Women over 40 are a movement, not a moment
LatestUPDATE: At the time this was written, it wasn’t clear that these photos were leaked.
It might not seem superheroic for Cindy Crawford to appear in a picture without the use of Photoshop when there are thousands of perfect pictures of her that stretch across the decades, but the fact that she is visible at all is a feat. In our youth obsessed world, women over 40 are expected to crawl into a hollowed-out tree with a sack of yarn and knit themselves to death, so to see older women living and thriving is kick-you-in-the-nuts defiant, even though it shouldn’t be.
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Supermodel Cindy Crawford is just a recent example of women refusing to be pushed into an early, unfashionable grave, including recent Céline model Joan Didion.
The 48-year old mother of two—who once famously said “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford”—posed for the April issue of Marie Claire baring her stomach, chest, and thighs in all their real-life glory. She looks dope, and the inherent double-radical act comes from the fact that she’s both a middle-aged woman and a model, someone who is well versed in the business of unrealistic, unattainable bodies.
Carmen Dell’Orifice, the world’s oldest working model at age 83, is on the spring cover of New You magazine looking like a fierce supervillain whose favorite way to kill someone is those cheekbones. Fusion recently took a peek into stylist and beauty entrepreneur Linda Rodin’s apartment, and her fun sense of style has clearly been cultivated over her entire life.
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The documentary Advanced Style delves into the stylish lives of older women, and further proves that women of a certain age have every reason to be proud of standing out and being seen, even when the world falsely tells them that no one is bothering to look anymore. Time is the part of style that is rarely discussed; you can buy couture until the cows come home, but it takes years of living to know who you are and how to wear it.
Danielle Henderson is a lapsed academic, heavy metal karaoke machine, and culture editor at Fusion. She enjoys thinking about how race, gender, and sexuality shape our cultural narratives, but not in a boring way.