Monday Beauty Poll
By Glinda
Products are always looking for ways to stand out, and crazy/tacky/suggestive naming is one way to do that. 48% of you said that a crazy product name might make you pause for a moment, but wouldn’t deter you from purchasing if you liked it enough. 28% could care less about what the name is, and a whopping 24% of you took a hard-line stance, saying that you wouldn’t pay for something with a wacky name. It would seem then, that almost a quarter of you have never bought OPI nail polish.
Today I want to talk about aging. 73 year old Jane Fonda was photographed at Cannes, above, looking like a zillion bucks. The Pucci dress worked wonders for her figure, and her face does not really look like that of your typical 73 year old woman. Jane has been honest about having plastic surgery, so I’m not sure she should be held up as a shining beacon of how to age gracefully. Or should she?
May 16th, 2011 at 4:58 am
I’m thinking she’s a good example of plastic surgery with some restraint. Her skin is astonishingly smooth for her age, but I know a couple of (very careful and genetically gifted) ladies in their upper 60s with similarly pristine facial elasticity and no plastic surgery. And I like that she still has a few creases under her eyes – like a token gesture to aging – when she could have gone all Bride of Wildenstein.
But you’ve got to give it to her in that she still looks like herself. Many others that dip their toes into the Botox pool can’t say the same.
May 16th, 2011 at 8:08 am
“Ridiculous” and “wacky” are not exactly the same.
For example, I will never pay my hard-earned money to purchase a book in the “For Dummies” line, because I’m not a dummy and I do not wish to be called one, much less pay for the insult.
On the other hand, getting a pedicure with OPI’s “The Thrill of Brazil” polish, as I did just before my trip to Leblon Beach, is pleasantly amusing.
May 16th, 2011 at 9:10 am
I like that she’s honest about having had work done, since the last thing we need is another person out there promoting unrealistic beauty standards (“Oh, no, I just naturally aged this way!”, or Bristol “it was corrective surgery” Palin).
She looks great, and doesn’t have any issues telling people how she got that way. Good for her, I say.
May 16th, 2011 at 11:02 am
She is a good example because GOOD plastic surgery should just leave you looking like you just are really relaxed and got a great night’s sleep the night before. 🙂
Being honest that she had the work done is key as is not getting SO much done she looks like she’s plastic.
Also, Jane dresses appropriately for her age (and her rockin’ bod!) She is not “mutton dressed as lamb” at all. That too, is part of aging gracefully!
May 16th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
She has the money and the time and the inclination to look this way. “Aging gracefully” doesn’t apply to public figures like her…she looks great, but let’s not attach any positive values to it. It is what it is in a celebrity culture.
And yes, good plastic surgery is a boon.
May 16th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Meh, I’ve been off Jane ever since she ‘fessed’ up to having massive eating disorders the entire time she was making millions during her ‘workout and look like me” phase in the 80’s. I know she’s not the first, or last do do that – but I’m not a fan of anybody who makes the millions on pushing unrealistic goals of ‘if you just work hard enough you can look like me” – when she is hugging the toilet the whole time.
May 16th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
I guess one is assuming that we look no futher than her “plastic” face or perhaps even her body to determine if she looks her age. Well, last time I checked, puking wasn’t classified as an exercise and one thing they can’t change is her hands…look at them…they look her age.
May 17th, 2011 at 6:48 am
I wouldn’t be so quick to write a person off because of an eating disorder. Yes, vomiting after eating is a symptom, but so is doing exercise two or three times a day when one is already thin and going on about that being “healthy”. It’s a bit nuts to say, “okay, Jane!” when she’s running around like a misguided chicken and asking you to do it too, and then criticizing her because the same impulse that’s making her exercise all the time is pushing her to vomit up every meal. If anything you have to give her credit for exposing the fact that eating disorders are deadly and rampant and they are often disguised as “healthy”, but the celebrity culture we emulate demands the disease of almost everyone in it. All she did was tell us that not even she (with great beauty, talent, lots of money, tons of family connections in the business–very long and impressive ones) would be employed if she didn’t stay slim and young looking despite everything.
As for her hands looking old, well, she’s in her seventies. Her hands look like seventy year old hands. Better that than the alternative.
May 17th, 2011 at 9:24 am
@ Thea and Pam: Wow, a lot of vitriol here directed at someone who suffered from a legitimate mental disorder. Do you all go around telling people with depression to just cheer up already and stop being such a drag? Yikes.
May 17th, 2011 at 11:04 am
I have a lot of sympathy for people with eating disorders, hey, I lived in LA in the 80’s – but the thing is, Jane didn’t go public about her eating disorder until AFTER she’d made her workout millions AND needed a new soundbite to get her back in the media years later….so while I sympathize with people suffering from eating disorders, it’s a different issue from being asked to sympathize from those who create the environment and pressure for others to develop eating disorders and then make money off them.
May 17th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Because obviously she was able to just turn off her eating disorder once she’d made tons of money! Isn’t that why everyone gets them? I don’t suppose it’s at all possible she developed an eating disorder due to the pressure put on her by the industry to continue being the workout queen cash cow she was, and that she was just as much the victim of the environment and pressures as anybody else. Wow, I sure feel better putting on my judgy pants now!
Just because you make millions of dollars off your own image doesn’t mean you’re any less of a victim. And maybe it’s possible it took her that long to come to terms with what she’d been through to the point where she could talk about it publicly. I don’t know her life, but neither do you, and I think you’re being awfully judgmental of someone who, as previously stated, was suffering from a legitimate mental disorder.
Really, this isn’t about Jane Fonda, since truthfully I don’t have opinions about her one way or the other. It just really gets my dander up to see such nastiness (Pam moreso than Thea) directed at people who suffer from eating disorders, like it’s their fault for getting them in the first place, and being a “bad example.”
Some people are naturally very thin, which is fine, and some people are average sized or larger but have eating disorders, which is awful but nobody would accuse them of presenting a bad example as long as their issue remains hidden, because they don’t “look like” they have a problem. But when someone is both thin and has an eating disorder, suddenly they’re the root of the problem? I just don’t buy it.
May 17th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Actually you can get hand lifts now – they pump in fat from your abdomen or butt but that takes me to a new peeve……
Can we stop making fun of women’s hands and feet because they, goddess forbid look older? There has been a spate of postings in other, less gentle blogs than the Manolo’s lately where they do closeup on some hapless actress’s feet, while she is standing in 6 inch heels and then mock her for having visible veins showing. Heaven forfend women should have a visible circulatory system! Ditto the closeup shots of women’s hands – along with commentary.
I fully expect my hands will look like monkey’s paws when I’m 75. I can only hope the glare from the honking big diamonds I hope to have by then will blur the view for the critics. If not, they’ll make nifty brass knuckes 🙂