Faye Dunaway, the celebrated actress, was in town recently. One night, as she went out to dinner with friends, she was hailed by one of her many fans. “Faye, you’re still beautiful,” the woman called out to her.
Discussing the encounter afterwards with her friends, Dunaway probably showed herself appreciative of this tribute to her beauty. But what was the meaning of the word “still.?” There was something faintly troubling about that small worm of a word.
John Kenneth Galbraith, professor emeritus, government veteran, and witty raconteur, could have told her all about it. Now 90, he continues to talk about an article that he wrote a few years ago for The Boston Globe. Nothing else he has written for a newspaper, he says, has ever provoked more reader response than his essay “The Still Factor.”
In that op-ed piece he told of this frequent experience in his later years. People come up to him and wonder aloud: “Are you still . . .?” You can fill in the blank – – writing, talking, walking, thinking, – – whatever. People persist in expressing wonder that, in what they may erroneously consider his dotage, he perseveres in productive action.
Ken Galbraith finds it peculiar that anyone should be surprised that he does now the things he has always done. Why should his advanced years call a halt to these activities? To him, it is a matter of course that he continues to carry on with the actions that help define his life.
To many people not yet elders, the implication is that old age brings a halt to almost everything worth doing. For some women and men, unfortunately, it does. But they are the relative few. Most people continue vital activities well into their last years.
Galbraith’s views have recently been seconded by a surprising authority. The Vatican has issued a new document on the dignity of older people saying,: “The perception of old age as a period of decline, in which human and social inadequacy is taken for granted, is in fact very widespread today. But this is a stereotype.”
The question of beauty, however, seems more complicated. Especially when you consider the notorious bias of Hollywood chieftains against featuring older women in films, it must loom large for female stars of a certain age.
Hiring a Clint Eastwood and putting him in a romantic situation with a much younger woman like Julia Roberts is regarded as a sure thing; taking a risk with a woman long past youth is something else. Hollywood, after all, does not make many films like “On Golden Pond.”
That is probably why Faye Dunaway has not appeared in many movies of late; instead she has taken roles in Broadway plays, notably in “Master Class,” Terence McNally’s innovative drama based on the career of Maria Callas.
Given American society’s glorification of youthful faces and bodies, one must go against the grain to find the aged beautiful. But if we only know how to look for it, we can discover in older people a beauty altogether their own.
Philosophically speaking, we can recognize beauty in every human being no matter how damaged. In the metaphysics most congenial to me, beauty belongs to existence. To be, means to be one, and good, and true, and beautiful.
Esthetic beauty presents more challenges. Men and women who have lost their former appearance may, in fact, no longer spontaneously attract us. That means we may have to develop a deeper appreciation of human features that goes beyond unblemished skin and svelte figures.
The issue of personal beauty came to the crisis point in a woman of my acquaintance whom, in a previous column, I called “Veronica.” Bothered by her own self-image and anxious to attract a new husband, she prepared to get her face lifted.
But seeing an up-close photo of the actress Julie Harris made Veronica change her mind. The actress’s face was lined, wrinkled, and filled with folds. Veronica, however, recognized in this face a person of beauty and, in a letter to the New York Times, wrote about Harris’s face: “She wears a pleased and pleasing expression. Wisdom and humor shine from her eyes. The lines in her face enhance her radiance.”
On the basis of this experience, Veronica decided not to go through with face-lift surgery. She gave expression to her new outlook like this: “I want my face to show my life. I, too, own the years.”
Owning the years may provide the secret to recognizing beauty in ourselves and discovering it in others. Faye Dunaway and the rest of us can, perhaps, remain still beautiful so long as we open ourselves up to the universal experience of growing older with all of its losses and gains.
Richard Griffin