"Love your Old Witch nature."

Babushka encourages women to embrace the beauty of aging:

"Gloria Steinem, lodestar of the modern women’s movement, dies at 92."

A Washington Post obituary (gift link).

In a tribute to feminism, the obit waits until the 6th paragraph to tell us how she looked: "With her willowy physique, her fashionable miniskirts and her straight, parted hair, she brought glamour as well as passion to her work, challenging the popular perception of feminists as bra-burning radicals."

Paragraph 8: "Ms. Steinem burst to the fore in the 1960s not as an activist, but as a high-flying freelance journalist for publications including Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. She experienced firsthand the sexism that she would later fight on behalf of other women. Ms. Steinem recalled a taxicab conversation between the renowned writers Gay Talese and Saul Bellow, in which she said Talese remarked in her presence, 'You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.'"

Here's the NYT obituary: "Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92/She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large" (gift link).

The NYT tells us how she looked in paragraph 4: "For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world."

"As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space."

So said the actress Hannah Einbinder:

Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.

“As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

Of course, she's getting trashed on X. She's "trending." That's why I saw it. I don't really know her, but I see she's highly praised for her role in "Hacks," and also that she's the daughter of Laraine Newman.

Anyway, it's cheap and easy to go after an actress who expresses any opinion that seems to require intelligence and background knowledge. I would prefer to isolate what she said and explore the various issues there:

1. There's a broad, casual use of the word "fascism" that's like the way Seinfeld used "Nazi" in "The Soup Nazi." You can argue that the word should be used more precisely, but it doesn't mean the person who's using it broadly is a fool.

2.  Correlation is not causation, and she only said "correlation." She intensified it with "direct" — "There is a direct correlation" — but Einbinder was clever enough to protect herself with the first-rate weasel word "correlation."

3. Did the actual historical fascists idealize female thinness? I don't think so. 

"I can’t count how many messages I’ve received over time about my appearance. Especially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair."

"The fact that I have an ugly 'wart' on my nose and good advice on getting Botox. I’m fine with my body. Such as it is, when you are a woman approaching 50."

Wrote Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who got a text that asked "Do you want to get that little spot on your nose fixed?"

She's quoted in "'I’m Fine With My Body': Danish Leader Responds to Unsolicited Beauty Advice/Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had just returned from Ukraine when she received a message from a plastic surgeon asking if she wanted to fix her nose" (NYT gift link).

The Times makes this a discussion of the pressure on women to meet beauty standards. I think that's an important issue. I'd like to see it tied to the massive celebration of Dolly Parton, who went to an immense amount of trouble to manifest her ideal of highly exaggerated feminine beauty.

But what I want to talk about is the facial phenomenon often called a "wart." First of all, it's not a wart!

"She is a platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough."

I'm reading "'With All My Heart, Natalie.' Trump’s Most Devoted Aide Emerges. President Trump’s White House aide Natalie Harp is always by his side. What, exactly, does she do?" by Shawn McCreesh and Maggie Haberman, in the NYT (gift link).

They're talking about Natalie Harp because"she was chosen to join the president on the secret food-delivery-truck rescue gambit" and because Senator Jon Ossoff, a potential Democratic Party nominee for President, observed, "[Trump] doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.'"

The Times article also refers to Harp as a "sylphlike woman."

The quote "With all my heart, Natalie" — seen in the article headline is the sign-off of a letter Harp wrote to Trump in which she apologized for attracting press coverage as she walked a golf course as Trump played golf and, naturally, used a golf cart. I guess that looked foolish to some observers looking for one more thing to revile. I haven't read about the incident, but I suspect she wanted the exercise. I've walked golf courses as a spectator. It's normal for spectators to walk.

"The letter goes on to say: 'I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).'"

"This is no different from what the Heritage Foundation wants for women in the US. Except maybe instead of burqas..."

"... they want us in milk maid dresses, heavy hideous makeup, plastic surgery and naked. And it's actually worse when I think about their plans for society as a whole with illiteracy, poisoned food, toxic 'health' care, etc. Separation of religion and state must happen to even attempt a free society. This is why this concept exists."

A highly rated contribution to the comments section for "Afghan Women Erased From Public Life in Five Years of Taliban Rule/Decrees restricting the rights of women and girls to study, work, travel and act independently now threaten to damage Afghanistan permanently, experts say" (NYT gift link).

"I, like many a young woman, was once wildly judgmental about plastic surgery. I grew up in the 1990s..."

"... at the bizarre, lonely intersection of second-wave feminism and Manhattan privilege. Many of the girls in my private high school had their breasts enlarged and their noses shrunk. I congratulated myself for not following suit, even though I didn’t have a bump on my nose and I wasn’t flat chested. My mother, the writer Erica Jong, had a whole gestalt back then: pro-sex feminism, which of course meant keeping herself appealing enough for men to want to have sex with her. She worried about her own weight and beauty constantly. Julia Phillips, a successful film producer and writer, once compared her to 'Miss Piggy when her face is in repose'.... My mom was the concubine of more than a few powerful men. To preserve that status, she had a face-lift in her 50s. Many of the feminists who populated my mother’s narrow townhouse — Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan and Phyllis Chesler among them — did not believe in molding themselves into something different for men’s delectation. These women rejected the beauty-obsessed power structure that my mother embraced. Instead, they hoped to change that culture by refusing to comply with it...."

Writes Molly Jong-Fast, who got a deep plane face- and neck-lift, in "I’m Not Going to Lie About My Neck" (NYT gift link).

"Now, I’m 13 days post-op. Only one of my friends has been negative about it."

"Before the surgery, he said, 'It’s weird to me that you’d do this, because you’re someone who preaches embracing who you are.' The confusing thing is that he’s very 'black pill,' which is a trend that says you need to be beautiful in order to get a job or find a soul mate. I hate black pill, because it’s pushing the narrative that hurt me as a little girl: that looks are the only things that matter.... Maybe I’m contributing to that narrative by getting this procedure. But I looked in the mirror after my surgery, and I thought, Wow, this feels like the real me. It sucks that I have to change a part of me to truly like myself."

Said "R., 18, is an incoming college freshman from Colorado who got a deep neck-lift and rhinoplasty," quoted in "Three People on Why They Wanted New Faces" (NYT gift link).

That realization "Wow, this feels like the real me" is so "Twilight Zone."

"I had to wrestle with myself as a feminist to do it, and it was a lot of money. But I'm very happy with the result."

"No one noticed for like six months. And then I wrote the piece, and now everyone wants to talk about it. But that's okay too. But, yeah, my daughter, who's 13, has autism, said, 'I will never respect you if you do it.'... You know, everyone has to figure it out for themselves, but don't buy into the feminine beauty myth. You know, that you can do and be whoever you are in whatever way you want to treat your body and your face and it's up to you. You know, that's a personal personal thing... I just didn't want everyone to think I look sad when I feel in fact very happy...."

"It's more expensive than any car I ever bought, but I can't drive around in my face."

Said Rosie O'Donnell, about the facelift she'd always said she'd never get.

Everyone can see it looks phenomenal. But don't try this with your local surgeon. What she got is "very expensive." 

Is it okay to look like privilege?

Can we all just say she looks great? Pick the answer closest to what you think.

Never. She's Rosie O'Donell. That's always ugly.

Let's be empathetic to those who are so deeply troubled by Rosie that they can't see what is true.

She's objectively much improved, and everyone ought to acknowledge what is true.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Got any more of these cross-literary sparks, or is there another Stafford zinger that cracks you up?"

Grok asked me after I was asking it about the poem "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" by John Ashbery, specifically my favorite line, "Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched/Her long thigh."

The poem had just come up in a crossword puzzle: 20 Across: "Cartoon character featured in the John Ashbery poem 'Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape.'" There are a lot of cartoon characters in that poem, but the answer is POPEYE. 

I'd said to Grok: "That description of Olive Oyl and the poem title — 'Farm Implements' — made me think of this quote David Sedaris found in the biography of Jean Stafford: 'She was sharp-tongued and once described a fellow writer as 'looking as if she were pregnant with farm machinery.'"

That's in DS's new book (commission earned).

Well, I didn't have any more cross-literary sparks or Stafford zingers, so I said "No. Do you?"

And Grok was all "Yes — plenty." Etc.

"What [James] Cameron did was not inspiration, it was extraction. He took the unique biometric facial features of a 14-year-old indigenous girl..."

"... ran them through an industrial production process, and generated billions of dollars in profit without ever once asking her permission."

Said the lawyer for Q’orianka Kilcher, quoted in "James Cameron stole my face, actress claims/Q’orianka Kilcher, who is of indigenous Peruvian descent, is suing the director, alleging that he and Disney violated her rights for the blockbuster franchise" (London Times).

Kilcher claimed that Cameron had told her at an event in 2010, one year after Avatar’s release: “I’ve admired your activism work in the Amazon.” She said he later gifted her a signed one-off sketch of the Avatar character with a handwritten note that read: “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”

"Avatar" is the highest-grossing movie of all time, so you can see how Kilcher must feel that she's owed something or that Cameron will be persuaded to give her more than that sketch and the compliment. That "Too bad/Next time" must hurt her! And it must hurt him now to be accused of making a movie "that presented itself as sympathetic to indigenous struggles, all while silently exploiting a real indigenous youth behind the scenes."

The law in question is California’s right of publicity law. Here's the text.

I'm giving this my "lawsuits I hope will fail" tag, but I could be talked out of it. 

"When [Grok] produced a 'corrected' version of my face, unrecognisable yet eerily similar to every airbrushed influencer..."

"... I closed my laptop and laughed. In my thirties I have enough context and confidence to know I don’t need to remodel my face like it’s a damp two-bed riddled with asbestos. But at 16 I’m not so sure I would have found it funny. I might have taken it as a blueprint, a glimpse of how I was supposed to look, and chased it down into the rabbit hole."

Writes Lydia Veljanovski, in "The new rise of female looksmaxxing/I tried AI apps suggesting surgery and rating young women who want to be 'Staceys'" (London Times).

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

"A 'rich face' is stretched taut, often incapable of varied expressions and plumped with filler or implants or a person’s own grafted fat."

Writes Amy Odell, in "Rich People Didn’t Look Like This Before" (NYT).

"Once, this face belonged to a villainous class of elites in sci-fi depictions of a dystopian future. In 'The Hunger Games,' residents of the capital city who revel in luxury and excess at the expense of other impoverished districts often wear sculpted, altered faces. In 'Doctor Who,' a wealthy socialite from the distant future has gone through so many face-lifts that she becomes little more than a stretched face on a thin sheet of skin mounted on a frame, maintained with constant moisturizer."

But is it Trump's fault?

"Today, at 85, [my wife] is lovelier than ever. Her lustrous white hair is so stunning..."

"... that people stop her on the street to remark on it. She has a beauty born of episodes of sorrow intermingled with joy. I have watched her transformation for decades. Her brown eyes are the picture of profound thought, an important idea given form. Her skin, still smooth. Only the lines on the neck betray her age, like delicate narrow paths cut into a desert. I have seen women who have feared these changes and had lots of work done to their faces, whose expressions are frozen in a strange perpetual surprise. I always wondered where their wrinkles went. To a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards?"

Writes Roger Rosenblatt, in "My Wife Is 85. She Takes My Breath Away" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read the whole essay).

I'm blogging this as a companion to yesterday's post about Megan McArdle's bemoaning faces ruined by plastic surgery.

Is Rosenblatt's writing bad? Can you understand "a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards"? I don't know, but I'm just hoping it's helpful to hear from an old man who sincerely believes his old wife is beautiful.

"You walk into a restaurant and see a woman you used to know.... She looks amazing at a distance and way younger than she has any right to."

"Then, as you get closer, you realize something is wrong. Her face isn't moving naturally. It's part of it is frozen in place, and other parts are uncomfortably over-inflated. Then you look around and you realize, she's not the only one. It's like they all took the same picture to their plastic surgeon and said, I want that one.... It happens because they're optimizing for a screen instead of real life.... It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that videos and photos are somehow especially real because, after all, it's just a plain picture of what happened. But in fact, cameras can alter a perception of reality in dozens of ways.... You shouldn't chase screen beauty because even celebrities don't really look like that when they're walking around, and... you need to take away is how destructive it can be for people who attain it. I've had so many encounters with people who look amazing at first glance and uncanny once you've watched them talk a bit. Frankly, I don't want to be around those people because it's a little scary...."

Says Megan McArdle, who goes on to condemn open-floor plans, on "Everyone wants to live like an influencer now," the new episode of her podcast "Reasonably Optimistic" (WaPo).

When people are talking face-to-face, how much are they thinking about the genuineness of each other's face? I'd say it's close to 100% of what we are doing and what we were born to do. It's only less than that if we're having trouble making eye contact or we're distracted or disgusted. 

"There’s always two poles in any movement. There’s this pull toward being post-human, shinier, newer, cloned, etc., the sense that people have elevated the lacquered surface of the machine over the body."

"[And there's this pull toward] I’m real. I think we’re like old stone houses. We have the value of antiquity. If you haven’t tweaked yourself, it’s like you have a working fireplace that’s been going since 1680. We’re authentic.... For all women, there’s that line between choosing to be malleable and pleasing and to conform with the collective norms or refusing it.... No, I’m not playing that game."

Said the 77-year-old French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, quoted in "Why Fashion Suddenly Loves Older Women/Representation of women of a certain age has never been higher. What’s going on?" (NYT).

The article is by Vanessa Friedman, who continues: "Authenticity is, of course, one of the current buzzwords not just in fashion, but in culture generally. It’s a reflection of the fear that individual style has been lost to the algorithm.... It’s not just influencers and celebrities who have become the vehicles for this version of ageless sameness. It’s political figures, too.... As many MAGA women have embraced the plumped and smoothed 'Mar-a-Lago face,' it has become an expression of a larger social swing toward exaggerated norms and old-fashioned patriarchal gender roles rather than simply a cosmetic fad."

Can we talk a little bit about beauty filters?

I'm told this is Rosie O'Donnell, inviting us to "talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell. If she's actually ready to get serious about the interests of women, why is she presenting herself like this?

Rosie O’Donnell speaks out about her past support for Eric Swalwell.

“It’s heartbreaking to me. And I wrote him a little message. And I said ‘Bill Clinton broke my heart and you did too.’ The conclusion I’ve come to- men suck.” pic.twitter.com/QP1nBuQDUc

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 16, 2026

She's used some kind of filter that makes her look like a little girl. That actually fits the substance. She's posing as an innocent girl whose "heart" was broken when men she supported revealed themselves to be abusers of women. She wants us to be angry at them because they hurt her — they broke her heart. First Clinton and now Swalwell. Her conclusion is babyish: "Men suck." 

Then she takes on a believe-the-science attitude: "The way that [men] are physiologically, they can't, sort of, control their sexual urges." After saying that, she touches her nose and cheek in a way that makes me think she knows she's bullshitting.

Notice that it's basically the same bullshit theory we were talking about 2 days ago in "The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."  That post title is a quote from a NYT column. The columnist, Michelle Cottle did not detail this "built differently" hypothesis, so I paraphrased it: "the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women."

"He never discusses the way he wants me to play things"/"He hired you for the job. He wants what you have."

A conversation between Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart about Alfred Hitchcock.

Quoted in "Kim Novak: 'Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time. She could never play me'/The 93-year-old star of Vertigo talks about Alfred Hitchcock, the trouble with being pretty and why a biopic about her love affair with Sammy Davis Jr won’t happen" (London Times).

Also: "[Tippi] Hedren has said [Hitchcock] made a pass at her and told her he 'expected me to make myself sexually available to him,' although she never did. Novak says she and Hedren didn’t talk about him. 'I’m not denying that if she’s saying it, but I never saw him pay any attention to women other than his wife, who was often on the set, and he was certainly never interested in me in that way. Maybe that’s why I never wanted to discuss it with Tippi — I have a hard time believing it because to me you have to see it to believe it. If he was like that with Tippi that was an odd exception.'"

The article has photos of Novak and Sweeney that inspired me to jot down this AI prompt: "I'm noticing that actresses of today will pose for photos with their mouth hanging open, slack jawed. I believe that in the past, the lips would be kept together (unless the actress was smiling/laughing/talking). Is my observation accurate?"

Answer, from Grok: