There’s a newspaper photo of Clint Eastwood that I use as an example of how the media look more kindly at men than women. There’s the unmistakable Clint squint. The famous steely gaze. Up close it’s a ruggedly handsome face, but what’s most amazing is that it’s the face of a man who’s been around for almost 80 years. And yet you still want to look at it.

We don’t see many female faces like that. Unless it’s a fading actress caught by the paparazzi in a “Gray Gardens” moment, older women’s faces don’t warrant a lot of close-ups. Who’d look? You’d just want to shudder and say, “Oh, honey, put on some blush or something.”

At least that’s how we’ve been conditioned to react. The line is that men age better than women, but that’s not true. The sun delivers funny brown spots on their faces, too. They get puffy. Lines deepen. Chins happen. The difference is we have a higher standard for what we want to look at in a woman’s face.

Basically, men get to look real. And women don’t. And that’s at just about any age.

However, something may be happening to change that. Perhaps we’re seeing a trend to natural beauty. We did have those Dove soap commercials showing ordinary women of all ages and sizes, some plump, some practically naked. Then, this spring the French version of Elle magazine did a photo spread of models without makeup. Stars like Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Rampling (pictured). No eyeliner. No lip filler. No retouching. No apologies.

It got a lot of attention. People called it refreshing. A photographer made it sound like even he thought excessive retouching was an unfair way to portray women. French health officials had already been pushing for this kind of reality check with a proposed measure that magazines have to report when and how images are altered. The fact that the health department got involved shows how damaging it can be for the public to try to measure up to faces where noses have been cloned and cheekbones moved around.

We may never see such a reversal in American fashion magazines but imagine what would happen if real faces and bodies became more the beauty standard than manipulated perfect ones. From time to time we get these glimpses of reality. Remember how excited we all were when Jamie Lee Curtis appeared in More magazine with her cellulite showing?

What if there were a beauty version of the slow food movement? Where human beings, like vegetables, get to be appreciated in their natural state. With soft spots and lumps. Preferred, actually, over the hothouse chemically pumped-up alternative.

Of course, you don’t have be famous to get a camera to lie for you. Wedding photographers can do better body shaping on a bride than her Spanx. As well as remove a groom’s paunch and trim a mother-of-the-bride’s ankles. And we have our own digital cameras that can zap out a life line or two before we plant our latest mug on Facebook.

Yet, models without makeup is an encouraging development. Even if it’s only a trend that lasts no longer than gladiator sandals, we could slowly move toward a greater appreciation for what all there is to study and admire in a face.

Get past the skin tone and the jaw line and what do you see? Kindness. Serenity. Wisdom. Courage. If they’re there you can spot them. If they’re not, you can’t add them, even with Photoshop.

French Elle photo of Charlotte Rampling

Tags: French_Elle, Juicy_Tomatoes, Photoshop, Susan_Swartz

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Aging, Healthy Living, Media, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.