The Times Magazine 23get here. In 2018, she announced she had
separated from Ric Ocasek. Then, after his
death in 2019, it was revealed he had cut her
entirely out of his will despite the couple
having been on amicable terms until the end.
“That was a real kick in the ass,” she says.
On a recent celebrity podcast, Porizkova
alleged Ocasek had been controlling of what
she wore, what she did and where she went,
and that she conformed so as not to “risk
losing his love”.
“I was a trophy,” she tells me. “But I didn’t
feel that way when I was with him. I felt
so desired and loved. But when I lost his
attention and his tenderness and his love,
I realised it might not have been the healthiest
of relationships. When you are a treasured
possession, as opposed to a person who is
loved, you don’t get to grow older. You have
to stay the person they’re obsessed with.”
Despite this, she didn’t go down the surgery
route. On a recent Instagram post about
facelifts, she wrote: “Just because you can
doesn’t mean you should.”
Instead, Porizkova posts selfies from the
treatment chair where she has non-invasive
plasma pen sessions, tightening ultrasound
therapy and hydra facials. She used to box, but
hip arthritis means she no longer can. (“That
makes me sound ancient,” she groans.) These
days she concentrates on Pilates and professes
to have abs for the first time.
“Oh, I’m vain!” she admits. “I don’t look
good under bright lights these days. In fact,
light plays a very big part in my life now”- evidently, given she spends the first minute
of our Zoom phoning her 28-year-old son,
who is elsewhere in the house, to fetch a ring
light that will throw a softening halo over her
features while we chat. “I can’t do an interview
without it.”
I know how she feels. Such apparatus
became standard issue as we came to terms
with how we looked on screen last year. More
than that, the daily confrontation with our
image led not only to the coining of the
phrase “lockdown face” (drawn, dry, chapped,
spotty) but also to a so-called “Zoom boom”
in cosmetic procedures as soon as restrictions
lifted. Some clinics reported a five-fold rise
in requests for surgery, while there was a
17.4 per cent increase in Botox treatments
in a year. There was a 70 per cent rise in
consultations among men too.
“We are in a society set up for women who
look like little girls,” Porizkova says. “That
shouldn’t be OK with us. We need a collective
movement to fight ageism, but it requires a
bending of the sisterhood, which just hasn’t
happened.”
“What we still don’t have on British TV
is a woman with grey hair,” says the former
Woman’s Hour presenter Jane Garvey,
- “When that happens, it will be a big
breakthrough. I’m going to have mine
coloured next Saturday, by the way.”
The academic Nancy Pachana believes
the hold-up is because the cohort in charge
of steering the zeitgeist, both corporate and
cultural, hasn’t come to terms with its own
inexorable – but not necessarily terrible- fate and doesn’t want to see the near-future
reflected back in the media they consume.
“People are most scared of ageing in their
forties and fifties. Once they turn 60 and
things don’t fall to pieces, most people find
being older is pretty cool. But between 40 and
50, they have those fears, and those people
tend to be in positions of influence.”
Yet, while many young women are starting
cosmetic procedures ever earlier (the 18 age
limit was only brought in this year), there are
others who – at the point in their lives when
they decide whether to do it or not – are
desperate to see women ahead of them ageing
naturally. I am one of them.
“Botox superficially eases age anxiety for
the user but compounds the issue for the
collective,” the 31-year-old beauty reporter
Jessica DeFino wrote last year.
“I had a grey streak in my hair in my
thirties and was given to understand, when
I worked in TV, that I was old,” says Caryn
Franklin. “I have two daughters and I was
very clear that I was going to be content
with ageing. My eldest recently asked me
when my grey streak kicked in and whether
she’d get one.”
Indeed, rather than tuning out those in
later life, young people seem interested more
generally in what they can learn from them:
the youth vote turned out in both the US and
the UK for Bernie Sanders (80) and Jeremy
Corbyn (72); the 87-year-old environmentalist
Jane Goodall is popular among 19-year-old
Greta Thunberg’s peers. When the author
Joan Didion appeared in the fashion house
Celine’s ad campaign in 2015, aged 80, sales
of her books rose rapidly among millennials
learning of her for the first time. Like
children and grandparents, non-consecutive
generations often have more in common.
“[Younger people] see something about
collectivism and non-commodification in older
people,” Orbach says. “Old used to be about
decline; now it’s about matching your inner
energy to what you are capable of doing.”
As baby boomers age, they are tackling the
stereotypes of what being old really is. Many
of them were hippies, some of the first eco-
warriors; the first rock stars; the first to enjoy
the effects of LSD. They are starlight, they
are golden – and they will not be wearing the
same old Crimplene slacks of yore.
“The best predictor of future behaviour
is past behaviour,” says Nancy Pachana.
“The stereotype is that you become more
conservative with age, but if you were voting
for the Greens at 30, you’ll be doing it at 80.
If you really like sex, you still will at 100.”
Increasingly it is education and class,
where you are born rather than when, that
influences your outlook on life. Sociologists
see a future where generations integrate far
more than they do now, as older people work
longer alongside younger colleagues and both
bring different attributes to the table.
“We are moving on from age as a
demographic into more of an attitude,” says
Vicki Maguire of Havas London. “Hopefully
my social feeds will get a lot more interesting
and I’ll stop seeing ads for cruises.”
“We’re pushing the boulder up the hill,”
says Porizkova. “There’s been improvement
in representation of everyone except older
women, and it’s because more of us are not
offended. Instead of things that promise to
erase our faces, we should be buying products
advertised by women like ourselves.”
Naturally, she’s open to offers – from those
who can see her, that is. nMOST OF HER FRIENDS ARE
DATING YOUNGER MEN:
‘THEY WANT TO LEARN’
PAULINAPORIZKOV/INSTAGRAM
Happy in her own skin: Porizkova
on Instagram in October 2021