“Yeah, those boiled faces!” she says, when I bring up the tricky subject of her female colleagues’ waxwork skin. “Scary. They go in [to see their doctors] saying: make me look like myself – or like myself 20 years ago. But you know, I have a movie out now and I can’t bear to watch it. I see myself up there, and it’s not normal to scrutinise your own face on a screen this big; it’s like opening a vein. So I do have some compassion for Nicole Kidman, or whoever, who has obviously looked at her face and sort of dissected it, like it’s a thing. I don’t want to be the poster child for wrinkles, and that’s what they make you if you speak out about that whole culture. So I don’t, mostly. But it has gotten so ridiculous as a job. [At the film festivals] the celebrities are dragging their movies in, going ‘look at this!’ instead of the movie being the thing, and they’re just there to support it. It’s a case of: ‘Look at my dress, at my hair, at my face and … oh, by the way, there’s a movie here, too!’ I have this character in my head. She keeps appearing places: on trains, in the city, on the highway. I see her out there. She is heroic, but not like any hero we’ve ever seen. Society makes women of a certain age invisible. It’s convenient. Remember our mothers? How inconvenient they were to us? It’s like that, on a grand scale. In the early part of my life I carried the flame for fiery women: perky women who were not dumb. And now I feel like I could be the woman to play this role: the invisible woman.” Only no one is writing these kinds of parts. “Roles for women. There aren’t any. They’ve been saying that since the 1920s, and it’s true. [My theory is that] women don’t write enough. Because who do they expect to write these roles? Men?”
A couple of years ago Peggy Orenstein wrote an article for the New York Times magazine entitled “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” about the rise of the Disney Princess line of toys. It left an indelible impression on my mind, long before I started to work on this film. A must read for mothers, grandmothers, and anyone who is going to raise a girl.
An excerpt:
There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be “perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be “kind and caring,” “please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.
Stepping inside the Barbie store is a true immersion experience.
Girls can shop for clothes, have their nails and hair done, peruse the latest dolls and buy Barbie accessories such as wristwatches, two-way radios and play laptops. Entry is free, though admission to the Casa de Barbie, the fantasy-land in the rear, is about $10. A manicure runs about $6, hair braiding costs as much as $20, and an elaborate “Barbie Full Style” hairdo can set Mom back $38.
An amazing way to teach young girls concepts of beauty, thinness and consumerism!
