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mirren.JPG

She was quite beautiful.

[chelsea girl]

Henry et al,

I never meant to disparage the inestimable pulchritude of Helen Mirren. I don't always take the time I should to write these posts, and what i'd probably say now, with a few days of thinking under my cerebral cortex, would be that while Helen Mirren was/is beautiful, her beauty was never marketed in the same way that the beauty of the Angels was.

She was never sold as a Total Babe. She was sold as a Serious Actress. Her worth--interior, exterior, metaphoric and literal--was never just in her looks, while the Angels were pretty much all about the face value.

Forgive my lapse in thinking and writing. It happens to the worst as well as the best of us.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

[Lorraine Grimes]

I am long time fan of the divine Dame Helen Mirren and, I am thrilled that she is finallyachieving the fame and recognition deserves.

I agree that she is an inspiration to all women on how to age gracefully (and sensuously) withoutundergoing the knife.

If you think she looked fabulous at the Emmy's,check this photo taken at the Venice film festival last week: http://updates.absolutely.net/20060902/queen_20_wenn823181.html

[Lorraine Grimes]

Oops!!!

The website for Dame Helen's picture at the Venice Film Festival must have been cut off.

Here is the actual link: http://updates.absolutely.net/20060902/queen_20_wenn823181.html

[tom paine]

I agree with you, though with a caveat that Helen Mirren has never had to make her bread from her looks, and has often taken roles like "Prime Suspect" that are anti-glamorous, whereas the three Angels were never considered real actresses, except perhaps Farah for "The Burning Bed." And the reaction to that was rather Johnsonian, along the lines of his appreciation of the woman minister.

The problem with aging in Hollywood is that women are already marginalized when they're young, whereas aging male stars are still paired with much younger pussy. And I use that term because that's all many female roles are: so actor's squeeze, married, GF, affair....