Lisa Ray opens up about the pressure to look younger in film industry

Mumbai, Aug 11 (IANS) Actress Lisa Ray has opened up about ageing, beauty standards, and the pressure women face to conform to unrealistic expectations of appearance.

Reflecting on her own experiences in the industry, she spoke about how society’s constant focus on youth and physical appearance can create anxiety among women. Sharing a note on Instagram, the ‘Four More Shots Please!’ actress recalled reading Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in her late teens and described the book as timely for someone entering an industry with strong opinions about how women should look. She said the book helped her understand the fear surrounding ageing, weight, wrinkles, grey hair, cellulite and the pressure to remain desirable.

Lisa shared a note that read, “If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business.- Dr.GailDines.” For the caption, she wrote, “This quote. I first read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in my late teens — which, in retrospect, was rather good timing for a girl entering an industry with very strong opinions about what women should look like. The book gave language to something I could already feel: fear is very good for business. Fear of ageing. Fear of gaining weight. Fear of wrinkles, softness, grey hair, cellulite, irrelevance. Fear that somewhere, somehow, another woman is doing “woman” better than you are.

“And perhaps the most exhausting part is not even what we buy because of that fear. It’s the low-level anxiety it installs in us — the constant background hum of not enough. Not thin enough. Young enough. Smooth enough. Desirable enough. Disciplined enough.”

The ‘Nethaji’ actress added, “I’ve spent much of my life inside industries that participate in this machinery, so I’m not pretending I’ve observed it from some morally superior mountaintop. I’ve benefited from beauty standards. I’ve performed them. I’ve also been diminished by them. But one of the delicious gifts of midlife is that some of the old programming starts to malfunction. You begin to see the trick. And once you see it, it becomes much harder to sell you your own inadequacy.”

Lisa Ray concluded by saying, “At 54, I’m far more interested in inhabiting my body than correcting it. Strengthening it. Listening to it. Enjoying it. Ageing in it. Imagine the collective exhale if women stopped waking up every morning feeling like a problem requiring improvement, but instead focused on health, tuning into their bodies, focusing on getting strong, supporting their physical, mental and spiritual needs, listening to their gut and heart and celebrating every beautifully flawed moment of their lives! Now that would be disruptive. And possibly terrible for quarterly sales.”

–IANS

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