The actor Kate Winslet appeared on Graham Norton’s Friday chat show last night. I love Kate, not just for her exceptional acting talent, but because she says things that challenge the narrative about what women should look like. Talking about a movie her fellow guest Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was promoting, she thanked him for including a female cartoon figure with what she referred to as a ‘soft’ body. She has been here before, saying in September that said women should celebrate “being a real shape, being soft and maybe having a few extra rolls”. I agree with her.
You may have noticed that it’s different for girls. Men can, and usually, do have curves in all the ‘wrong’ places. Our lines are the lines of age. If we go grey, it’s dignified and attractive. And so on and so on. None of these rules apply to women.
Take my word for it when I tell you that the red tops, like the Mail, which are read almost exclusively by women, are constantly banging on about new diets. They are always aimed at women. And the lines of age? Well, no. Women can’t have them. Have some shit injected into your skin. If your breasts start to sag, then have a tit job. If your bum looks big, or small, in this, there’s operations for that too. Come on, girls. There is a way for you to look. Society expects it. Above all, do not appear old as you grow old.
In my small world, there are rarely conversations about how women should look. Of course, I have certain preferences in women – that’s why I have been with my partner for 35 years, poor girl – but they are not determined by preconceptions or images of how women should look. Whether a woman is ‘soft’ in parts, as Winslet described, for one thing it is no business of mine and anyway, I don’t care.
It’s so hard to write this sort of stuff, treading on eggshells in some ways, but here goes. I like curves, I don’t mind grey hair, the lines and indeed ravages of age are, at least in my eyes, attractive. I don’t look anything like I did when I was young so why should you, dear reader in general, dear female reader in particular?
It’s surely about the individual. If I don’t care about the lines, and ravages, of age, then maybe you do. And if you choose to do something about it, like duck lip fillers and whatever else it is folk resort to in a desperate attempt to rage against the dying of the light, then that’s fine. It’s for you, not me. Whatever works.
Kate Winslet happens to be, in my opinion, a very beautiful woman. If she has flaws, I don’t notice nor care about them. She’s a great actor, very smart and very funny.
The obsession with what society defines as beauty is just weird because in truth it’s wholly subjective., Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Be as you are, do what you want. That’s the real message. And “being a real shape, being soft and maybe having a few extra rolls” says it all.
