By Maggie Millar
The wonderful British actor Glenda Jackson, interviewed on television, was bemoaning the lack of good roles for women in their 40s and 50s. She was appearing in yet another revival of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because, as she rather acidly put it: "most writers don't seem to find women of my age particularly interesting. I can't imagine why, but they don't."
Jackson's sentiments are shared by many others: Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunnaway, Barbara Streisand, Shirley Maclaine, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, Meryl Streep. In a recent report released by the Screen Actors Guild of America, it was revealed that the level of employment and earnings for female actors in film and TV has diminished since 1986.
In her keynote address at the first National Women's Conference of Screen Actors Guild, Meryl Streep said: "Three years ago, we'd slipped to a third of all parts, and in 1989 the number has come down to 29%. If this trend continues, in 20 years we'll have been eliminated entirely!" Olympia Dukakis, in Australia to film Over the Hill, pointed out that in 1990 the share had already slipped to 14%!
Among other findings in the SAG report were the facts that: "women represent 42.6% of the entire SAG membership, but earn only 31.5% of earnings; after age ten, males earn consistently higher average annual earnings than females; women's earnings drop when they enter their 40s, 50s and 60s, while men's earnings peak at these age groups".
Streep comments: "My advice is: little girls, hold out for the big money, invest wisely and investigate other careers, because after fourth grade, it's all downhill!"
When Gene Hackman was nominated for an Academy Award a couple of years ago, he said that he was getting more scripts, of better quality, than at any other time in his career. Hackman, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Michael Cain, Edward Woodward, Sir Michael Hordern, Leo McKern, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Sir Peter Ustinov, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Sir John Guilgud still play leading roles and command large salaries well into middle and even old age; whereas Fonda, Maclaine, Dunnaway, Field, Streisand all have to form their own production companies and fight tooth and nail for long periods of time to get their own projects into the cinemas. In Australia, it's well nigh impossible to do that.
"What has happened to women in the movies?" asks Janet Maslin, a critic for the New York Times. Peter Rainer, of the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote: "an entire generation of female performers is being squelched by an industry that finds no percentage in accommodating their talents".
"Why is this happening?", asks Meryl Streep, answering her own question "'I don't see any good scripts being written for rs, covering their eyes. 'I can't continue to write screenplays that won't sell', say the writers, covering their mouths. 'We'd love to make that picture, but nobody wants to see it - nobody wants to hear from women', say the studios, covering their ears and bases, their wallets and their faces all at the same time".
The same situation exists in television. While it is perfectly possible for an obviously middle-aged actor to carry the responsibility for a sustained leading role in a series (Rafferty's Rules, Rumpole, Matlock, Father Dowling, Paradise Postponed, Jake and the Fat Man, The Equaliser, The Singing Detective, The Paper Man, Embassy), the idea of a female equivalent is rarely, if ever entertained - and certainly not in Australia.
If a woman does find herself in a similar position (Murder She Wrote, The Golden Girls), it is still incumbent upon her to look as youthful, slim, elegant and sexy as possible. Joan Collins is the most obvious example: she's there precisely because she doesn't look like what she is: a middle-aged parent.
The only exception to this rule that I can think of is Roseanne, but in that case, the leading protagonist, though somewhat rotund, does not exactly belong to the upper echelons of society! (Fat women don't belong in Dallas or L.A. Law.) Prisoner too, while it featured an extremely strong cast of female performers, nevertheless was set in a milieu outside the bounds of "normal" society.
I watched the television Emmy Awards presentation last year. The actors nominated for best actor in a mini-series were Art Carney, Albert Finney, Michael Cain, Hume Cronin and Tom Hulse - all, with the exception of Hulse, middle aged. In the same category for women the situation was exactly reversed: Barbara Hershey, Farah Fawcett, two other young women whom I did not know, and middle-aged Piper Laurie.
The same double standard applies to talk shows, news, current affairs and sports programs: the avuncular "older" man and the young pretty newsreader/interviewer/weather person/whatever. Males as varied in age, shape and size as Ernie Sigley, Graham Kennedy, Clive Robertson, Max Walker, David Johnston, Brian Naylor, Lou Richards, John Jost, Richard Carleton, Mike Munro, Arthur Higgins, Edwin Maher, Brian Burey, Tony Barber, have all graced, if that is the word, our television screens; whereas Jana Wendt, Lis Hayes, Jennifer Kyte, Tracey Kuro, Kerri-Anne Kennerly, Bridget Duclos, Joan McInnes, Ann Sanders, Mary Delahunty, Alice Platt and the truly magnificent Mary Kostakides are all comparatively young, certainly slim and wrinkle-free, and in some cases totally interchangeable.
The networks will tell us that this is what the viewers want: that people don't want to see women who don't conform to the young, slim and pretty stereotype. I personally have never seen any evidence that this is the case, and all of the women with whom I have broached the subject say they are absolutely fed up with constantly being confronted with images of unattainable perfection, especially when the same standards are not applied to
A study was done a few years ago by Sally Hartnett and associates for the Office of the Status of Women in NSW to find out how women felt about advertising on television. Ninety-two per cent of the women surveyed thought that women in advertisements are shown as young, slim and good looking most of the time, and 68% think that is too often; 87% believed that advertisements show women as valued only for their sexual attractiveness at least some of the time, and 68% think that is too often; and 66% of women thought advertisements show women to be incompetent, childish or silly.
A lot of women - and men - find TV advertising insulting to women, and are especially concerned at the effect it has on their children.
There are no recent statistics on the employment opportunities for female actors in Australia. It is pretty clear, however, from a glance at any week's television viewing, or adverts for cinema programs, that the ratio of male/female roles is hardly equal, and that roles for women in middle and old age are practically non-existent.
The only statistics I have for Australia are from a paper given at the Women's Conference in Vancouver in 1986: "An unpublished survey conducted by Equity (Federal) indicates that during the period January 1980 to December 1982, women were employed in only 12% of the roles available in Australian feature films; and in the years 1971-84, out of 236 feature films produced, only 54 leading roles were for women ...
"During the calendar years 1983-4, a survey of all television productions revealed that of a total of 662 roles, 211 (31%) were available to women. Within this sample, in the more prestigious and financially lucrative area of television mini-series and telemovies, the participation rate of women declined to 21%."
Of the telemovies and mini-series made in Australia in recent years, the vast majority have been about war, sport, politics and police corruption - hardly fields of endeavour in which women display a high profile. In two recent series, The Paper Man and Embassy, both of which were excellent examples of well-made television, the women were more or less subsidiary, and, as usual, much younger than the leading male protagonists.
The same imbalance prevails in live theatre, although that is obviously in some measure due to the classical repertoire, in which the male/female ratio is even more extreme. Gale Edwards, who was last year appointed as the first female associate director of a state theatre company in Australia, believes the ratio is as high as 8:1, and again the slim youthful stereotype prevails.
If legendary performers of the calibre of Sarah Siddons, Ellen Therry, Ethel Barrymore, Mrs Patrick Campbell or Sybil Thorndike showed up for an audition today, they'd probably be turned away or told to lose two stone! Joan Plowright, the marvellous British actor whose husband, Laurence Olivier, played a superb King Lear s life, is quoted as saying: "When I'm old enough and good enough to be able to play Lear, there's nothing for me to do!"
It is obvious, then, that in film, theatre and television, as well as in the fashion and advertising industries, women are expected to conform to a narrow, idealised and impossible standard of manufactured beauty. The effects of these expectations, on both women working in those industries and the women who watch us, can be absolutely devastating. They range from mild discomfort to absolute rage, from slight dissatisfaction with one's body image to eating disorders of varying severity — some of which can and do result in death.
In her fascinating book Beauty Bound, US psychologist Rita Freedman talks about some of these effects. "When rigid cultural expectations set up impossible standards, then failure to reach perfection contributes to depression. Females outnumber males by an estimated three to one in the incidence of clinical depression. Women tend to distort perception of their bodies in the negative direction, just as depressed people do ... men tend to distort body image in a more positive self-aggrandizing way ... men tend to judge themselves in terms of what they can do, whereas women tend to equate self-worth with good looks."
Teachers of adolescent girls are only too aware of the disproportionate concern young females have with their looks and body image. Psychologist Rheinhild Robertson, who specialises in treating eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, is extremely concerned at the widespread and increasing incidence of these disorders. When I asked her if it would be reasonable to make a connection between the constant exposure of to images of young, slim and pretty women in film, television and magazines, she had no hesitation in saying: "Absolutely. That is a fact." The incidence of bulimia, particularly in adolescent females, she said, was "rampant".
"The demands of a myth can be cruel, driving people even to the extreme of death", writes Freedman.
According to Freedman, "anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. Nearly all those who die from it are women. It affects about 1% of females between the ages of 12 and 25, and the incidence is believed to have increased significantly in recent years. [Naomi Wolf's recent book The Beauty Myth cites a current figure of 10%.] So-called sub-clinical anorexia, consisting of weight obsession and uncontrolled dieting and bingeing without serious weight loss, is described as virtually epidemic (among college co-eds). Fear of obesity is even widely reported now among prepubertal girls.
"The lean lithe look now worshipped as the ideal is in fact the look of a prepubertal girl. Fashion ads depict ... models with superlong legs that are characteristic of a late maturing 14-year-old who is in the early phases of puberty. Those girls whose maturing bodies approximate this image tend to have more positive self concepts."
Anorexia is a complex disorder with many causative factors. However Freedman, Robertson, Penelope Goward (a counsellor who treats eating disorders) and Denise O'Brien (a women's health worker at Broadmeadows e) all believe that unrealistic cultural demands of feminine beauty contribute in no small way to this illness and to many other eating disorders, like bulimia.
A few years ago Jane Fonda, having promoted her exercise program as the way to acquire a figure like hers, confessed to being a bulimic!
Growing up is fine. Growing old is not — at least not in film and television land. While the female viewing population is ageing, the video/celluloid equivalent is doing just the opposite.
Monroe gave up at 36. Would she have been able to muster enough courage to live out the second half of her life if she had lived in a world where ageing actresses could remain "leading ladies"?
Freedman writes: "Ageing women have greater value when their image remains pleasing. An over-60 Nancy Reagan is painfully thin, perfectly coifed and always packaged in chic. Some applaud her for inaugurating a new wave of glamour for the mature woman. But wealthy women (often the wives or daughters of powerful men) have always enjoyed protracted visibility because their wealth enables them to remain attractive longer. Mrs Reagan's high style increases the pressure on average women to attain the youthful look that only the privileged women can afford."
In my own profession there are quite a few examples of such women, many of whom have spent large amounts of money on cosmetic surgery of all kinds: Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins are the most well known, though I know of quite a few in this country who have had the odd nip and tuck.
The pressures on women in the acting profession to remain ageless, and therefore able to earn a living, are horrendous. I have a colleague, a beautiful woman and a fine actor, who has achieved a great deal of success in her work in her late 40s. She's been around for years doing fine work (when she could combine it with raising a family) and is now very much in demand. She confessed to me that she is seriously thinking of giving up, having achieved at long last what she has always wanted, simply because she finds the pressures on her to look youthful and elegant are almost more than she can bear and have begun to affect her health.
"Will they think I look as good in the next film? Will my work still impress them?", she asks. In other words, will I be able to earn a living and practise my craft when the camera, the lighting technician and the make-up artist can no longer disguise the wrinkles?
The pressures on female performers to conform to the current ideal of female beauty are enormous, as they are on the female population generally, and one's success in living up to these ridiculous standards dictates one's capacity to earn a living. Apart from the pressure to look young and slim, there are the myriad so-called "beauty routines" which must be observed in order to present a perfect image. Some of the absurd and painful procedures women endure to achieve the current ideal of female beauty are:
- faces lifted, masked, peeled, toned, massaged, moisturised, plastered with foundation, highlight, shading, blusher, etc.;
- ears pierced and pinned back;
- brows tweezed, waxed, pencilled and dyed;
- lashes dyed, curled and dressed with mascara;
- lids lined, shadowed and surgically "done";
- lips glossed, frosted and "plumped" with silicone;
- chins and noses implanted, reduced, turned up or down;
- hair permed, straightened, teased, rinsed, tipped, streaked, dyed, curled, sprayed, moussed and gelled;
- teeth capped or removed to accent cheekbones;
- nails manicured, polished, painted and falsified;
- body hair removed by electrolysis, depilatories, waxing, tweezing, shaving of the upper lip, chin, brows, underarms, legs and bikini line;
- breasts augmented with silicone implants, reduced, lifted and padded;
- torsos contoured with lipo suction, corseted and girdled;
- rumps plumped and reduced;
- tummies stapled (to reduce food intake), tucked surgically and lipo sucked;
- hips and thighs firmed and reduced (with machines or surgically);
- cellulite dissolved;
- feet reshaped by high-heeled, pointed shoes and toes amputated to fit them.
Cher is reputed to have spent a million dollars on having herself lifted, pinned, shaped, tucked, contoured and implanted so that she would look just like a million dollars!
The vast amounts of money made by weight loss corporations, diet book publishers and writers, purveyors of diet supplements, biscuits, pills, and potions, fat-farm owners, fitness instructors, aerobic gear manufacturers, women's magazines, the fashion industry, the cosmetics industry and, of course, cosmetic surgeons, bear potent witness to the deep and widespread dissatisfaction the vast majority of women are culturally conditioned to feel about how they look.
Dietitian Rosalie Boyce reported in the September 9, 1990, Age that the amount spent on diets and diet-related products in the US market alone this year will be a staggering $33 billion. I firmly believe, along with the psychologists and health workers I've quoted, that so long as the entertainment and advertising industries persist in promulgating such narrow, idealistic and false images of women — and increasingly, pornographic and sexually violent images — women will continue to suffer and our culture will be sadly impoverished.
That women are still so constricted by idealised, impossible and unrealistic standards of so-called "beauty" at the expense of our humanity, indicates that we still have a long way to go in creating a humane society based on equality and compassion. And it will only be when popular culture reflects the total acceptance of women as people with many different facets and faces and shapes, that we can perhaps be said to have grown up. When a female "Rafferty" rules, maybe that will have happened. I just hope I'm still around to play her.
Maggie Millar is an actor (Prisoner, Bellbird, etc) and a member of the Women's Committee of Actors Equity.