{"id":370239,"date":"2026-04-08T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370239\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:02:09","slug":"look-at-charlies-angels-where-are-you-on-the-anti-ageing-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370239\/","title":{"rendered":"Look at Charlie\u2019s Angels! Where are you on the anti-ageing debate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd. You have to have been watching TV back in the three-channel era to remember these names as the stars of Charlie\u2019s Angels (after Farrah Fawcett had left): the American series about three gorgeous female private detectives chasing danger in tight flared trousers.<\/p>\n

Back then, in the mid-Seventies, Jackson and Ladd were in their twenties and Smith was a practically over-the-hill 30 years old. Now Smith is 80; the baby of the trio, Ladd, is 74. Half a century has passed since they were the bedroom poster most requested by adolescent boys (probably) and now they\u2019re TV legends, happy to reunite for the show\u2019s 50th anniversary and answer questions on feminism, bikinis versus swimsuits and how times have changed in the industry.<\/p>\n

Now, the big question is: do you look at these pictures and think, \u201cWow, they look amazing for their age; look at Jaclyn Smith \u2014 she\u2019s 80 for Pete\u2019s sake. Who would believe that!\u201d? Or do you look at these three women and think (while possibly forwarding the picture to your like-minded friend, with three exclamation marks), \u201cThis is not quite right. This is a bit wrong.\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"PortraitSmith, Jackson and Ladd in 1978Getty images<\/p>\n

Because there is no one standard, received point of view any more when it comes to the ageing female face and body. You are either pro-intervention or anti. You\u2019re in the \u201cplastic makes perfect\u201d camp, where seeing women who have subverted the ageing process leaves you impressed \u2014 and baffled by the idea that anyone wouldn\u2019t take advantage of every available procedure to keep sagging jowls, corrugated foreheads, crow\u2019s feet and marionette lines at bay. Or you\u2019re in the \u201cmaintain the Forth Road Bridge as best you can but don\u2019t try to turn it into Versailles\u201d camp. And in Hollywood and LA taking the latter view in 2026 is a bit like drinking martinis at lunch: quaint, almost certainly British behaviour to be observed with amusement but secretly pitied.<\/p>\n

This debate is not new, but it is what now discreetly divides the female population. And since Mounjaro has been added into the body-altering mix, we\u2019re getting to the point where the two tribes \u2014 Plastic Makes Perfect (or, why the hell wouldn\u2019t you?) and the Tell Me You Can\u2019t See She Looks Like a Freak (and ten years older for losing the weight) \u2014 are as different as Magas from Greens or the head of the Cottesmore Hunt from a Dubai influencer.<\/p>\n

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On the one hand you have women delighting in Kylie Jenner\u2019s honesty in not just admitting she\u2019s had a breast enhancement but directing her followers to the specific surgeon \u2014 because why would you hide such information unless you were ashamed, and why would you be ashamed of having amazing-looking fake breasts in 2026? That \u201ctotally natural, all my own, yes, thank you\u201d era no longer cuts any ice among a significant number of females under the age of 60 (and some older ones too: Jenner\u2019s 70-year-old mother, Kris, last year acknowledged a second facelift, saying it was \u201ctime for a refresh\u201d). <\/p>\n

For this group there is no honour in managing what you\u2019ve got, no extra glory in looking good for your age without a facelift and whatever tweakment (knee lift, armpit bulge eraser) is in the ascendant. The aim is to get in there as early as possible with Botox, to touch up your face IRL as you would your Instagram pics, and if you don\u2019t at least get your teeth veneered the assumption is you\u2019re too poor.<\/p>\n

\"KylieKylie Jenner has admitted to having breast enhancement surgeryGetty images<\/p>\n

\"KrisHer mother, Kris, acknowledged her second facelift last yearXavier Collin\/Image Press Agency \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

In the other camp are the women who still (and, you know, maybe it is starting to sound slightly old-fashioned) talk about women in the opposite camp \u201cruining\u201d their faces. They wince at the light bouncing off a recently topped-up Botox ice-rinked forehead. They cringe at the very slight adjustments to the faces of actresses on the Oscars red carpet who last year still looked like themselves and this year look like someone very similar but not the same. Don\u2019t sue me, British actress in that series on TV, but even that very subtle work has \u2014 if you\u2019re Camp Resist \u2014 removed something lovely and replaced it with something animatronic. Maybe we imagined it.<\/p>\n

There used to be a whiff of something moral about the objectors\u2019 argument that it\u2019s wrong to interfere with what nature gave you, that it\u2019s unnecessary to go under the knife or spend good money on altering your face with a view to looking younger than you are. That\u2019s all gone now. No one judges the interventionists for their interventions; we just think, \u201cThose aren\u2019t my people\u201d \u2014 unless their job depends on looking reasonable in HD. (In which case, who are we to stand in the way of their career longevity? See: Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link \u2014 one of the first \u201cgood for on-camera\u201d facelifts.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that you\u2019re not a worse feminist and you don\u2019t lack a sense of humour if you\u2019re in the PMP camp \u2014 as the very surgically assisted Katherine Ryan has proved. You don\u2019t lack self-awareness, as Demi Moore demonstrated in The Substance when she played a woman for whom looking youthful to survive in Hollywood became an obsession. <\/p>\n

\"KatherineKatherine Ryan in 2023Lia Toby\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ryan made the point, in an interview with Prue Leith (of course in the non-intervention camp; of course horrified and saddened at the number of young women changing the size of their breasts and the shape of their features), that Ryan\u2019s generation was brought up to think of their bodies as a trend. She\u2019s 42 and joked that had she not been so busy when the fashion for enhanced bottoms was at its peak, she\u2019d be sitting higher in her chair.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s no different from plastering your face in Elizabethan white arsenic in the name of fashion. But if you\u2019re on the other side of the coin it feels different, like a separate philosophy. It goes hand in hand with: let\u2019s not eat lunch, let\u2019s not have a drink, let\u2019s stay out of the sun, let\u2019s stay out of the water, let\u2019s be careful of our hair (even if that means not going on the swing). Mummy has to go to a Brazilian place and she\u2019ll come back with bandages on her face and you might cry when you see her again, but, listen, Mummy has to do this in case Daddy goes off with someone with a tighter jawline.<\/p>\n

The issue here is that \u2014 and the appearances of the Charlie\u2019s Angels actresses prove it \u2014 the population are now seeing on two different planes. Some of us look at an 80-year-old woman with lush long hair (can we assume it\u2019s a wig?) and gasp with delight and respect for their commitment. Some of us (often older but not always) feel like you feel when Donald Trump says the unthinkable and no one reacts. <\/p>\n

If it is better to look like sandblasted you than to have crow\u2019s feet, hooded eyes, a lined forehead and a frilly jawline, then we cannot see it. It\u2019s like the emperor\u2019s new clothes. We would rather end up looking like Dame Edna\u2019s sidekick Madge than an abstract version of ourselves that has melted. When your eyes look different in your head, your smile has been lifted and shifted, you look (to this tribe) deformed, there\u2019s no other word for it. But that\u2019s OK because most of the people don\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n

Every so often there\u2019s a flutter of excitement in Camp Denial when an actress (it\u2019s always an actress) crosses the floor and admits to having messed up her face with fillers (Courteney Cox in 2023) or regretting a facelift, like Sharon Osbourne, who admitted that one in 2021 had left \u201cone eye here and one eye there and my mouth was all skewwhiff\u201d. These are the moments the naturals chalk up to the beginning of the slow U-turn back to healthy normal. <\/p>\n

\"CourteneyCourteney Cox has opted for fillers in the pastGetty images<\/p>\n

And every so often an actress will stick her head above the parapet \u2014 such as Salma Hayek Pinault last year, aged 58 \u2014 pull her hair back and insist that her interviewer checks her for scars (\u201cI have [had] no plastic surgery\u2026 no filler!\u201d), which is slightly different. She wants the credit and we can only assume feels that opinion moving in the direction of intervention-free beauty. No hair extensions either. Jessie Buckley, the 36-year-old Oscar-winning star of Hamnet, is widely recognised for having a natural appearance free of filler and Botox, and that bodes well too. A face that crinkles and a post-pregnancy body that lit up awards season is just what the deniers need.<\/p>\n

But even if the thirtysomethings draw a line under it right now, it\u2019ll take some time for this juggernaut to turn around. Maybe we\u2019re entering the age of telling people\u2019s age by precisely how much work they\u2019ve had. Charlie\u2019s Angels, 74 to 80. Bang on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd. You have to have been watching TV back in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-370239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}