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Helen Mirren, in a series of jaw-dropping new photos, has done old women a huge service. I could talk about older women – a less scary way of describing those of us (I’m 71) who have a hard time coming to terms with age – but I stress old because at 78, that’s what Mirren is.
But not old as fragile, old as invisible, old as apologetic. I mean old as dazzling, old as provocative and old as very beautiful. Posed in profile for the American luxury magazine DuJour, you can see close-up every corner of her life well lived.
The few sun damage (she loves the beach), the elongated earlobes, the sagging neck, the vertical lines on her upper eyelids, the creases in her hands.
Retouched? Barely, I would say. Have you ever had cosmetic surgery, especially around the jawline? Maybe. But it’s not about a woman pretending to be something other than she really is. These images scream: “Take me as I am, I’m 78 and having fun”.
How could she not? His roles are still as stimulating and diverse as ever. Last month, Barbie premiered with Mirren as the narrator, adding a delightfully ironic tone to the pink universe.
LINDA KELSEY: Posed in profile for the American luxury magazine DuJour, you can see in close-up every corner of Helen Mirren’s life well lived.
And in Golda, which will be released in Britain in October, she plays Israel’s first female prime minister as she leads the counterattack in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war – at a time when Golda Meir herself had even 70 years old.
Mirren got her nose bigger for the role, her hair is gray and disheveled, her eyebrows are gray and bushy, and she looks every bit the stereotypical older woman. Vanity, your name is not a woman when it comes to Helen Mirren.
As the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1980s, it would have been commercial suicide to put a 70-year-old woman on the cover. I applaud magazines that do that today.
If only Vogue’s editor had been as brave as DuJour’s.
For its September issue, Vogue features a number of ’80s models on the cover. window mannequins; AI products rather than living, breathing people.
Extraordinary, isn’t it, that the original models, who graced nearly every issue of Vogue in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, haven’t aged at all for over 30 years if believe these photos.
For its September issue, Vogue features a number of models from the 80s on the cover. The women are all in their 50s.
It is patently dishonest and insulting to women’s intelligence to think that we could be fooled into thinking that the original supermodels haven’t aged in the three decades since they dominated the catwalks.
What good are these images, if not to tell us that aging – for women – is as taboo today as ever? It certainly doesn’t strike me as some sort of celebration of age.
I’d like to at least think the models had fun on this shoot. But in most pictures, they look stiff, stern and uncomfortable – as if they fear that by daring to smile, their taut skin will crack. When I look at 58-year-old Evangelista, I remember that for five years she was a recluse, after a fat treatment she certainly didn’t need turned into a disaster.
Three months after the sessions she had between August 2015 and February 2016, she started seeing bulges on her chin, thighs and above her bra. And then parts of her went numb.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, a rare side effect of the CoolSculpting fat freezing process, causing the fat tissue she was trying to shed to expand. It took him five whole years before he could face the world again.
In the meantime, she underwent various corrective procedures. Her poor body has been hammered time and time again, all in the name of age denial.
And now in Vogue we see her acting like life is perfect since she said she can’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day and her face and body have been frozen in time. .
LINDA KELSEY: Helen Mirren, it seems to me, never fully conformed to the beauty standards of the time.
And why, I wonder, Cindy Crawford, 57, undeniably still so gorgeous, would allow herself to be portrayed as the twin sister of her successful model daughter Kaia Gerber rather than her mother. In actual paparazzi photos, you often see the two men together, touchingly sweet, with the age difference quite apparent.
It would be exciting to see these women, alongside Naomi Campbell, 53, and Christy Turlington, 54, still modeling after all these years, as current rather than ancient themselves.
Why can’t they be portrayed for the mature beauties they have become, rather than succumbing to the fading of age? We are all still in such confusion about aging. And then we have Helen Mirren, and it makes women like me want to hug her.
If only those gorgeous supers had been as brave as Mirren, rather than being stripped of most of the characteristics of humanity. Mirren has clearly come to terms with her appearance as it is at this point in her life.
The age at which (if ever) we can learn to do the same has as much to do with personality as it does with numbers. I know 35-year-old women addicted to Botox, 70-year-old women undergoing a second or third facelift. I’ve known lonely, postmenopausal divorcees who hate how they look and bemoan their youth, then suddenly meet a man who loves them and their faces light up with joy and vitality and they look ten years younger.
I know 95-year-old women who still dye their hair, do manicures, and wear full makeup every day. As a nonagenarian told me recently, “It’s called getting the best out of yourself. I accept my age but I don’t want to scare the horses.
Some women may cringe at this image of Mirren, focusing only on the so-called havoc this image depicts as her youthful perfection has inexorably faded away. For some, it will be a stark reminder that old age is all about decadence.
But what I’ve seen consistent in the decades since Helen’s first stardom is a spirit, determination and enthusiasm that clearly hasn’t waned in the 48 years since I took her on. saw on stage as a sexy rocker in a play called Teeth. ‘n’ Smiles at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1975.
Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford all grace the cover of British Vogue’s September issue.
“A force of nature”, I remember thinking as I left the theatre. And around the same time, I remember the shoot for Cosmopolitan, where I was then a junior editor, that she did with a young photographer called James Wedge who was even more blown away than me.
It was from there that their love story took off. The atmosphere in the studio was electric, according to the artistic director. That’s the kind of effect Helen Mirren had back then. And it still is.
From fiery Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect to Queens Elizabeth I and II and Cleopatra, Mirren has always been bold and courageous in her choice of roles.
I am convinced, looking at this portrait, that I see no sense of mourning for the peachy beauty of youth, no deep regret for the passage of years, but an innate understanding of the flow of life from young to old, an accumulation not just imperfections, flaws and lines but experience.
For women, every age has something to offer that no adjustment, procedure or filler can deny.
Helen Mirren, it seems to me, never fully conformed to the standards of beauty of the time.
She was curvy and sexy but never had the wafer-thin legs and ankles of other stars. She always seemed more real than many of her contemporaries.
And as she got older and her success grew, she spoke out about how women are viewed, both in the acting profession and in society.
As an ambassador for L’Oréal, she has pledged to challenge beauty standards for older women, insisting that her generation has been subject to ageism for far too long.
During the Covid lockdown, she let her hair grow well below her shoulders. Women after a certain age are not supposed to have long hair, she said at the time. “I was like, you know what, that’s pretty cool. I think I’ll stick with it for a little while.
And earlier this year, she showed up at the Cannes Film Festival with her hair dyed blue, real blue (no resemblance to an old lady’s little blue rinse.)
I would be lying if I said that I have never given up on my own wrinkles. When I look at pictures of me as a young woman, I can’t help but think: was that really me?
But what I love about these photos of Helen Mirren is her acceptance of what is, and they make me determined to keep trying to accept aging too.