Actress Justine Bateman is doing the interview circuit, but it’s not to promote a new movie or a “Family Ties” reboot. She’s talking about her looks and how they fit with her age although not with how Hollywood, and some of society, views aging.
“I think I look rad,” Bateman, 57, recently said during an interview with 60 Minutes Australia. “I think my face represents who I am. I like it. And so that’s basically the end of the road.”
Bateman also said on the Today Show that any fears people have about their looks affecting their personal or professional lives already existed when they were younger. Once she got herself “on the other side of what that fear was for me,” Bateman began to share with other people how to embrace aging.
How did we get to the point where we think “a woman’s face is broken and has to be fixed” Bateman wondered. In her 2021 book “Face: One Square Foot of Skin,” Bateman pieced together several fictional accounts of how women see themselves and how their appearance is viewed by others. In doing so, Bateman sought to reveal the negative perceptions (from inside and outside) that impact women as they age.
Bateman’s face looks like so many “regular” women in her age group: weathered, handsome, wrinkled, wise. For Bateman, the wrinkles represent experience, not obsolescence, and she wants other women to see themselves the same way.
On the other side of the aging coin, we have Madonna Louise Ciccone. At age 64, she appears to be in a mad race to turn back the hands of time while reinventing her physical features.
She revealed her new “look” during the recent Grammy’s, causing some viewers to do a double and even a triple take. The extra-chiseled cheekbones, the puffy lips, the skin that seems like it’s been stretched and wrapped in cellophane are all a departure from the Material Girl in the picture below.
First, let’s note that it’s everyone’s right to age how they choose. If Justine Bateman wants to go au naturel and Madonna prefers herself avec des changements, so be it. We can, however, discuss what these disparate approaches say about people, particularly women, and the way society perceives them.
Just the Way You Are
Since playing the cute, sassy and spacey Mallory Keaton on “Family Ties,” Justine Bateman has found success as an actress, writer and director. She has been married to businessman Mark Fluent since 2001 and they have two children. In 2016, Bateman graduated from UCLA with a degree in computer science and digital media management.
In 2021, Bateman told Entertainment Tonight, "Now a lot of younger women are looking at older women in the public eye... and they see that they're getting their faces cut up and plastic injected in and toxins and everything. So if you're 20, 25 years old, you look at that and you go, 'Oh, I guess that's what I have to do.’ Or you see these women who seem frightened about looking older and then you think, 'Oh… I don't want to be frightened. I don't want that to be my future.'"
Bateman has adopted the attitude that talent and tenacity have more to do with success than looks. "I think things are going to come my way whether my face is wrinkled or my skin is loose on my neck and under my eyes, or not," she told Glamour in 2021. "Am I going to enjoy it or not enjoy it?”
Her face, she says, is evidence of a life lived, with happiness, sadness and everything in between. "I think about how many tears have come through this face, how much joy, how much exhaustion or exuberance – that's an incredible collection of experience that this really small area of my body has taken on," she has said.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone saw aging this way? That can admittedly be hard to do, especially for people in an industry like acting or singing, where “good looks” count for so much.
Who’s That Girl?
Madonna exploded onto the world stage around the same time that “Family Ties” was on the air. She moved to New York in the late 1970s to pursue dance, but she eventually found fame as a singer. Her debut album, “Madonna,” produced three top-10 hits (“Borderline,” “Lucky Star” and “Holiday”) and inspired millions of girls to adopt her unique look.
Madonna’s ability to continually transform herself every few years ensured that her image remained fresh and her fans always found something new to admire. Even as some early fans dropped off during some of the transformations, more fans jumped on board.
You can only reinvent yourself for so long, however, before the novelty wears off and the real you is buried under multiple revisions. Maybe you’re not even sure who the real you is at some point. In Madonna’s case, the need to reinvent seemed so ingrained in her persona, it had to go beyond wardrobe and evolve into plastic surgery.
Did anyone tell Madonna she had to chisel her face to stay relevant? Maybe not directly, but as a pop star now in retirement age, she may have been feeling the pressure. And that can be especially impactful for female celebrities. While the wear and tear on the faces of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and other senior-citizen rock stars don’t seem to phase their fans, that is not necessarily the case for aging performers like Madonna.
Then again, is that a perception that Madonna feels rather than sees? In other words, does Madonna’s need to update her looks stem from her own sense of what she believes the outside world is saying about her?
Madonna herself might be answering that question for us. According to the Toronto Sun, Madonna was so taken aback by the negative feedback from her most recent plastic surgery, she’s planning to reverse what she had done through further surgery. As the singer reportedly undergoes “procedures that will revive her natural features,” we have to feel a little sorry for the Material Girl.
Even as she has sealed her destiny as a pop icon and a trendsetter, Madonna can’t seem to settle into her current role as an older pop icon. That doesn’t mean she’s obsolete; in fact, it’s wonderful to use the wisdom gained from past failures and successes to catapult yourself into the next phase of your life.
What Madonna’s plastic surgeries tell other people in her age bracket, especially women, is that there’s something wrong with getting older. A constant need to turn back the clock suggests fear of aging and losing relevance.
Not all cosmetic enhancements are inherently bad. An eye lift or a botox injection isn’t the same thing as sculpting your whole face into an unrecognizable amalgam of plastic perfection. Beneath all the injections and incisions, the real person still lurks.
The question is, do you like that person inside you? If you do, does it matter if the packaging is a bit crinkled? We know that it really shouldn’t. Perhaps Madonna will discover that as well once she reverses her plastic surgery.
Right on!