Maggie Smith Reminded Me It's Not My Destiny to Be Invisible
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The news of Dame Maggie Smith’s death was fresh in my mind last weekend when I went to see The Substance, a film about a “fading” movie star, played by Demi Moore, who turns to a black-market drug that promises to create a “younger, better version of herself.” I talked my mom, 72, into coming with me without telling her much, other than that it was part horror, part sci-fi.
“What’s the gist?” my mom asked.
“Well,” I started, “Demi Moore plays an aging actress—”
“Oh, that is horror!” my mom said grimly.
The contrast between Moore’s character, violently desperate to to regain her youthful glory and Maggie Smith—the real life actress who passed away on Friday at 89—could not be more stark.
Of course Smith’s face changed through the years, but it always contained the essence we knew: that ferocious intelligence and humor glinting in her enormous eyes. When we think of the Maggie Smith we love, most of us think of an older woman who seemed so completely comfortable in her own skin.
By Smith's own admission, her looks weren’t her superpower—she made plenty of self-effacing jokes over the years. During the Downton Abbey era, the British actor good-naturedly told Vanity Fair, “I play 93 quite often. When you’ve done it more than once, you take the hint!" Then she implied that she might consider plastic surgery if she’d started sooner, and joked about why she rarely attended award shows: “I truly think if I went to Los Angeles, for example, I think I’d frighten people. They don’t see older people.”
What made Smith stunning never faded; at 29 and at 89, there was power in her face. Enough to collect two Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, and a Tony Award. Enough to find herself gracing what will forever remain one of the best fashion campaigns ever, as the 88-year-old face of Loewe. Last fall, I looked up in delight to see her visage taking up the side of a building near Trafalgar Square in London. There she was, perched on a zig-zagged couch, clutching a burgundy Loewe Paseo bag, her fabulous face seemingly makeup-free. I thought, I want to feel this power, this freedom!
And yet.
At 48, I've found myself peering into the mirror ever more frequently for signs of drooping, scrutinizing my jawline in candid photos. Just last week, while helping my husband find a new suit, I caught an unfortunate glimpse of myself in his dressing room mirror, and nearly fled in terror. I looked so … middle aged! Was it the hideous mall lighting or had I suddenly developed jowls? Haunted by the image, back in the car, I peered into the passenger-side mirror, assuring myself I hadn’t withered an additional decade since that morning. My husband merrily drove us to our dinner plans, chatting about his work project, blissfully unaware that I was haunted by the image of my own face as a Halloween mask: a future, older me.
I hate feeling like this, and I actively try to not feel like this. Last year, the beauty editor Val Monroe, aged 73, was a guest on one of my favorite podcasts, Everything Is Fine, and she gave some advice for learning to not obsess over our aging faces that really stuck with me. In order to undo the years of conditioning designed to ensure that we care about conforming to a particular beauty standard, she said we must learn to see ourselves without objectification. One of her techniques for achieving this sadly difficult task is to “be able to look into your own eyes and see the person who lives there.”
It sounds simple, but it is profound. “When I was able to really see myself, it elicited enormous compassion,” she shared. “And when I feel more compassionate about that person who’s looking out of those eyes, I feel more comfortable with how I'm perceived. Looking at myself grounds me … so that I'm basically walking through the world looking out, rather than feeling like I'm just being looked at.”
Several years ago, Monroe actually wrote a story for Allure about this type of self-reflection, and the science of “mirror meditation”—I wish I'd come across it then. (Although perhaps my 42-year-old self would have been less receptive.) Seeing my self, not my “flaws.” Looking out! This paradigm shift has helped me many times since I listened to that interview, when I can remember to do it: take in the wonders all around me, rather than perseverating on how others might be perceiving me.
It’s a gift to age, I remind myself constantly. A privilege!
Of all the wonderful videos and images of Maggie Smith circulating since the news of her death hit us last week, there is one that stands out to me, a 2013 clip from 60 Minutes. In response to interviewer Steve Kroft’s question, “How are you dealing with the whole aging thing?” she replies, “I don’t like it at all. But then, I don’t know who does!” Poking fun at herself for name-dropping Noel Coward, she quotes him as saying “the awful thing about getting old is that you have breakfast every half hour.” An existential laugh and then: “I can’t understand why everything has to go so fast!”
Our grasping, our clawing at our youth won’t stop the inevitability of time. I know this, and try, I really do, to not waste my precious, fleeting moments in my body with hating it, or wishing I could exchange parts of it for upgraded versions. I’ve so far been mostly content sticking with fancy skin-care products I’ve been lucky to get gratis because of my job as an editor, and one flirtation with Botox a couple of years ago. I try to just keep moving, to stay healthy and strong and alive.
“Look at her face!” I will squeal to my daughter while we watch the latest Netflix series about terrible rich people. “It doesn’t move!” Later, I will Google images of this actress “young” to stare at the photos, and then wave my phone about. “Look how different she looked!”
What am I doing when I do this? What am I hoping to impart to my daughter, what mixed messages am I sending, and does it even matter what I say or do, as long as she swims in the tidal wave of our youth-obsessed culture?
The National Portrait Gallery of London posted another of my favorite glimpses of Maggie Smith on Instagram a few days ago. It’s a photograph of the actor standing in front of her portrait, painted by James Lloyd in 2012. Both versions of Maggie, painted and real life, wear delightfully bemused expressions, though the painted Maggie is a bit more subdued. Both Maggies are dressed in comfortable-looking clothes, their heads similar mops of gray hair. “Well, here I am,” the portrait seems to say. “Here we are!” the woman in the photograph seems to be laughing.
It’s difficult to learn to see yourself without objectification when the culture insists on doing just that, when even women my age constantly repeat the lie that it’s our destiny to become “invisible.” But Maggie Smith was anything but invisible. It's hard to imagine her being tempted by a substance that promised to generate a “better” version of herself.
What if everywhere we looked, we saw women like her?
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Originally Appeared on Allure
