20 The Times Magazineveryone knows that walking into
a party beside a supermodel is a
terrible idea, but Paulina Porizkova
is inviting me to do just that. She
has a point to prove.
“You have to come with me,” she
insists. “Nobody believes me unless
they see it. My girlfriends thought
I was joking at first. Now they’ve
all witnessed it.”
What is this party trick of which the
56-year-old, Sports Illustrated swimsuit-clad
two-time cover star is so proud? What new
skill has the once highest paid model in the
industry, named by Harper’s Bazaar in 1992 as
one of America’s ten most beautiful women,
added to her repertoire?
“I am now completely invisible,” Porizkova
explains. “I walk into a party, I try to flirt with
guys and they will just walk away from me
mid-sentence to pursue someone 20 years
younger. I’m very single, I’m dressed up, I’ve
made an effort – nothing.”
Some women say it kicks in at 40; others
when they finally “let” themselves go grey.
Virginia Woolf described the phenomenon
in Mrs Dalloway in 1925, aged 43. In 2005,
47-year-old Kate Bush summed it up in How
to be Invisible with the lyrics “hem of anorak/
stem of wallflower/ hair of doormat”. The
actress whose roles dry up, the widows left
off guest lists. Bar presence, network, social
interactions diminished. The female invisibility
cloak falls heaviest on those most used to
being looked at as well as – or instead of- listened to, and the time before it smothers
you speeds up with every child you have.
“People between 50 and 80 report feeling
ten years younger than their chronological
age,” says Nancy Pachana, 56, professor of
psychology at the University of Queensland
and co-director of its Ageing Mind Initiative.
“So you might easily feel 40, but it’s as though
you no longer exist.”
“It’s a slow fade,” agrees Porizkova. “Like
the boiled frog, you don’t know until [you’re
gone]. It was around the same time my
marriage fell apart: my husband was no
longer interested in me and, as I started
looking around, I realised I was invisible to
the population at large. It made me feel really
terrible about myself.
“The only way to gain visibility in our
society is to look younger. If you look your
age, nobody will listen to you, and if you
want to be heard you can’t look your age.”
That’s why she has taken to Instagram: on
the internet, everyone can hear you scream.
Even as Paulina Porizkova feels her presence
diminishing in real life, she has, since her
divorce, built up a base of almost 700,
people who follow her one-woman resistance
movement against going gently into that good
night. They comment on her bikini shots,
nudes (yes, nudes) and no make-up selfies
in their thousands – although not always
kindly. There are those – mostly men but
not exclusively – who tell her to keep house,
and her clothes on, instead.
“I started posting the same kind of pictures
that have been taken of me since I was 15,” she
says. “I look good. I didn’t realise it would be
shocking for a fiftysomething woman to pose
in the same bikinis from 30 years ago that still
fit. It’s OK to ogle somebody who could be
your daughter but not mature women who
know themselves and are most likely way
better at sex?”
This is why many of her single friends end
up dating “much, much” younger men who are
less judgmental, she says: “They want to learn.”
“Do I feel sexier? Oh my God, yes. But
what I am not any more is feminine. I am not
a fluttery, vulnerable creature. I am an active
participant, an instigator. I know what I like
and how I work. I like to have fun. I know
what I’m doing.” She laughs. “That really
makes them run away.”
Taking in the fine-featured, high-
cheekboned, almost perfectly symmetrical face
and sweep of long ash blonde hair in front of
me on Zoom (we won’t be attending that party
together any time soon, alas), I can’t believe I
wouldn’t notice Porizkova. Perhaps the parties
I go to have a lower threshold for beauty.
Perhaps when you’re the widow of a rock star- Porizkova had two sons with her husband
of 30 years, Ric Ocasek, of the Cars – and the
recent ex of the screenwriter/director Aaron
Sorkin, the circles one moves in are more
rarefied. More mummified, certainly.
“I understand the impulse to tweak things
to gain confidence because you are becoming
invisible,” she continues, luminous skin
crinkling ever so slightly into the habitual
expressions that she is on record as never
having had filled, jabbed or Botoxed away like
so many of her peers, celebrity and otherwise.
“But once you do that, you’re actually
servicing exactly what you’re trying to oppose.
We need to stand up and insist on not being
invisible. I wish there were more women who
left their marionette lines [which run down
from the corners of the mouth] and forehead
lines and crows’ feet. I wish there were more
women who dared to age.”
You’d be forgiven at this point for thinking
that bravery is all well and good when one has
the bone structure for it.
The UK’s non-surgical cosmetics
“tweakments” market is worth £3 billion. Most
users start in their thirties. If one of the vials
used in the more than 23 million injections
made over the past year has your name on
it, you might not feel like taking lessons
on ageing from someone whose face once
earned $6 million for a single Estée Lauder
contract. Someone who is, inarguably,
E
Porizkova with her late
husband, Ric Ocasek,
and sons in 2006Porizkova in the film Her Alibi, 1989With her former partner, Aaron Sorkin, in April
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