Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - This is What Ageism Looks Like !!!

00:00:00.000 I feel like we don't even know what beauty looks like anymore.

00:00:07.720 Hi and welcome to Flossom Talk. I'm Tersti Floor, journalist, Hollywood truth teller and your voice

00:00:13.300 of reason in a town built on delusion. Let's talk about the emperor's new clothes. Sandra Bullock

00:00:22.220 and Nicole Kidman appearing in a movie pretending to be in their 40s while in real life they're 59

00:00:29.420 and 62. There's been a lot of controversies surrounding their movie Practical Magic 2,

00:00:36.460 especially because the actresses who played their daughters in the original movie 18 years ago

00:00:43.600 were not recast to play their daughters in this movie, simply because they were too old. So instead

00:00:51.300 of creating a movie around two women in their 50s and 60s, Hollywood decided to pretend that they're

00:00:59.940 20 years younger than they really are. So what does this tell us? Apart from the fact that it's hard

00:01:05.960 to invest into a story when you're looking at two women's faces who can hardly move, we're told as 0.86

00:01:13.240 an audience that these women are redefining aging. Look how beautiful they are. Look how 1.00

00:01:22.040 ageless they are. Another word that the media love to use to present these women to us. And we 1.00

00:01:29.840 as the audience are supposed to pretend that this is real. And talking about beauty, I don't care

00:01:37.100 what an actress look like when I'm watching them on a big screen. I just want to get invested into

00:01:44.900 a story. I want to watch a real person tell a real story that's so believable that I get a great

00:01:53.380 experience watching that film. That is the whole purpose of a movie, isn't it? That you're supposed

00:01:58.120 to entertain people and that they're supposed to believe what you are trying to portray on screen.

00:02:04.240 So to me, I'm not watching a movie because I think that the person in this movie is attractive, is physically attractive.

00:02:13.320 And what I found particularly sad about this is that both Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are Oscar winners.

00:02:20.700 I predict that none of these women are ever going to win an Oscar again because they can't give us a real performance anymore.

00:02:27.440 And I'm not saying that to shade them because they've done a lot of Botox and fillers and maybe some facelifts. 0.99

00:02:33.800 I'm just saying that they sacrifice their acting abilities to try to appear younger to an audience.

00:02:40.260 And I think that is really, really sad.

00:02:42.420 I was talking about this very passionately last year as well,

00:02:45.560 when Demi Moore was on the cover of People magazine as the world's most beautiful woman.

00:02:51.040 To me, that just says that we redefine beauty into something that just looks fake.

00:02:57.160 Demi Moore's face looks fake. 0.97

00:02:59.220 She's a beautiful woman, but it looks fake.

00:03:02.460 But I guess people have decided now that looking weird makes you look young for some reason.

00:03:08.720 And even actors in their 20s are using Botox to prevent aging later in life.

00:03:15.420 As I said the other day, I think it was Halle Berry who said this.

00:03:18.480 She said, if you choose to age naturally, people somehow see that as failure.

00:03:24.740 I mean, we still have real faces out there like Kate Winslet, Frances McDormand, Emma Thompson, Jodie Foster, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

00:03:34.660 But these faces are becoming rarer and rarer in Hollywood.

00:03:40.260 I feel like we don't even know what beauty looks like anymore.

00:03:43.360 And this, to me, is not empowering to women whatsoever. 0.86

00:03:47.640 This idea that people actually look younger with Botox and fillers is ridiculous to begin with.

00:03:54.280 I've also done Botox in the past. My face looked weird. I stopped doing it because I couldn't move

00:04:00.280 my eyebrows and I did a little bit on the side of my eyes and it just looked really weird. So I

00:04:06.120 stopped doing it. But that doesn't mean that I'm embracing aging, like welcoming all the lines.

00:04:13.240 Of course I don't like the lines. Of course I don't like sagging skin. But the fact that we're 0.54

00:04:18.280 now being told that fake is beautiful, that really upsets me. This whole controversy surrounding

00:04:25.320 Practical Magic 2 is especially interesting considering how women in Hollywood have been

00:04:30.660 complaining for years that there aren't enough roles for older women. And when we have two 0.94

00:04:37.680 powerful actresses like Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman accepting roles like this, pretending that

00:04:44.940 they look 20 years younger. Like do they think it would be uninteresting to watch a movie with a

00:04:50.720 woman who's 59 and 62? To me that is ageism. I mean when I look at Sandra Bullock and Nicole

00:04:58.500 Kidman they're beautiful women but all I see when I look at their faces now is everything they've

00:05:04.860 done to try to look young and I think everyone should do what they can to make themselves feel

00:05:10.660 good about themselves if you feel happier and more confident inside if you don't have any lines

00:05:16.240 you should do botox but let's just stop pretending it's so funny to me how we're supposed to 0.98

00:05:23.300 celebrate older women but only if we can pretend that they're not that old they should show us

00:05:29.680 that women in their 50s and 60s can still be romantic sensual have exciting life and build

00:05:37.900 a movie around that. So you have the Hollywood machine and the pressure that I'm sure a lot of 0.92

00:05:44.120 these actresses feel for looking their best at all times and for trying to look younger than they 0.69

00:05:50.620 really are. They keep telling us, look at these women, how successful they've been in trying not 1.00

00:05:56.220 to look their age. This isn't defeating ageism at all. It's just rewarding the women who have 0.93

00:06:03.700 enough money and who have great genetics to begin with and tell the rest of us that these women 1.00

00:06:09.620 should be our goal. Ageless is supposed to be a compliment, but it's really more like an insult 1.00

00:06:15.660 because what it suggests is if you look your actual age, you have failed. So yeah, this is not

00:06:22.180 what 60 looks like and it's not achievable for most people. And why should it be our goal to

00:06:29.100 look like that. On top of that, you have the women's magazines applauding them for being 1.00

00:06:34.640 ageless. Look at these women. Aren't they beautiful? They are not letting age define them. 1.00

00:06:41.380 Yeah, let's look at the hypocrisy in these women's magazines when they're telling us 0.98

00:06:45.280 that we are haters because we are not accepting that these women look great. But before we get 0.98

00:06:52.920 into that, a big thank you to the sponsor of this video, Osea. Talking about aging, I want to make

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00:08:28.500 Okay, so let's get back into it. 1.00

00:08:30.200 So we're being asked basically, how dare you question these women and their looks? 1.00

00:08:35.540 If you do, you are jealous and you are a hater.

00:08:40.040 So let's get back to the controversy surrounding Practical Magic 2.

00:08:44.620 So as I said, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock did the first movie about 18 years ago, I think it was.

00:08:51.820 And now they're brought back to play 40-something.

00:08:55.640 And they're supposed to have aged only 10 years in these 18 years.

00:09:00.520 And the two actresses who played their daughters in the movie,

00:09:03.840 Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Atrip were not invited to come back to play their daughters

00:09:10.400 because they were too old. Evan Rachel Wood came out and talked about this and said that she was

00:09:16.060 really disappointed and sad that she wasn't asked to return to her role. The two actresses were

00:09:22.120 replaced by Joey King and Macy Williams who are 29 and 27. Evan is 38 and Alexandra is 36 years

00:09:32.900 old. And as Evan Rachel Wood pointed out, it wasn't only Sandra and Nicole who were brought

00:09:37.900 back for the sequel. It was also Stockard Channing and Diane Wiest who were in the original movie as

00:09:44.300 well. But in spite of all this criticism, Practical Magic 2 did pretty okay at the box office. Although

00:09:51.800 I've heard that the movie is pretty bad. The Independent called it a lazy, pointless, cash

00:09:59.040 grab sequel. So yeah. But anyways, the reason why I wanted to do this video to begin with was

00:10:05.400 because I stumbled upon this post on Instagram the other day. So this was a post by Allure magazine

00:10:14.140 and a journalist called Daniel Hergiment. She wrote an op-ed about the ageism against Nicole

00:10:23.460 Kidman and Sandra Bullock and she was really upset that all these people were attacking them

00:10:29.840 when they looked so amazing according to her and she said Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock play

00:10:36.420 40-something moms in the sequel while their kids were recast. Personally I'm not taking issue with

00:10:42.880 their unlined faces. I'm taking notes says this reporter and then she says I should say at the

00:10:50.540 outset that i'm on nicole kidman's side okay so we know that we can't trust anything she says about

00:10:56.960 nicole kidman after this by the way but anyways always have been always will be will have our

00:11:03.160 we all have our movie star the one who would be our best friend if only we could chain her to the

00:11:08.720 radiator until she loves us okay for me it's nicole that said it could also be sandra bullock

00:11:15.020 I'm not picky and she said the movie itself is terrible but that's not the point I still loved

00:11:21.220 it in every way how can you love a movie in every way if it's terrible by the way I have no idea

00:11:27.400 she says in case you miss the haters the argument goes roughly like this Kidman 59 Bullock 62 look

00:11:36.480 too good too young to not enough sag there have been 28 years between the two films but in the

00:11:46.500 narrative of the fixtures owen sisters only about 10 years should have passed okay big mistake by

00:11:53.760 me there i've been saying it's 18 years uh it's been 28 years actually between these two movies

00:12:00.920 so please accept my correction here it's been 28 years between the two movies and she continues

00:12:07.980 which means the actors who played Bullock's daughter in the original are now too old to

00:12:13.660 plausibly play to plausibly play college-ish so new actors were cast as kids and the same actors

00:12:20.540 play the adults and the world wide web lost its fact-checking mind how could someone in her seventh

00:12:26.820 decade pretend to be 40 whatever suddenly their beauty was an affront to the haters she says here

00:12:34.320 you know who you are but in case you don't if you think you might be you are i have a few questions

00:12:43.780 have you ever used concealer and been called a liar swiped on mascara and felt the cold sting

00:12:51.580 of accusing fingers worn self-tanner and being denounced a fraud and then she continues fine

00:12:59.980 new rules every time you put on your spanks you have to wear disclaimer across your torso

00:13:05.440 the following has been modified from its original version it has been formatted to fit this dress

00:13:12.960 and she continues at what age does wanting to look good stop being self-care and become a crime 0.99

00:13:19.240 against feminism why are we threatened by beautiful older women regardless of how they 0.90

00:13:26.480 come about their beauty and sorry for all the questions but there's another who is on the

00:13:32.020 judgment committee because i have some questions about their qualifications so this is a very

00:13:40.380 seasoned reporter she's interviewed a lot of celebrities i'll get to that later and she starts

00:13:46.160 of this op-ed telling us that she's very biased here. And then she is telling all of us that we

00:13:53.480 are haters if we don't applaud Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. So she makes all critics look like

00:14:01.600 they're just threatened by Nicole and Sandra's beauty. She is completely missing the point here

00:14:09.300 on purpose, I believe. And she's speaking to all women here, by the way. Everyone who's ever used

00:14:15.000 Spanx or mascara or whatever makeup, then tell them that you are just as guilty of trying to

00:14:22.160 look good as Sandra and Nicole are. Those comparisons are just ridiculous. So she's 0.99

00:14:29.380 telling every woman, if you've ever been guilty of trying to look good, you should not judge Sandra

00:14:35.300 and Nicole. That makes you an ageist and a hater. And who she's talking to specifically here are

00:14:42.200 the people who are actually questioning the casting of this movie she is accusing people 0.99

00:14:48.220 of being anti-feminists for that to me feminism should allow us to ask why looking good has now

00:14:55.820 become synonymous to looking young and she continues here to say that also not for noting

00:15:02.260 but if you think that kidman and bullock look unnatural can i gently point out that you're

00:15:07.360 watching a movie about wine glasses that fling themselves to the floor, doors that spontaneously

00:15:13.380 splinter into pieces and cups of tea that stir in their own sugar. But Bullock's lack of crowd's

00:15:20.080 feet is where you draw the line. Here's a spoiler to Danielle Pergament who wrote this op-ed.

00:15:26.560 Every movie is fake. It's called movie magic. The presence of magic in the movie doesn't mean

00:15:35.140 that the actors in the movie should somehow magically not age.

00:15:42.120 I mean, if the movie was about that, that they had stopped the clock

00:15:46.540 and they supposedly look younger, fine.

00:15:50.360 But that's not the premise of this movie.

00:15:52.620 A wine glass flying through the room is supposed to look supernatural.

00:15:57.400 The faces of Sandra and Nicole are supposed to look natural.

00:16:02.440 That's the difference here.

00:16:03.980 and the journalist continues like I said I'm on their side okay we know that now Bullock's skin

00:16:09.700 is rose petal smooth Kidman's arms are as taut as climbing rope this is not the sound of someone

00:16:17.040 who is threatened it's the sound of someone taking notes the world in which turning 50 means allowing

00:16:24.020 yourself to slide into a life of puff sleeve tops and low expectations is gone so wearing puff

00:16:31.980 sleeves means that you are relaxing and letting yourself go, according to this reporter here. And

00:16:38.340 if you don't admire and admit that you're jealous of Kidman and Bullock, then you're just letting

00:16:45.800 yourself go. I love puff sleeves, so I guess I have failed. And what she's saying here, if you

00:16:52.660 don't try to erase every sign of aging from your face, and if we all just don't agree that these

00:17:00.160 faces are the beauty standard and should be our goal then you're just a failure who's letting

00:17:07.300 yourself go and then she continues here why not accept it even embrace it as I have and why stop

00:17:14.880 at 50 maybe I'll grab a 10 pound weight in my next hit class perhaps I'll actually use the serum

00:17:22.280 that's been in the box since forever could even try microblading and when 60 comes for me I might 0.65

00:17:28.740 buy myself a new bikini i think nicole would approve so now she's talking about actually 0.88

00:17:35.260 taking care of your body and your skin but that's not what we're talking about here we're not 1.00

00:17:40.840 talking about how nicole kidman and sandra bullock are taking care of their bodies if she would have 0.91

00:17:46.540 ended this with okay i'm gonna do a lot of botox fillers and maybe a facelift to try and feel good

00:17:52.540 about myself that would have been honest because that's what we're talking about here we're not

00:17:56.860 talking about trying microneedling or to start lifting more weights to keep your body strong.

00:18:04.840 No one is saying that you should stop working out when you're 50 or 60 and stop taking care

00:18:10.880 of your skin. What we're saying is that these women are not goals and I honestly don't think

00:18:17.700 that they look great. I think they just look fake. Anyways, when I found this article on Instagram 0.99

00:18:24.940 that she promoted there, or it was a lure.

00:18:27.980 Now I couldn't find this post on Instagram anymore

00:18:30.280 for some interesting reason.

00:18:32.340 But I noticed that there was a comment underneath it

00:18:35.920 that I couldn't find either, obviously.

00:18:37.920 But that comment pointed to another article,

00:18:41.180 another op-ed that the same journalist wrote back in February,

00:18:45.300 where she had a very different opinion about all of this.

00:18:49.440 She then said,

00:18:50.440 I was kind of looking forward to letting myself go in my 50s,

00:18:54.620 but I guess we're not doing that anymore.

00:18:57.400 Then she said,

00:18:58.660 regarding the question of why people feel threatened

00:19:01.160 by beautiful older women, 0.94

00:19:03.020 my instinctive reaction is that many women

00:19:05.420 look forward to their 60s

00:19:07.340 as a time to finally be free from society's

00:19:10.560 rigid beauty standards.

00:19:12.400 And I think there is a misunderstanding

00:19:14.020 of being freer when you get older.

00:19:16.400 Being freer to me means that you don't care so much

00:19:19.660 what people think about you anymore

00:19:21.440 because you're confident in who you are.

00:19:23.920 you're confident on the inside and therefore many people maybe don't care that much about their

00:19:30.700 appearance anymore. But I don't think it's a general rule at all that women don't care about 1.00

00:19:36.840 their looks the older they get. I think and I hope that most women have a more healthy relationship

00:19:43.100 to their bodies and to their faces as they get older. And in this article about five months

00:19:49.840 earlier she said right now we are trapped under unrealistic standards driven by celebrities and

00:19:55.620 influencers whose entire job is to look perfect the rest of us are juggling full-time jobs families

00:20:01.300 and personal lives yet we're still expected to keep up with this exhausting never-ending cycle

00:20:06.940 and then she said extending these impossible expectations into our 60s and beyond just feels

00:20:13.120 incredibly daunting so there's that and then she mentions the women who have moved this goalpost

00:20:18.980 according to herself, which is Jennifer Anderson, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Hurley

00:20:24.100 and Nicole Kidman. And then she says that their bodies and faces make ordinary women feel that

00:20:29.400 they're never permitted to relax. And then she says, what is presented as female empowerment 0.90

00:20:34.960 may actually be patriarchal beauty pressure repackaged as feminism. Men are permitted to

00:20:42.860 age, visibly women are not. So yeah, in February, Danielle Pergament was wondering whether Hollywood's

00:20:50.900 ageless women represented feminism or their patriarchy with better lighting. Those were the 0.85

00:20:57.220 exact words she was using. But then when the conversation moved to Nicole Kidman and Sandra

00:21:03.060 Bullock a few months later, then suddenly questioning Hollywood's obsession with

00:21:08.440 lineless faces wasn't feminism it was ageism I mean it's old news and I've been talking about

00:21:15.020 this before I talked about it last week when I spoke about that Tom Cruise interview in GQ

00:21:20.740 where the journalist didn't do his job at all asking interesting and important questions

00:21:27.060 and this is exactly what this journalist is doing here she's admitting even that she's biased

00:21:33.460 because she's interviewed these women and of course she wants to interview them again and 0.80

00:21:38.680 therefore she has to be on their team she also mentioned that she spoke to jennifer anderson

00:21:44.800 about aging a few years ago when she was the cover when she was on the cover for allure and

00:21:50.860 i found that cover and i was looking at it and i was looking at jennifer anderson's face i mean

00:21:55.360 she has a great body she really takes care of herself there's no doubt about it but look at 1.00

00:22:00.020 her face we can all see that jennifer anderson has done a lot of fillers and botox but on top of 1.00

00:22:05.700 that airbrushed it like there's no tomorrow and then you're like look at her ageless face she

00:22:11.540 looks so beautiful but to me when i look at that that is not even a human face and anyways then

00:22:16.940 she talks about jennifer lopez in the same op-ed and she says that she talked to lopez in an

00:22:21.620 interview as well about aging and jennifer lopez told her that once you hit 50 it all gets harder

00:22:30.020 And then the journalist asks herself,

00:22:32.260 what exactly gets harder?

00:22:34.160 I should have asked.

00:22:35.500 Looking your age? 0.93

00:22:36.780 Yeah, to me, this is what hypocrisy looks like. 0.98

00:22:40.140 Then she asks, but is this feminism, 1.00

00:22:42.300 legions of women claiming their power, 0.98

00:22:44.380 owning their sexuality, 1.00

00:22:45.820 at the same time they're wearing HRT patches?

00:22:48.800 Or is this the patriarchy with better lighting, 1.00

00:22:51.840 the most influential women in the world 0.95

00:22:53.500 succumbing to a man's ideal of what we should look like?

00:22:57.280 Personally, I don't know if we should blame this on men or if we should blame this on women

00:23:03.400 or if we should blame it on Hollywood or if we should blame it on the beauty industry.

00:23:09.340 I mean, there's billions and billions of dollars invested in the beauty industry 0.93

00:23:14.480 to brainwashing us into believing that women's faces are beautiful when they don't move.

00:23:22.120 I just know that I get really upset when we as women are being called haters because we question these things.

00:23:30.300 Women's magazines have always pretended to be your friend.

00:23:34.760 I've worked for women's magazine personally myself, so I know how these things work.

00:23:40.820 And at the same time as they're your best friend, they also make sure that you keep all your insecurities

00:23:47.040 and you can feel like a failure if you are aging naturally.

00:23:51.400 To me, the real ageism here is not acknowledging their real age, but instead behaving as if their

00:23:59.260 actual age would diminish them. And refusing to participate in Hollywood's machinery does not

00:24:07.380 make you a hater. Our goal in the end is to feel good on the inside. And I support every woman's

00:24:15.360 choice out there to do whatever they feel like with their body and their appearance to make

00:24:21.660 themselves feel good. But let's just stop pretending what's really happening here.

00:24:28.540 Anyway, that's it for me today, you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for all your

00:24:33.800 support. I really, really appreciate it. And if you have any tips or things you want me to talk

00:24:39.140 about here please send them to tips at flawsome talk dot com and if you haven't subscribed yet

00:24:46.100 please do as well and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode of flawsome talk

00:24:52.080 and before i forget thanks to oscar my executive producer who's napping in the background as usual

00:24:58.380 oscar is not afraid of aging right oscar he doesn't even know how old he is anyways see you guys

00:25:05.780 tomorrow. Bye.

Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - September 25, 2026

This is What Ageism Looks Like !!!

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