‘I look rad’: Justine Bateman doesn’t care about society’s thoughts on her aging face
Justine Bateman doesn’t care if you think she looks old.
The actor, who is perhaps best known for starring in the ‘80s sitcom “Family Ties” and being actor Jason Bateman’s big sister, got candid this month about the internet telling her she has an old face.
“When you say, ‘Is there beauty in aging?’ Aren’t you really saying, ‘Do you think it’s possible for other people to find aging beautiful?’” she asked before adding, “I just don’t give a s—.”
The 57-year-old, who has become a director, writer and producer , sat down with “60 Minutes Australia” to talk about aging, Hollywood’s obsession with youth and how she’s at peace with the aging process.
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“Hollywood is a business, a film business, a TV business ... so they’re going to sell you as an audience, whatever they think you want to buy,” she said in the interview published on YouTube on March 19. “If everyone decides they want to see people with purple faces, then every actor is going to have a purple face.”
When Bateman was researching her first book, “Fame: The Hijacking of Reality,” the “Desperate Housewives” and “Californication” actor was confronted with society’s perception of her appearance as she grew older.
“I needed to Google something to do a little research, and to remind myself of something that happened when I was famous, so I ... Googled my name, ‘Justine Bateman,’ and an autocomplete came up which was ‘looks old,’” she said. “I was only 42 at the time and I was like, ‘What?’ And I looked at the pictures that they had as evidence, and I couldn’t see what they were talking about.”
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Bateman admitted that she has had moments when she’s looked at her own face through a critical lens and said, “If I just had a lower face lift, I would get rid of this skin that catches the light ... or this that’s hanging over the eyelid, you can get that removed, sure you can do all of that.”
In her 2021 book “Face: One Square Foot of Skin,” Bateman examined the ubiquitous nature of cosmetic surgery and pondered what could happen if society simply rejected the notion that an aging woman’s face needs to be fixed.
It saddens the writer and director when people feel like they need cosmetic procedures, and women use Botox and fillers before wrinkles even appear, in an attempt to delay aging.
“I feel sad that they’re just not enjoying life,” she said. “I feel sad that they are distracted from the things they’re meant to do in life, with this consuming idea that they’ve got to fix their face before anything else can happen.”
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She thinks cosmetic procedures would erase the authority she’s gained. She likes that she’s a different person now than she was at 20. “I like looking in the mirror and seeing that evidence,” she said.
“I think I look rad,” she added. “I think my face represents who I am. I like it, and so that’s basically the end of the road.”
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