Awards season has group chats buzzing this year.
I love awards shows. I love analyzing the gowns on the red carpet and being pleasantly surprised when an actor lands a solid joke during an acceptance speech. I spent much of my early career as a beauty editor eating takeout in the office on Sunday nights during awards season, waiting for potential viral moments and ranking the celebrities’ hair and makeup. While I am thankful to now be able to watch from the comfort of my own couch, I have formed a soft spot for these often-boring events. This year, as a 43-year-old woman, I found the Golden Globes to be particularly delightful.
Host Nikki Glaser, 40, delivered big time; Ali Wong won the award for best standup performance for her comedy special about divorce and dating in your 40s; and all the women nominated in the best actor in a motion picture drama category were over the age of 45.
Then there was Demi Moore, who, at 62, won her first ever award, best female actor in a motion picture comedy or musical, for her role in The Substance, and delivered an acceptance speech that gave us all the feels. (She has since taken home a Critic’s Choice and SAG Award, and is the favorite to win the Oscar this Sunday.)
“In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, or pretty enough, or skinny enough, or successful enough, or basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me that you will never be enough, but you could know the value of your worth, if you put down the measuring stick,” she said in her signature raspy voice seemingly fighting back tears.
The audience felt it, America felt it; Moore deserved this. When I put up a celebratory post on our Jenny Instagram, floods of people reposted it, offering their congrats to the star as well. It was her moment.
But one particular repost stuck in my mind. Glynnis MacNicol, the author of the memoir I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself wrote: “I’m happy for her, but also the fact that women have to punish (deform?) themselves in so many ways to appear to not have aged in order to get recognized as they age does not exactly feel like a victory to me.”
I do not think Moore had to get the amount of plastic surgery she has endured to be considered for an award (Fernanda Torres, who won best female actor in a drama that night seems to have aged quite naturally) and this certainly was a role that called for a woman who is battling her aging demons with the knife. But, I did find that something didn’t sit quite right with a person giving advice about accepting oneself physically, yet not appearing to have done the same. And when I look at her face, even though I find her to be likable and charming (she’s Demi Moore!), it puts me a bit on edge.
Moore has spoken about her past issues with disordered eating in interviews, and even published a memoir in 2019 that highlighted many of her struggles with body image. But when it comes to speaking about The Substance—a film about a woman who mutilates herself to stay youthful—although she says she can relate to the character in some ways, she mostly speaks of how she now, finally, feels comfortable in her own skin. While that is all I want for her, there is a disconnect here, and a missed opportunity for a more nuanced discussion about the pressures of aging.
The other movie everyone is talking about.
Right before the Golden Globes, I saw Babygirl (Nicole Kidman was also nominated). While I am actually in the I liked it camp for this polarizing film, there is no way not to be affected by 57-year-old Kidman’s altered appearance in this, or any of the dizzying amount of shows and movies that she has starred in over the past few years.
“Nicole naked was frightening to me in Babygirl. Pulling skin and fake boobs and six pack and bird arms…and then there’s her face,” a friend of mine wrote in our group chat.
“It’s disorienting to look at her,” another responded.
While Kidman also seems like a kind and generous celebrity, even a bit of a badass, who I don’t want to hate on, it’s hard to disagree.
When I brought up this idea—older women having a moment but still not looking like older women—to the Jenny team, texting that I think there is something there worth covering, I wasn’t met with much enthusiasm. They didn’t really think there was an angle—at least a new one—actresses having to be beautiful is a tale as old as time. “What is the story?” one texted. “Hollywood likes young and beautiful, no matter the cost. It’s been a truism since Sunset Boulevard.”
At first, I thought perhaps that’s right, what’s there to say about Hollywood wanting women to look young that hasn’t been said before? But the more I mulled it over, and the more I brought up the subject with friends, it did feel like something different was happening here. We are seeing more and more roles for women over 40—which is something to be celebrated—but the appearance of the women who are often cast in these roles is causing a visceral reaction among other middle-aged women. The way Kidman or Moore or whoever’s appearance makes us feel physically, or about ourselves, or the state of the world is worth talking about.
I reached out to MacNicol for an interview and she took it a step further.
“In all of these conversations, it’s necessary to separate the individual from the culture,” she started off our phone conversation saying. “I have no thoughts on how Demi Moore or Nicole Kidman choose to live their life vis-à-vis what they do with their body or what expectations of youth they are trying to meet. I don’t have to survive in Hollywood and holding an individual accountable for that feels unnecessary, short-sighted, and cruel—it’s not the issue.”
The issue, she says, is the cultural inability to allow women to age. “Saying that is just the way it is in Hollywood is lazy and sort of cowardly, and releases anyone from responsibility,” she says. “We are responsible too; what we consume and what we buy into is all a part of this thing.”
For MacNicol, it’s not even just about youth anymore or wanting to feel younger. “It’s demanding that women look juvenile—the age when they are still quite vulnerable—and maintain that their whole life. It strips away any celebration of women at the height of their power, at the height of their agency.”
This is what really got under MacNicol’s skin about Babygirl—she may be the ringleader of the I didn’t like it camp. “This speaks to what I see in all these stories about older women sleeping with younger men: the women themselves, the way their personality is constructed, the way their choices are constructed, they are still behaving as though they are teenagers.”
We can’t escape politics.
As most things do these days, our conversation quickly turned political. “You just have to glance at the news to understand this is a country in a headlong rush to strip all women of any access to power over their bodies, over their political choices, over anything. These things are all connected in alarming ways and calling them out at every turn is really necessary.”
And not just in Hollywood: “If you look at the Trump administration, and see the women who are allowed to occupy seats of power, they all have had such obvious work done on their face in ways that look, to me, cartoonish,” MacNicol continues. “This surgically altering the body, as a physical uniform, is now overtly political. You are signaling allegiance to a certain party with a certain look.”
When I bring up the topic with my friends in our group chat, things get political quickly there, too.
One wrote: “It’s a moment of cultural anti-feminism. Keep the women spending and starving instead of thinking and acting.”
“Keep us self obsessed to steer us away from the oligarchy we are living in,” wrote another.
As for Moore and Kidman, like MacNicol, my friends put the onus on society, not them. “Which we are each a little part of,” one wrote. “And they’re slowly changing our brains to accept female subjugation, distraction, and self-hatred as normal.”
Control over women’s bodies is nothing new, but the way it has been implemented has changed. “It’s increasingly expensive now, and requires surgical intervention,” says MacNicol. “It’s not control of a woman’s body in the sense of, you can’t wear pants or you can’t leave the house without lipstick: It’s you have to appear to remain at an age where you signal with your appearance that your primary motivation is sexual appeal to a male gaze.”
But what about a woman who is in control of her body? A woman who is in control of her sexuality? Like the women in the recent article, “Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex,” that references a 2019 study stating that, “many women in middle age and beyond are now finding their ‘sexual voice,’ experimenting and claiming the right to be satisfied.”
For many, these women are pretty goddamn scary.
“This idea that women post-childbearing years have hit their sexual prime and are sexually viable, can get what they want, and attract who they want, is so terrifying to power structures,” says MacNicol. “We have financial agency, we are out from under the punishment and risk of pregnancy, and we represent an incredibly powerful segment of the population that is very hard to suppress.”
MacNicol thinks what we are seeing right now, with these extreme physical alterations, is a last stand of disempowerment. “We are only going to represent you as looking younger; making you do things to remain younger that will bankrupt you, that are painful, because you can’t possibly occupy a space of power at an age when you are beyond our reach in so many ways.”
The plastic surgery paradox.
When I asked plastic surgeon Javad Sajan, MD of Allure Esthetic Plastic Surgery about what middle-aged women are coming to him for these days, his answer showed things in a less extreme light. “Overall, women want more subtle, natural results than they did a few years ago,” he told me. “There has also been an uptick in interest in non-surgical options such as Botox and fillers, especially among middle-aged women who want to refresh their look while still looking mature and not overdoing it.”
He also has a different point of view on Moore’s plastic surgery. “In my opinion, she has had several years of well-done non-surgical injections and skin treatments,” he says. And although he then listed off the other procedures she has most likely had done—including a facelift, neck lift, and brow lift—he says she has “let herself age naturally, especially along her nasolabial folds, and she is sometimes seen with crow’s feet. But good skincare and strategically placed filler have helped disguise the more advanced signs of aging along her midface.”
It’s all about perspective in Sajan’s eyes. “There will always be celebrities and people who take it too far, but my definition of too far, theirs, and yours will all differ,” he says. “I do think plastic surgery is unfairly demonized because we often only notice it when it’s especially bad. However, we should not criticize those who choose not to have plastic surgery either.”
Middle-aged women who choose to age naturally don’t scare everybody. In fact, many young men find them quite enticing. “Every [straight] woman you talk to who is single at the age of 45 will tell you they are overwhelmed with attention from young men,” says MacNicol. “In my experience, what is appealing about older women to a 25-year-old guy is their level of self-confidence… Even if you haven’t been naked in front of someone for a while, or are a little unsure about this dynamic, you still come to it with the confidence that age brings. You’ve had a life, and you’ve made decisions. That is the appealing part, and Hollywood’s inability to consider that is very telling.”
This is clearly a jab at Babygirl. Both MacNicol and my friend Caty (another card-carrying member of team I hate Babygirl) spoke of how the film may have been good, at least better, if someone else was cast as the lead. While The Substance, for me, was too slow, too graphic, and too on-the-nose, I am happy it exists in the world as a cultural artifact. Moore was perfectly cast and I would not change a thing, even if I will never watch it again. But I see their point with Babygirl.
“It would be far more interesting with another actor, and for me, that’s someone who looks very different,” says Caty. “The women whose faces and bodies seem more natural—I’m thinking of Kate Winslet or Melanie Lynskey.”
MacNicol would love to see Tracee Ellis Ross or Olivia Colman cast in these types of roles. All these women are younger than Kidman.
“I kept thinking how radical and interesting Babygirl would have been if they cast Olivia Colman.” she says. “I just want to see the agency and confidence that comes with age—and it doesn’t have to mean a woman who knows everything that is going to happen, or doesn’t experience doubt, or worry or anxiety, but that she is a fully-formed woman who has sexual agency.”
Young men want to see us, and more importantly, we want to see us.
This is not to say we don’t all sometimes stare in the mirror analyzing our sagging necks and crow’s feet wishing there was a quick fix; or on some days, simply avoid mirrors altogether. It’s not to say we don’t ever spend money on fancy creams or Botox and fantasize about getting a face lift that we can’t afford. (“Movie stars don’t make me want to get work done but getting old kinda does!” says my friend.) We are all victims of what has been programmed in our brains since we started watching our mothers nitpick their own “flaws” as children: beauty is youth, aging is death. And death is scary.
“Aging brings existential anxieties about mortality and loss of identity,” psychotherapist Janet Bayramyan, LCSW from Road to Wellness Therapy tells me. “Society’s negative portrayal of aging amplifies these fears, leading individuals to seek ways to preserve their youth as a form of control and security. This obsession has profound mental health implications, contributing to anxiety, body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, and ageism—both self-directed and societal. It also distorts our relationship with time and identity, creating a disconnect between how we look and how we feel or who we truly are.”
Who hasn’t said, “I don’t feel my age” or “I still feel like I’m 32”? Seems innocuous until you think about it in these terms. Why can’t we just feel the age that we are?
When I was in California in January celebrating my mom’s 80th birthday, my 15-year-old niece’s girlfriend was astonished to discover that my mom had just turned 80, saying she does not look her age at all. Admittedly, I hope her youthful genes are passed on to me as I enter my golden years, but also her intellect. After the comment, though gracious with the programmed-already teen, she referenced the Gloria Steinem quote after a reporter told her that she didn’t look 40 (over 50 years ago!): “This is what 40 looks like. … We’ve been lying for so long, who would know?” Thanks Mom, it’s nice to see what 80 looks like.
A breath of fresh air.
Out for drinks with a couple friends the other evening—both of whom get Botox a couple times a year and dream of getting fancy laser facials like the rest of us—I broached the topic once again. One relayed her experience of watching Kidman in The Undoing, and how she felt each time her costar Noma Dumezweni, who is also in her mid-50s, came on screen.
“Every time the camera would cut to [Dumezweni] I would just feel this huge sense of relief, like I would literally feel tension in my body just fade away,” she told us. “It took me a minute to realize that it was seeing her natural, animated, human face after spending so much time with Kidman’s, whose face—especially in this series—felt so stiff, taut, and unrealistic. I hadn’t realized how uneasy Kidman’s ‘work’ was making me until that point. I just needed to see a human face.”
Bayramyan says this reaction makes sense: “When a middle-aged woman sees another woman on screen with a natural face—one that reflects the real aging process—it can feel like a physical and emotional relief,” she explains. “This reaction isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about emotional and social connection. We are highly attuned to facial expressions as a way to read emotions, relate to others, and gauge authenticity. Faces that have been altered too much can sometimes seem less expressive or off in a way that makes it harder to connect with the person on screen.” She believes this could explain why some women experience a kind of cognitive dissonance when they see actors their own age who have erased the visible markers of aging.
MacNicol feels similarly off-kilter when watching Kidman or the like on screen. “I find it distracting and cumbersome and it just makes me so grateful when I come across a face that hasn’t had any work done to it,” she says. “I recognize beauty in that. I get that very deep instinctual sense; I think that is a human instinct of recognizing the truth of life. Age is living, and you are trying to remove lived experience from a body, as if there is shame to having a life.”
Of course, this leads us to Pamela Anderson—who is the same age as Kidman and who also was nominated for a Golden Globe but did not get an Oscar nod this year—who forgoes makeup at awards shows and no longer gets any work done.
“It’s worth noting that Anderson’s decision goes beyond just rejecting cosmetic surgery—it’s about rejecting the objectification she experienced throughout her career,” says Bayramyan. “Her image has long been commodified, and by embracing her authentic self, she is reclaiming her agency and asserting control over how her body is viewed.”
I wanted to see her in The Last Showgirl, a film I was told actually addresses aging in a real way, before writing this piece. But it is only playing in one theater in all of New York City (if that doesn’t say something on its own…) and I was unable to get there in time. So once again, I turned to my trusty group chat.
“Loved looking at Pam’s face in last show girl,” one texted. “She is so beautiful and expressive.”
“So refreshing,” replied another. “And she’s always been a sex icon! I love that she resisted.”
“Yeah it’s a lot more rich and interesting.”
“It’s amazing how revolutionary it is to just to not fuck with your face as an actress.”
Marie Claire recently published a story featuring the directors of The Substance, The Last Showgirl, and Nightbitch with the Instagram headline, “Is Hollywood Finally Ready to Embrace Female Aging?”
It seems we are taking baby steps in that direction. For MacNicol, we’re embracing it on paper, though not visually. But perhaps this is just the first wave? “Hollywood is able to embrace women that are technically a certain age, but don’t appear to be aging,” she says. “If Hollywood could embrace the appearance of age, the next frontier could be really interesting and dynamic.”
Bayramyan agrees. “If we see more women in film with ‘real’ faces—those that show wrinkles, scars, and other signs of natural aging—it would help normalize the aging process. This could shift the cultural narrative that aging is something to be feared or hidden. Instead of pushing women to ‘fix’ themselves, it could encourage authenticity and individuality.”
My friends also seem to have hope; I might, too.
“I do think we’ll live to see the anti-work ricochet—especially as older women keep showcasing how dreadful years of work can be, on your face, and self-esteem,” says Caty. “Self-esteem is always an inside job, and no amount of work can fix it; there will always be something else to tweak.”
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Megan Cahn started her editorial career at Sassy’s less irreverent younger cousin, CosmoGIRL. She went on to work in the women’s lifestyle space at publications such as ELLE, Refinery29, Cup of Jo, and Best Life. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, cat, and five-year-old daughter, who has adopted her childhood Cabbage Patch Kids collection.
