Let Icons Be Icons
Who is all the retouching and flattening really for, anyway?
Last week, a Gucci campaign dropped and Maggie Smith died. These are related. Stay with me.
Debbie Harry is starring for Gucci handbags. More power (and $) to her! She’s been an icon to me since preschool.1 Until I started drafting this, I never thought about why.
Here it is: She had ZFG energy long before it was acceptable in women (it still rarely is.)
She led an all-male band named after her—at a time women just got the right to have a credit card in their own names.2 She cannily used her beauty to push into fame, but on her terms. As Ms. Harry was famously quoted, “Being hot never hurts.”
She was gorgeous, but tough. She had edge, not just cheekbones. Punk, not pop. She epitomized NYC’s grit, wildness and independence in a time of disco babes. Sexy that was challenging, not submissive. She made art with Warhol and apparently hung out at the anti-Studio 54. She was the anti-Christie Brinkley.
She ran so Madonna could writhe.
She was weird. And continued to be into her middle-age.
Independent, edgy, weird, unsmiling—hot women aren't supposed to be these things. Successful women aren’t. Hell, women aren’t really supposed to be these things.3
So when I saw the Gucci campaign drop I cheered. It’s stunning. But then I thought, who’s this?
Nan Goldin shot it. A woman famous for famous for raw, intimate, unsparing photography. Which is not this. Credit to Gucci for hiring and paying these women. Women in their 70s! But.. But…
When I think of Ms. Harry I think of recent photos like these:
Still beautiful. Still even retouched, some still styled. But her. Weird. Complex. An artist. On her terms.
You know, the deeper reasons she became an icon. And probably a bit more interesting to the women who buy Gucci, if not the men who run it.
Interesting but Not Beautiful
Meanwhile, let’s talk Maggie Smith. I knew little about her as a person until the tribute pieces rolled out. The woman evolved constantly, worked for decades—and was also dancing to her own drum. She was told early on she was too ugly to succeed but she clearly didn’t listen.
This quote from from NYMag’s Maggie Smith Rejected Irrelevance really hit:
Smith’s presence immediately becomes a declaration of refusal. Not a glowing, loving godmother nor a witch, either, her caretakers and elders became more complex and magnetic, women who never lost sight of their own ambitions and desire. These often relatively minor characters would not become irrelevant. They would not disappear into the woodwork.
That’s what aging as a woman in this country requires. And it ain’t easy. 👊🏻
That’s what we see Gen Z women doing. And they weren’t raised to apologize.🥂
Maggie Smith, model
Then I saw that Dame4 Maggie Smith also did a luxury handbag campaign last year, shot by Juergen Teller. A photographer also known for raw and unsparing shots, and that’s what actually got to print.
The vulnerability of the first shot with the “yes and??” energy of the sofa are so much more intriguing. I want to study these. I see a fascinating woman here.
Of course, she was never deemed beautiful. So she can be interesting.
In Gucci, I see a movie still that looks de-aged but oddly, very dated.
Maybe hot women are destined to be put into the hot box forever, no matter how they’ve really lived. No matter how they may want to be seen or work.5
The Substance sounds like it looks at this hot trap in the most repulsive way possible.
Maybe only characters—the Maggie Smiths, the Iris Apfels, conventionally less pretty women—are allowed to be characters. To show age. But in life and face, characters pay the price.
It’s not easy to let the wrinkles show, because the world keeps insisting no one wants to see it. Loewe says otherwise. I agree.
In the age of the tattooed, I keep waiting for wrinkles to become cool. A fabulously chic woman with a lined face is a thing of wonder in today’s flattened world. But I will probably keep waiting.
We celebrate inked lines drawn all over bodies as personal expression - but not actual expression lines.
We know from study after study that retouched images — our own on Facetune, others via Facetune — create issues, and not just for teens. They may drive sales downstream for plastic surgeons, shrinks and skincare, but they create bad vibes on contact.
They Make Us Sad
Body Dissatisfaction and Social Comparison: Retouched imagery leads to increased body dissatisfaction and negative social comparisons, especially to people prone to compare. Warning labels on them make it worse by drawing more attention to the body parts that were edited, reinforcing unrealistic beauty standards.
They Make Us Sick
Studies consistently link exposure to idealized, altered media images to the development of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction. The fastest growing group for E.D. is middle aged women
Yet.. They Make Money
Snapchat Dysmorphia > Plastic Surgery: The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported that 55% of plastic surgeons noticed patients requesting procedures to look like filtered versions of themselves.
As co-founder of Wile, I found in my research that one of the harshest influences for women over 35 is not actually the Gucci reotouchers of the world. It’s ourselves - memories of how we used to be.
Debbie Harry seems like a woman who’s too interesting, too passionate, too powerful to be flattened. I want to see her and keep learning from her in all her topography.
MARKETERS: I don’t believe women want to see these highly retouched images of older women—we polled this at Wile and 80+% did not like it. I also see Gen Z women upholding Grandmother and Senora energy… can we finally believe them?
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Is Timing Everything?
Starbucks jumping on the AG1 train in test markets.
Starbucks is testing two AG1 co-branded drinks - just as AG1 cache has been de-influencing culturally.
Admittedly, AG1 is still SOARING in revenue as it goes from niche to, well, Starbucks in terms of wellness edginess.
And of course, it’s got Huberman!
Ironically: I could NOT find the nutritional info for these drinks anywhere on the Starbucks site or anywhere else.
Again, shows who they are really talking to.
It will be interesting to see which sectors of functional drinks have real staying power and which go the way of “Fat Free” in a few years.
Technically I did not attend preschool, unless you count watching Sesame Street and the Electric Company.
Blondie’s first single, “X Offender” came out in 1976. It written by Gary Valentine and Debbie Harry, about an 18-year-old boy being arrested for statutory rape of his younger girlfriend. Women were able to get credit cards 1974 due to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 24 years after the first card was introduced.
I read somewhere, “men learn open conflict, women police each other’s conformity. “ Can’t get it out of my head.
Let’s bring back DAME as a femme-type not just an honorific, please.
Can’t picture Goldin asking for more tightening of the jawline. Debbie in milk maid blouse is nearly unrecognizable in spirit or face. It’s giving Dolly Parton’s sister!
Thank you! Nuanced and thoughtful. I wouldn't have known it was her.