Adaeze Onwuelo
Pop icon Madonna is in her sixties, but she edits her images to appear decades younger.
The star has allegedly obtained cosmetic surgery to preserve a youthful appearance and frequently appears on Reddit’s Instagram vs Reality forum for erasing her wrinkles on photos.
Many of the online observations take a pitying look at Madonna, musing as to why she cannot accept her age. She was always known as a rule breaker, contentious and controversial. She didn’t accept anything else that was told to her. She was sacrilegious, too salacious, too sexual.
So why is Madonna – like many other women – at the whim of beauty standards and the multi-billion dollar anti-ageing industry?
The pervasive beauty standards in entertainment
Youth is beauty – and beauty for women is cultural capital, a currency employed to leverage power and visibility.
This pressure to appear beautiful is especially prominent in the entertainment industry. Female actresses reach their ‘peak’ in their 20s and 30s: male actors in their 30s and 40s. The average age of a male winner of the Oscars is 47. For women, it is 39.
“For women primarily, ageing is a signal of our impending invisibility”
From the age of 27, Madonna was consistently told she was becoming ‘too old’ to enter the music industry. If you were to look at the music charts and dissect them by age, hardly any musician, male or female is above 40 years old. For women primarily, ageing is a signal of our impending invisibility.
Our obsession with celebrity ageing
“if these stars looked closer to their ages, would their beauty be as widely celebrated?”
Mass media is obsessed with which celebrity has aged the best. Stars like Shakira, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez are heralded for their youthful looks, despite being in their 40s and 50s. Some older celebrities only seem to be honoured for conserving their youth and therefore sexual capital: their success at combating ageing.
Anne Hathaway and Gwen Stefani are praised by their fans, alluding light-heartedly that their youthful look is due to their lack of problematic nature, rather than having access to high-quality surgeons and dermatologists. This begs the question: if these stars looked closer to their ages, would their beauty be as widely celebrated?
Due to the pervasive ageism in the industry, Madonna is stuck. If she decides to conform to the beauty standards, she faces the repercussion of people taunting her for being unable to accept her age. If she decides to forgo these standards, she may face invisibility.
For example, there are a plethora of pieces from tabloids scrutinising Madonna’s ageing hands. There would be no doubt if she had let her face age as her hands have done that there would be pushback.
Ageism in the music industry
Commentators who question whether Madonna cannot age gracefully fail to acknowledge the rife ageism in the music industry, as well as the ubiquity of ageist beauty standards. Why did she ruin her face with cosmetic surgery? Why does she edit any semblance of age out of all her photos?
Yet, anti-ageing skincare products from retinol to collagen creams are promoted via social media and content creators. Letting your hair go grey is so rare that in some instances, it is perceived as a revolutionary empowered statement. The current “It Girls” of our era like Jenna Ortega, Zendaya and Millie Bobby Brown are either in late adolescence or young adulthood.
“We are told constantly by media that to be youthful is to be beautiful, and to be beautiful is the essence of womanhood”
A study has shown that older women who undertook facial rejuvenation surgery were deemed as more likeable, feminine and more attractive after surgery. In 2021 the anti-ageing market was worth 62.1 billion dollars.
Why accepting ageing can be hard
There is no wonder Madonna cannot age without resorting to surgery and FaceTune. We are told constantly by the media that to be youthful is to be beautiful, and to be beautiful is the essence of womanhood. But in the same breath, we are told to regard those who get cosmetic surgery to remain young as vain. This is a paradox which is both confusing and tiring for women to endure.
The average woman, who isn’t under the constant watch of millions of people, faces continuous pressure to stay young. Teenagers are even anxious about premature wrinkles.
If I, a 22-year-old who doesn’t face the glare of the media, feels under pressure to halt the natural process of ageing, it should come as no surprise why Madonna feels the same way.
Featured image: Courtesy of Raphael Lovaski via Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
