Once again, dear readers, I am feeling bamboozled. Why? I recently noticed that one of my favorite makeup entrepreneurs, the feisty, plain-spoken Laura Geller, hired supermodel Paulina Porizkova for an ad campaign called #LetsGetOldTogether. And my spidey-sense came on strong.
Furthermore, after I watched the campaign’s launch video (you can see it here), I tumbled into the rabbit hole that is Paulina’s Instagram.
She’s captivating, stunningly beautiful, and aging, apparently, without invasive intervention. And her personal history is worthy of a Lifetime mini-series: Her parents, anti-Soviet dissidents, fled Czechoslovakia for Sweden, where they left a young Paulina with her grandmother for seven years; she married (and separated from) the lead singer of The Cars, who disinherited her before she found him dead in his home, after which followed a nasty lawsuit; she has written a children’s book and a novel; and in 1989 she was nominated for a Golden Raspberry award for Worst Actress.
OK, a gorgeous celebrity with a patchwork past. Whatever. But Paulina is also known as “the crying lady” on Instagram, because she’s posted several videos of herself quietly weeping or bawling. I mention this because I find such public display both fascinating and creepy. Paulina says she purposefully does it so people know that everyone experiences sadness and grief, and to help contradict social media’s general “life is just a bowl of cherries” messaging. She admits it’s a way of working through her emotions (and she’s not alone; studies show that people use social media to manage their feelings by sharing them in various ways and testing the limits of social acceptance). She wants people to see her raw, I guess, which seems fine when it means showing herself makeup-less in bed. But the Sobzilla—I’ll keep scrolling, thanks.
Anyway, I have a whole other issue with Paulina as a spokesperson for Geller’s ad campaign, which is clearly trying to draw in mature women—mature being the over-40 crowd—by emphasizing aging’s positive aspects. What does #LetsGetOldTogether imply? That there’s a community of us who might support each other as we clamber up the steep, rocky track to Nowhere (as the late Jan Morris so vividly put it); that we know, or at least intuit, that this journey isn’t easy; and that there is solace in the knowledge that we are not alone in it. That message is a seductive one and it would be lovely if the hashtag’s promise were fulfilled. But how could it be when the spokesperson, though she happens to be the ripe old age of 56, also happens to be the embodiment of beauty culture’s toxic and distorted ideal—tall, thin, exceptionally fit, and fair with wide blue eyes and long fine hair—representing, therefore, an unattainable goal for most of us?
The campaign’s online messaging…
Menopause has never been sexier. Ask Halle Berry and Salma Hayek
Mature (definition): Owning and embracing the changes in your body
Aging (definition): Living your best life and loving every second of it…
…is that aging, for women, is a competition (especially with ourselves)—and if we want to succeed at it, we’d better do it well. At least as well as Halle and Salma, who are so privileged, financially and otherwise, that the idea of competing with them is almost sadistically unfair. The fact is, for most of us, going through menopause is the opposite of sexy. How was yours? Care to repeat it in a corset and stilettos? I no more desire to embrace my slightly brittle bones than you do. And the moment you try to love every second of your life, I guarantee you’ll find yourself in a cascade of seconds depreciating in pleasure. In other words, this #LetsGetOldTogether message is a warm invitation—to feel like a failure. As a brilliant young friend commented, the campaign doesn’t seem interested in redefining what it means to be aging; it seems to be interested in asserting that mature women can be hot—so what’s your excuse if you’re not?
If you watch the video, you might also notice Paulina is never in the company of another mature squab. Instead, she’s ogled by young women at the pool and at the gym, where she outlasts her younger, sweatier, and less attractive fitness aficionados. The older women (and many of the younger ones) I know long ago eschewed that kind of competition. Most of my 50+ friends would find both situations laughable: Tossing our hair as we stride around a pool in a string bikini? What? The last time I competed with a 40-year-old at the gym, I fucked up my hip so bad I was six weeks in physical therapy. And I was in fine shape. Lesson learned.
I recognize Geller’s good intentions. (And I love her makeup.) I believe she would like all of us to be happier as we mature. @lauragellerbeauty features many ordinary-looking older women and some of the messaging is more benign. But the problem is that you can’t appoint someone who appears to have largely avoided the aesthetic snags of aging as a role model for people who are seeing those snags in themselves and probably not loving them. It’s dishonest messaging. Paulina—and other aesthetically-gifted women (by certain standards) like her—still evokes an unattainable beauty standard we’re all accustomed to, no matter what she tells us about how tough it is to feel invisible. As the shrewd entrepreneur Stewy said in a recent Succession episode, “If you jump out on someone on the road in the middle of the night, hit them on the head, and shout, ‘I’m not ambushing you,’ it’s still a fuckin’ ambush.”
Val Asks You
Don’t be shy! What’s your most vexing or intractable appearance issue? Send your beauty-related questions to valeriemonroe@substack.com. If I don’t have a good answer, I’ll find someone who does.
Thank you for tearing this latest body beautiful sickness to shreds. I was wondering when the beauty industry would get here since aging baby boomers represent a HUGE cash cow if they can just find the right hook. Sorry if I sound cynical, but I spent a good portion of my youth torturing myself (eating disorders, addiction to exercise, alcoholism - I had it bad) over my looks, trying to look like the latest image the marketers fed us. I never dreamed that my real beauty lay within. What a waste of talent, creativity, and life! I wish I could take my younger self in my arms and say you are GORGEOUS as you are. Now go out and do what you love and show others how to do the same.
What's needed here is a very loud and boisterous party in which the emperor (or emperoress in this case) is shown to have no clothes and we all get together to start our own clothing line designed to celebrate all kinds of women of all colors, all kinds of skin, at all stages of the aging process.
I will stop raging now, but it really does tick me off. Thank you for letting me go on. Hugs.
Val! Bravo!! I feel ambushed by Paulina and exhausted by Emily R and I am ACTUALLY now invisible (recently confirmed at the first wedding I attended since dawn of Covid) and I applaud your ability to sum it all up. Now, wait, what do I need to do to my face???