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While progress has been made, the battle is not over. The "Mature Woman" category is still often limited to white, thin, conventionally attractive actresses. The next frontier is intersectionality.
Where are the stories of the plus-sized mature woman? The woman of color over 60? The disabled elder? Viola Davis (57) is leading this charge, producing vehicles for herself that defy gravity (like The Woman King), but the industry needs to ensure that the renaissance of the older actress does not become a renaissance of the older white actress only. milfs in stockings updated
Furthermore, the industry must stop treating "40" as the start of "old." In real life, 45 is prime. We need stories about women in perimenopause who lead rock bands. We need rom-coms about 55-year-old divorcees going back to college. We need horror films about the terror of the empty nest. While progress has been made, the battle is not over
While film has been slower to adapt, television has offered rich opportunities for mature women due to longer narrative arcs. Where are the stories of the plus-sized mature woman
Many mature women bypass the system by writing, directing, or producing:
This trend is global. In France, Isabelle Huppert (70) continues to star in sexually charged, psychologically intense dramas that Hollywood would never dream of giving to a 70-year-old man, let alone a woman. In Korea, Youn Yuh-jung (74) won an Oscar for Minari, playing a spunky, irreverent grandmother—a role that could have been a cliché, but instead was a revelation.
The international market has always been slightly ahead of Hollywood in valuing the crone, the witch, the wise woman. Now, the global streamers are forcing a cross-pollination of ideas.