There comes a time in a superficial man's life when he notices an actress he had a crush on as a teenager finally aged a little (though she often looks better than he ever has or will), and then sees himself in the mirror and screams. “Oh God I've aged too!” An-ahead-of-schedule mid-life crisis soon follows.
If the people with near-perfect genetics can show the effects of mortality, what have the ravages of time done to us peasants? A few years ago, for instance, I remember hearing the news that model Adriana Lima retired. Retired? Suddenly a new line on my forehead became visible.
Gaze across the needlessly harsh internet landscape and you'll see articles and Tweets and TikToks bemoaning how an actor's aged, all without an ounce of self-awareness. Jennifer Love Hewitt is the latest target. Apparently she committed a crime by looking a little different in her mid-40s after a few kids than she did at 25, getting judged by trolls who have the same taste in women as gay fashion designers.
Years ago Mickey Rourke got the same treatment after showing up in Hollywood after an absence. As did Renée Zellweger, Nick Nolte, Pamela Anderson, Meg Ryan, and so on. It shows a society that claims progression but is as obsessed with youth and beauty as it's ever been. Such faces were flashed over big screens in our youth for decades, and as a result we hold them to standards that we couldn't even begin to live up to. Millions of nasty words are coughed up by click-baiters who’d go into a tailspin if their uncle made a crack about their weight gain at Thanksgiving.
It's not that I feel sorry for the celebrities. The unfortunate price of fame and money is often an intense level of scrutiny from those who’ll never have either. Many of these celebrities have all the money and products in the world, but that can't stave off the inevitability of decay. If you're judging them, what the hell do you look like?
Obviously there are overt psychological deficiencies at play here. Some men are bitter they never got the popular girl in high school, and didn't look like the guy who did. Some women are jealous for similar reasons, and dually resent being inundated by Hollywood's unrealistic beauty standards, not that men are unaffected by that. Both tend to be envious of the fame, money, and success, seeming to believe that the pretty people acquired these things with greater ease than everyone else has to.
This is naive, but it’d be nice if we could all take it all down a notch. People often age differently as a result of choices, genetics, environment, how long it’s been since their team won, and we're all just trying to look our best. That this extreme judgment exists shows a massive disconnect with maturity. It's the middle-aged guy who still hangs around bars in search of 20-year-olds who won't look twice at him, it's the delusional mother trying to fit in with her daughter's friends (perfectly portrayed by Amy Poehler in Mean Girls). It's people who can't accept the realities of the passage of time. Maturity isn't simply a form of wisdom, it's your body telling you it's over, it's tired, and to grow up.
It's the understanding that none of us could handle the scrutiny celebrities face. I sometimes get mad at the mirror like it's the paparazzi standing outside a window, so I definitely couldn't take it. Has my friend Pete aged worse than Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise? Yes, because they look like Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise, and Pete has always looked like Pete. Them's the breaks. We sit in movie theaters staring at perfectly-lit heads for two hours and then somehow have skewed understandings of reality as a result. No one looks great when the lights come on, and it's getting worse for all of us as the big light begins to fade.