newwrinklethemovie

Look Your Age

Lately I’ve been getting the comment, “you look great for your age.”  Now, I know that’s supposed to be a compliment, but it makes me sad.  What is so bad about looking like an older woman?  I love what Jamie Lee Curtis said when an interviewer asked her why she didn’t touch-up her photo on the front cover of a popular magazine.  She said that she’s not ashamed of being 50 so there’s no reason to make it look like she’s 20.  That simple act of courage made a huge impression on me and made me feel less fearful of growing older.  Counter that with this statistic: Three minutes of looking at a fashion magazine makes 70 percent of all women feel depressed, guilty and shameful.

As we all know, the advertising and beauty industry have billions of dollars vested in our feeling bad about ourselves.  Best selling author and lecturer Marianne Williamson says, “Society programs us, through the subliminal messages of popular culture, to believe we’re not truly desirable as women unless we adhere to the current standards of physical beauty.

Instead of giving into this view, how about we limit our exposure to mainstream media and listen to inspiring messages from women in their middle years…people like media and film critic Jan Wahl.

Valentines Present to Yourself

Valentines Day is the perfect time to think about love.  Whether you’re in a relationship or not, you can always love yourself.  Let’s take this day and accept ourselves the way we are.  We do not need to be better or do more to get and give love.  We are all seeking this joyous emotion and it’s in us at all times.

Let’s give ourselves a break today and not think about how we wish we were younger and had fewer wrinkles. Let’s just be ok with who we are, relax and focus on our inner-strength, courage and power.

This is the kind of message I was looking for when I hit my middle years.  Sadly, we are besieged by a dizzying display of images and advertisements that tell us are best days are behind us.  To counter this view, I decided make a film called New Wrinkle.  My hope is to create a new dialogue that will soften the fear of growing older.

Living Out Loud

I wrote to best-selling author and lecturer Marianne Williamson the other day to see if I could interview her for my upcoming documentary New Wrinkle.  She recently wrote a book called the Age of Miracles about the need for a psychological and spiritual reframe in midlife.  I was happy to get an immediate reply from her that said she liked the project and wanted to participate. She even suggested that I talk to an actress friend of hers in Los Angeles.

It seems that there is a hunger for a new way of looking at aging — 150 million women baby boomers yearning for a sense of real power, a power that doesn’t come from turning back the clock.  I like what Tina Fey says about the dilemma facing today’s women: “You can have it all and be serious, but also, it’s great to get Botox, and you should be really skinny, but don’t be, but don’t not be.”  It’s crazy-making.

The more time women spend fighting their own bodies, the less they have to fight for anything else. Williamson says, “we are ultimately responsible for how we see ourselves, regardless of the horrible images that permeate our culture.  When we are truly aware of our spirited glory, a varicose vein or two is not that big a deal.”

In New Wrinkle I will introduce you to women who are not shrinking as they age but expanding.  One of those is film critic Jan Wahl.  People around the San Francisco Bay Area know her on TV as the lady with the crazy hats.  She says she will not give into the notion that she’s becoming invisible.  Wahl likes to say “I’m living out loud.”

Give us Your Poor, Tired and Turkey Necked

Last night I googled the word “unalloyed” to find the definition.  I clicked on the dictionary site and right above my word was an ad for Lifestyle Lift.  Now this caught my attention even more than my original intent to expand my vocabulary.  I realized that I’d probably seen Lifestyle Lift advertised at least a dozen times over the past couple months.  But seriously, hovering over the definition of a word? The other day when I was at the gym Lifestyle Lift was blaring on the TV.  The aging news reporter said how it changed her life and she’s never felt better.

It seemed I couldn’t get away from this new cosmetic procedure, so I decided to check it out, clicking on “get a free consultation” button.  I saw that Debbie Boone was the spokesperson…she looked great, bet she’s had a little Lifestyle Lift herself.  I read the ad copy, “Linda F, age 71 was suffering from wrinkling and sagging skin…Lifestyle Lift removed her turkey neck.”  Then I noticed the phone lines were open 24/7 and up pops “Nina” to book me an appointment.

As I began chatting with her online she noticed a little hesitancy on my part in which she wrote, “anything holding you back?”  It was at that moment that I realized I had clicked my way into a well oiled marketing machine.   Nina told me there were four doctors that were of the highest caliber in my area.  They were standing by to help the poor suffering turkey neckers get their dignity back.  I knew I had enough and in a split second, poof, no more Nina.  I thought about all the times I tried to book an appointment with Kaiser and couldn’t see a doctor for weeks for something far more serious than a turkey neck.  If only our healthcare system could be as simple and accessible as Lifestyle Lift, but I digress.

Plastic surgery is a $15 billion industry.  Doctors know this is where the money is and are turning from general practitioners and pediatricians to specialists in cosmetic procedures. Meanwhile, the advertising industry does its part to make women and men feel bad about their looks while giving them instant access to relieve themselves of their misery.

San Francisco Anchorwoman Goes Gray on-the-air

I recently interviewed KPIX TV anchor Dana King. She caught my attention after watching the 11 p.m. news one night.  Now I normally avoid the local news as I was a TV news reporter for about a decade, and watching murders and fires no longer interests me.  But the particular story King was reporting on, was right up my alley.  It was an entire segment on why she decided to let her hair go gray.  She had gotten so many emails from viewers concerned about her appearance that she actually had to dedicate a portion of the news to explain her reasoning behind it.  Some people thought she was ill, others wrote her angry emails saying she looked horrible.

All this fuss over a few gray hairs fascinated me.  I knew I had to reach out to King and interview her for my new documentary, New Wrinkle.  It proved to be a wonderful interview with King opening up about how difficult it was for her to stop dying her hair.  The pressure to stay young and gorgeous on-the-air is immense, however, King said she simply wanted her looks to match her experience, not unlike her male gray co-anchor.  This simple act was not easy, and I believe King is a role-model for other women who deserve the respect of their years.