I’ve been reading a lot about “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” and the coverage has been almost as delicious as the show appears to be. What’s struck me is how much more aspirational I find the “older” women in the cast (Calista Flockhart, Diane Lane, Demi Moore, Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny) than I do the sea of influencers given more airtime today, with their hydrofacial’d faces, perfectly matched workout sets, and Revolve closets. I’m vain like everyone else, but I don’t wake up aspiring to that Flat Stanley prototype of womanhood.
None of these famous actresses, raised by Hollywood, are immune to external pressure either, and you can see that on their faces made more youthful by botox, filler, etc. But they have depth, they share thoughts that you can actually latch onto and turn over in your mind. Their opinions are their own, not the masses. Reading interviews with them feels like sitting down for a 3-hour lunch with an old friend, one so enjoyable that, for a short time, the clock stops.
Age surely helps us clarify our thinking—it lends perspective—but part of me wonders if what I’m drawn to most in these women is minds that were forged almost entirely offline. They don’t think in follower and like counts, their online presence isn’t center stage. The Instagram rabbit hole hasn’t turned them into each other, merging their faces and clothing into one ideal. When I look at a group shot, I can tell them apart.
In one article on the show, which is about a group of society women that Truman Capote befriended and then betrayed, the show’s writer Jon Robin Baitz says of the women being portrayed (who include Lee Radziwill and Babe Paley): “They were enslaved to their own mythology. They devoted themselves to something absurd. They devoted themselves to imagery and beauty and posing and being seen and society culture. That’s a dead end.”
You could say the same of the influencer class today, devoted as they are to being seen in just the right light, at all the right places. One could argue that they, too, are treating life as art, privileging beauty above all else, and is that a crime? No, it’s just that today, that beauty is so often boring and same-samey, every single person a version of the same domino. They collapse into each other and I can’t spot the difference.
We all look for clues for how to live a good life from other people, but I struggle to find them in the virtual abyss, where womanhood has been diminished to glowy skin, a pilates habit, and a curation of beige objects we’re supposed to call home. In place of wisdom, I’m served hollow inspirational quotes that chip away at my brain, every attempt at a deep thought in the confines of Instagram pushing me further away from myself.
It makes an interview with actresses, in their own mimetic and rarefied class, feel somehow real—more substantive. An irony, yes, and, a sign of the times.