Outta the best way, Massive Dick Power! Previous Woman Power simply trotted onto the taking part in area, flexing her well-toned muscle groups and displaying them off to nice benefit on the 2025 Golden Globe Awards. As one of many winners giving off that power, actor Fernanda Torres stated in her acceptance speech, “That is such an incredible yr for feminine performances!” What she didn’t say was that it was an incredible yr for performances by girls over 50, 60, and 70.
The proof? Demi Moore (62) for The Substance; Jodie Foster (62) for True Detective: Night time Nation; Jean Good (73) for Hacks; and Torres (a child, at 59) for I’m Nonetheless Right here. To not point out—however what an honorable point out—the opposite nominated actresses, seven of them of their 50s (Pamela Anderson, Nicole Kidman, Karla Sofía Gascón, Kathryn Hahn, Liza Colón-Zayas, Naomi Watts, and Sofia Vergara), together with Tilda Swinton (64), Allison Janney (65), Isabella Rossellini (72), and Kathy Bates (76). Oh, and the estimable Viola Davis (59), embellished with the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Have a look at these numbers: Sixteen actresses throughout 50! Lastly, a whiff of change is within the air. Foster, in an interview for Folks, stated, “This isn’t my time. I had my time. That is their time,” referring to youthful gamers, which is the sort of generosity extra probably out there when one feels a sure contentment together with her profession. She went on to say that working in her 60s is extra satisfying and enjoyable than it has been prior to now 20 years, a sentiment undoubtedly shared by the winners and nominees at Sunday’s awards present.
However why this A-team of older girls now? There have been current precursors signaling a change. Earlier than Hacks, Grace and Frankie tackled the challenges of growing old head-on with honesty and a sort of big-hearted resolve. With extra alternatives by social media, girls are capable of painting their lives as advanced, full, even enviable as we age. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s award-winning podcast, Wiser Than Me, for instance, wherein she interviews iconic older girls, shines its mild on the worth of accrued years. (Louis-Dreyfus occurs to know the darkish aspect of accrued years, too: 9 years in the past she, together with a couple of different notable and barely maturing actresses, was featured in Amy Schumer’s “Last Fuckable Day” video, satirically celebrating/mourning their passing from sexually desired to…human husks.)
Possibly the affect of a extra extensively held recognition—that middle-aged and older girls aren’t utterly robbed of their lifeforce, their generativity, their inventive juices at menopause—has eventually begun to infiltrate Hollywood. And talking of inventive juices (or possibly merely juices) our ideas of what middle-aged girls appear like are very completely different from what they have been even 5 or 10 years in the past. To wit: Demi Moore, a grandmother IRL, performs a 50-something-year-old girl in The Substance, with a physique not very not like her 20-something-year-old antagonist’s. Although we’re incapable of reproducing (with out numerous assist) after menopause, Hollywood has reluctantly begun to confess that some girls should still be interesting, sexually, even after they can not make infants. (After all, some girls, like Moore, can nonetheless appear like they might make infants, which makes it simpler for Hollywood to take a danger with them. And tougher for us to reconcile with our very different-looking our bodies.)
It will make sense if a part of the explanation for a extra sturdy illustration of older girls is that there are extra girls writing scripts for them. However in accordance with The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, girls made up solely 17% of writers for the highest 250 movies of 2023, solely a slight improve from 13% in 1998. And simply three years in the past, a narrative within the on-line publication The Conversation famous analysis from 2019 discovered that older girls are sometimes relegated to supporting roles in movies—or are constantly portrayed as grumpy, frumpy, or senile.
