Sigourney Weaver at 60, still gorgeous.

It’s no surprise that when I come across any bit of news regarding someone, anyone, who accepts their wrinkles, I am intrigued. I admit that I need to hear it from others in order to help me accept my own sagging self. Such was the case when I heard 60-year-old Sigourney Weaver discussing the whole question of beauty and aging. The photo below reveals a very beautiful woman—and yes, there are lines in plain sight but I still find her to be exquisitely good looking. Sadly, when she was growing up her mother once told here that she was not beautiful, but that’s a whole other article for another time perhaps. Let’s stick to what she had to say about plastic surgery. “I find that look scary and I like getting older. There’s nothing more interesting to me than a woman in her 70s who’s full of life and still useful. I never notice age in people’s faces. I just look at the whole person,” she said very candidly. I love Sigourney for her uncommon philosophy on aging, especially when taking into account that she is an actress, and there is a certain amount of pressure to look good. I’m sure that life off the set does not reflect Hollywood glam, but when she’s filming a movie, or making a public appearance, her looks will always be scrutinized, such is the nature of the business. And it’s not only pressure that comes from the film industry, it’s fans or anyone really who will make nasty remarks about a famous person’s looks and dissect every inch of their face. Some of the comments people leave behind in newspaper articles are terribly cruel.

How many of us have watched the Oscars or some other award show and without thinking we’ve said something like, “Oh my God! She does not look good. She’s so old looking!” We look at the stars, we expect them to look ageless, so it’s not only the industry or their egos driving them to alter their looks—we too are guilty of contributing to that craziness. When we look in the mirror we see our own age, but when we look in a magazine we see smooth, young and thin, or we watch another award show and we see someone our age who looks ten times better. We feel unsettled, unattractive, and old as a result of this. It’s hard to remove those images from our mind when we are constantly reminded of how we should really look like. Pop culture has its good points, but in terms of beauty and aging, it’s gone completely overboard. There was a time when actresses would get a little bit of work done, we’ve heard this about Marilyn Monroe and even Judy Garland said that the studios in her day disliked her nose. It’s naive to think that they did not get something done, but it was different, less of an obsession, and social media was not around to help turn every single fad into a complete obsession, something that everyone needs to get done.

So when someone like Sigourney breaks free of those preconceived notions of aging and wrinkles, it’s refreshing and worth the read.

Sigourney as a teen, innocent and sweet.