Words by Nikki Peach<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/08\/imago0070458989h-scaled.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”BAFTA Film Awards 2014 – London Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arriving for the 2014 EE British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”107px” custom_padding=”||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”] \u2018We, especially women, don\u2019t allow ourselves to age gracefully. We don\u2019t allow other women to age gracefully.\u2019 It\u2019s a confronting statement from Cameron Diaz, from an interview which has recently resurfaced, but it\u2019s one which still feels depressingly relevant today.<\/p>\n In an interview with the LA Review of Books in 2014, Cameron Diaz discussed her book, \u2018The Body Book\u2019, about what it means to be healthy and why she wants to change the way people \u2013 mainly women \u2013 approach ageing. We say \u2018mainly women\u2019 because men are not denied the right to age in the way that women are. They are not routinely criticised for their frown lines, called out for getting Botox, or pulled apart online when they talk about getting older. It\u2019s something that happens to women, and it’s something that women do to each other.<\/p>\n A clip from the interview has recently resurfaced on TikTok and \u2013 unsurprisingly \u2013 the comments reflect how little progress we have made. A lot of the comments on the viral video point out that it\u2019s \u2018easy for her to say\u2019 that we shouldn\u2019t touch our looks because she\u2019s so \u2018naturally beautiful\u2019 anyway, but isn\u2019t that just her point? Unfortunately, no woman is exempt from the illogical beauty standards that pull us in different directions on a daily basis. Women are allowed to age, sure, but only in a certain way that doesn\u2019t feel affronting to anyone else. Then again, if women successfully hide all signs of ageing, they shouldn\u2019t also dress younger than their age, because that\u2019s tacky. Instead, they must tread the impossible line between maintaining \u2018youthful\u2019 beauty \u2013 taut, smooth skin, a toned body and coloured hair \u2013 and ageing in a way that\u2019s deemed acceptable. Sadly, this is as true for celebrities as it is for everyone else.<\/p>\n In the clip Cameron goes on to say, \u2018We feel like if we\u2019re not how we were when we were 25 years old, if we don\u2019t look the same, that we have failed in some way. We have not done our job by staying in a stagnant place. I always want to be changing and I always want to be getting older. I always want to be getting wise. That, to me, is a privilege.\u2019<\/p>\n She then points out: \u2018Not everybody gets to do it. The only alternative is that you\u2019re dead.\u2019 It may sound curt, but it\u2019s probably not something we give enough thought. Ageing is something that everyone should appreciate as a sign that they are still alive. And if we all hate our appearances and focus on the negatives now, when we\u2019re at our youngest, then we have a long, long road ahead. (If we\u2019re lucky).\u00a0<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}”] What\u2019s particularly alarming is that one commenter admits, \u2018I\u2019m 23 and feel like I\u2019m old and I\u2019m terrified. There\u2019s no reason anyone should feel that way.\u2019 In the original video, Cameron Diaz, now 51, was 43. Today, there are girls 20 years younger than she was describing the same feelings of inadequacy. This comment doesn\u2019t exist in isolation either. There is a rising trend of age anxiety amongst women in their teens and early 20s on TikTok \u2013 women who have grown up with social media, face tuning and are targeted by anti-ageing products and trends before they even hit puberty. If 23-year-olds are worried about being old, when will it ever end?<\/p>\n That\u2019s why the simple act of ageing has become somewhat revolutionary. For anyone, particularly those in the public eye, to embrace it is still something to behold. Take Pamela Anderson, whose \u2018no make-up era\u2019 started in September 2023 when she attended The Row show in Paris without a scrap of make-up on and it sent the internet crazy. The former Playboy model chose to bare her natural (and still incredibly beautiful) face, and it made headline news.<\/p>\n Speaking to Allure she said, \u2018It wasn\u2019t a political statement, I just wanted to have my little weird face sticking out of the top of those great clothes. [\u2026] My intention is to accept where you are in your beauty journey.\u2019<\/p>\n If anyone knows what it\u2019s like to be at the mercy of other people\u2019s beauty ideals, it\u2019s Pamela. She added, \u2018I\u2019ve tried Botox, I\u2019ve tried filler, but I haven\u2019t had anything like that for over three or four years. [\u2026] I look like a different person\u2026 and I thought why am I doing this shit? So I\u2019m free and clear of that stuff and I look like myself again.\u2019<\/p>\n While she has been praised for embracing her natural self, Pamela\u2019s choice shocked a lot of people. And still does. In June, she posted a make-up free video of her skincare routine, and the comment section is, again, unsurprisingly disappointing. Someone commented, \u2018Sorry, she still needs some mascara or something to bring her eyes out.\u2019\u00a0 Another wrote, \u2018Wtf??, are you 80 years old???\u2019 Another added, \u2018Sucks to get old, huh?\u2019 Pamela is 57 \u2013 it\u2019s possible we\u2019ve got to a point where we can\u2019t even fully grasp what different ages look like.<\/p>\n \u00a0Let\u2019s not forget, those who take a different route are chastised as well. Jennifer Aniston, for example, faces a daily torrent of abuse for her changing face. Following tabloid reports that she\u2019d had a $50,000 face lift, the Friends star has been called \u2018puffy\u2019, \u2018a freak\u2019 and had people ask, \u2018what on earth has she done to her face?????\u2019<\/p>\n The same thing happened to Meg Ryan, 62, who was deemed \u2018unrecognisable\u2019 by tabloids when she attended a documentary screening in New York last summer. Immediately, a spate of articles questioning what surgery she\u2019d had done and how different she looked followed. To the interest or benefit of whom?<\/p>\n This is quite simply not something that happens to men in even remotely the same way. Men aren\u2019t interrogated about their appearance or asked if their decision not to dye their grey hair is a political statement. Men don\u2019t lose out on roles because of their age, because it\u2019s not thought of as important. In a Vulture study about the age of female leads cast opposite men in their 40s and 50s, it found that even the oldest male actors are rarely paired with women their own age \u2013 or even women older than their mid-30s. \u2018Instead, you get 57-year-old Denzel Washington paired off with 35-year-old Rebecca Hall. Or 50-year-old Tom Cruise with 33-year-old Olga Kurylenko. Or 50-year-old Steve Carell with 29-year-old Olivia Wilde,\u2019 it reads. And people have the audacity to question why women want to look younger.<\/p>\n Resisting this toxic and pervasive idea that women aren\u2019t allowed to age is something that, sadly, we must all do together. We must resist it on a personal level, and we must resist it when we\u2019re judging other women. It\u2019s really a waste of everyone\u2019s time \u2013 time, as Cameron rightly points out, that we\u2019re lucky to have.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] IMAGE: IMAGO<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" why Cameron Diaz is right to speak out about ageing in Hollywood Words by Nikki Peach\u2018We, especially women, don\u2019t allow ourselves to age gracefully. We don\u2019t allow other women to age gracefully.\u2019 It\u2019s a confronting statement from Cameron Diaz, from an interview which has recently resurfaced, but it\u2019s one which still feels depressingly relevant today. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3791"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3799,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions\/3799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘The simple act of ageing has become somewhat revolutionary’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|||0px||” global_colors_info=”{}”]