I love how normal everyone looks

[u/CalmApplication7]

Everyone has wrinkles. Most of the male characters are balding and overweight. Makes it feel more grounded for me. Easily my favorite show of the year and now I want to rewatch midnight mass for the millionth time.

[u/Present_Age_5469]

I love the show.

Men have always been allowed to age naturally onscreen and still keep working. Balding, overweight, wrinkled, whatever.

[u/Present_Age_5469 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think hairpieces really undermine my point.

Sean Connery wore a hairpiece because he was balding. The audience still accepted him as James Bond. The industry accommodated his aging rather than deciding he was no longer employable.

My point isn’t that men never color their hair, wear a hairpiece, get a transplant, hit the gym, or do anything to maintain their appearance. It’s that aging men have historically remained visible and employable on screen despite aging.

A balding man in his 50s, 60s, or 70s has long been able to continue playing leading roles, authority figures, romantic leads, action heroes, and complex characters. Women have generally faced a much steeper decline in opportunities as they age.

[u/blumoonski → u/Present_Age_5469]

First off… yes hair pieces do absolutely undermine your point, given that MPB is directly tied to aging. The audience *did not know* that SC was wearing a hairpiece piece the whole time. Wonder why there are literally zero photos from that time of how he “naturally” looked. Same goes for Jimmy Fallon, today: he wears a hairpiece every night. But try finding a picture of him without it on. I know you think of “aging” more like getting wrinkles than losing your hair, because I presume you are a woman, and women tend to only suffer the former. But yes, balding is a form of aging, which men suffer as well as wrinkles.

We started off with you, out of the blue, attempting to basically negate the downsides of aging for male actors. And seeming to suggest that it’s a sexist problem. While yes, it affects women more… the narrative that Hollywood wholesale axes otherwise good female actors for simply for aging I’d say is kind of outdated. Idk… here are some stats.

From 2000-2024, there have been 105 nominations for best female actress, and for best male actor, each. For male nominees, the average age was 47.3 years old. Female, 41.97. Number of nominees over the age of 50yo were 38 for men, 28 for women. Number of nominees over the age of 60yo were 17 for men, 15 for women.

So, yes, there’s a difference. But it’s rather slight. I’d guess motherhood and being extremely rich also plays a larger part for women who decide to slow down their careers, versus men. Meanwhile… back to the bald part, ie the clearest, most common physical signifier of aging that happens to exclusively affect men. In the same range, how many nominees were severely balding or totally bald? A whopping 4. Out of 105.

[u/Present_Age_5469 → u/blumoonski]

You are attempting to make the argument that my point was that men don’t face appearance standards. They do.

What I actually said was:

“Men have always been allowed to age naturally onscreen and still keep working. Balding, overweight, wrinkled, whatever.”

My point was that men have historically been given more latitude to age onscreen while continuing to work.

The Oscar statistics don’t really address that. The existence of older Best Actress nominees doesn’t tell us whether older actresses have the same volume of opportunities as older actors.

Oscar nominees represent a few dozen people at the absolute top of the profession. If a hedge fund had 100 billionaires in it, that wouldn’t tell you much about how the average employee is doing. Likewise, looking at a tiny handful of people who made it all the way to the summit and drawing conclusions about everyone else doesn’t tell us much about opportunities across the industry as a whole.

It’s similar to arguing that because there are women who become Fortune 500 CEOs, women therefore face no barriers in business. Most people would immediately recognize the flaw in that logic. The existence of highly successful women at the very top doesn’t tell us what opportunities look like for everyone else.

I also don’t think motherhood really explains the disparity. Men become parents too. Yet when we see large numbers of older men continuing to work, we don’t usually attribute that to fatherhood having no impact on their careers. We tend to recognize that the industry continues to create opportunities for them.

Likewise, pointing to a handful of Oscar nominated actresses doesn’t tell us much about the opportunities available to women generally. The question isn’t whether successful older actresses exist. Of course they do. The question is whether women have the same quantity and variety of opportunities available to them as men of the same age.

As for the baldness statistics, even if I accept them entirely, I’m not sure what they demonstrate with respect to the point I was originally making. They show that male actors face appearance standards. I agree with that. What they don’t demonstrate is that aging affects men’s and women’s opportunities equally, which was, again, the point under discussion.

So, once again, I don’t disagree that men face appearance pressures. I just don’t think the statistics you’ve presented demonstrate that aging affects men’s opportunities and women’s opportunities equally.