Aging and Agelessness
Here’s the thing about Bernadette Peters’ birthday. As my friends and family will confirm, I celebrate and meditate on Bernadette Peters as performer, activist, public figure, and diva on a daily basis; for me, her birthday is just the one day a year that everyone else is on the same page as me. It is also a day when more people weigh in on her more than almost any other—exceptions being noteworthy events, such as the Tony Awards last year, when people marveled at her re-wearing a dress that Bob Mackie first designed for her in the 1980s. The algorithms which curate my Instagram and Twitter feeds reflect my interest in Bernadette, and, consequently, on her birthday I am subjected to these opinions whether I like it or not.
I saw less of this than I expected, but on the eve of her birthday I was dreading an influx of posts praising Bernadette because she “doesn’t age.” I detest this kind of rhetoric which celebrates women for their youthful appearance because I believe it reinforces the idea that once a woman is no longer easily reduced to an object of sexual desire that she is no longer valuable.
I was somewhat cagey about this when I wrote about Bernadette as “diva,” but anyone who is paying attention knows that Bernadette’s youthful appearance is not solely because of good Sicilian genes and staying out of the sun; she has undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries. This is why it looks like she “doesn’t age.” You, too, could “defy age” if you had the money to invest in these procedures.
I know it’s a little bit tacky to discuss, but I think it’s important context to consider when examining what message people actually send when they celebrate older women who have had cosmetic surgery for their youthfulness.
I cannot speak for Bernadette, but I suspect that like many other women in the entertainment industry, one reason she may have chosen to get cosmetic surgery is to sustain the longevity of her career. The longer she appears youthful and “desirable,” the longer she will be able to keep booking parts, which typically dry up for women of a certain age, especially if they choose to age naturally. (Notice that one high profile exception to this rule, Frances McDormand, often either works with her husband Joel Coen and/or produces her own projects. Access to capital might be one way to evade this requirement of youthfulness, which many women in the entertainment industry either do not have or do not want to risk.)
If I were a woman who got cosmetic surgery for the sake of my career, reading posts in which my “fans” celebrate me for not aging would confirm my worst fear: that I am not beloved by the public for my talent or intelligence but because of my ephemeral beauty, which regardless of the procedures which may extend it, necessarily has an expiration date. If I’m one of those women, I’m staring down the barrel, always wondering how long I have left before I become disposable.
I believe that women’s personhood is conditional, that it slowly erodes the further we diverge from an ideal of beauty that is defined by what men consider desirable; that if we are old, fat, disabled, queer, gender non-conforming, or of color, we are considered less than human. So, reading pithy little tweets that praise Bernadette Peters—or any woman—for their “agelessness” makes me seethe. It’s a way of implicitly qualifying women’s personhood, of endorsing the idea that their value is dependent on their appearance.
People have been objectifying Bernadette for decades, ever since she was nine years old and a critic wrote in a review of This Is Goggle that she had “a rear end like a Bartlett pear.” I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do is become the next in a long line of critics and commentators who reduce her to her looks.
Everything I just wrote was said funnier and better in this Inside Amy Schumer sketch from 2015 about Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s “last fuckable day,” so I suggest you watch that to cleanse yourself of my indignation.
