What the hell is "ageing appropriately"?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, as the endless trolling of Kate Beckinsale for not looking the way a 50something woman "should" shows
Today (well, yesterday now) is one of those days when I’m supposed to be writing my weekly newsletter. On Wednesday mornings I always take myself off to a cafe and don’t allow myself to leave until I have a thousand or so vaguely coherent words that you, lovely reader, will hopefully not consider a total waste of your valuable time. But removing myself from proximity to the cat (hellbent on proving he can type 60 words per minute), the laundry and the fridge (in no particular order) isn’t always enough. So here I am, in Waterstones cafe, watching the tourists takes selfies in front of the castle and wondering how many cheese and marmite scones are too many cheese and marmite scones.
See how easily I’m distracted?
I’ve been thinking about “ageing appropriately” (whatever the hell that means) ever since I saw Kate Beckinsale post a plea on Instagram at the start of the week, asking people to stop bullying her, insisting she must have had work done, every time she posts. “Every time I post anything – and by the way, this has been the case since I was about 30 – I am accused of having had unrecognisable surgery / using Botox, using fillers / being obsessed with looking younger….every time there's a chorus of my God, you're unrecognisable. Oh my God PLASTIC, oh my God, you don't even look like yourself anymore, it happens constantly,” she wrote in a post now deleted, which is a shame because she made some excellent points.
Beckinsale (Kate? Ever the Editor, I always struggle with this. Surname too frosty, first name too matey? First world problems) who by anyone’s definition looks pretty damn good, has felt obliged to go to quite some lengths to prove she hasn’t had cosmetic surgery, even getting a plastic surgeon to state that she doesn’t and hasn’t. But really, why should she have to? Why should anyone regardless of age or gender feel obliged to defend their face to a bunch of faceless keyboard warriors? Or anyone else for that matter.
And yet, here we are.