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In the skit, Schumer and the gang are clearly calling bullshit on Hollywood's treatment of older women. They're celebrating Julia Louis-Dreyfus' "last f***able day" which, according to the ladies, is the day when Hollywood no longer sees you as a truly sexy woman with whom moviegoers could believe hot guys would want to have sex. Their examples included the time Sally Field went from playing Tom Hanks' love interest to his mother in just a few short years. Or when you start being cast as a woman trying to get Jack Nicholas' attention. Of course, the women aren't complaining. They rejoice at being able to down whole pints of ice cream and finally being able to stop, ahem, landscaping.
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Still, it's a cold hard truth that Hollywood, and really all of the world, has such claustrophobic ideals of what a woman should be doing, wearing and saying at each stage in her life. When was the last time you saw any woman over 45 in a bikini in a movie? And middle-aged celebs with long hair seems to always be the few and brilliant "eccentric" Hollywood types to buck against tradition. Somewhere around 50, female actors must start getting memos that it's time to cut their locks into a bob or shorter. At 44, Tina Fey sat at that table, in tune with the women celebrating their last f***able day, as if she's already experienced hers. And yet, we still swoon over 40-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio and 51-year-old Jack Sparrow. They're still playing strong, sexy male leads. They and their elite set of friends are still being marketed as sexy and, yeah, f***able. They can do whatever they want in their 40s, 50s and beyond. But the minute a woman turns 30, the restrictions start rolling in.
Average women aren't immune to this, either. I've been 30 for nearly six months now, but even a couple years before that monumental birthday, people began weighing in on what turning 30 meant. After swooning over a perfectly peach-colored dress from Forever 21, my best girlfriend told me I would have looked really cute in it at Homecoming, a decade earlier. But that, at 28, it was "too young." At 29, during an epic road trip, a family member told me that "once you turn 30" you have to start being more responsible and settling down. And, on my 30th birthday, my precious grandmother told me she worried it was too late for me to have children. Shoot. Just last week, when I mentioned I needed to hit the salon for my annual summer bleached-blond treatment, my aunt and her well-meaning friend suggested maybe it was time to pick a more grown-up hair color. To summarize: In our culture, women going on 30 can't wear fun, flirty dresses or be the wild and carefree girl traveling the country, platinum locks getting all tangled up from the wind gushing through the window.
According to Hollywood, 30 looks nothing like my life. At 30, I should be the cute, fit wife of a slacker husband. I should have a sassy grade-schooler, a rambunctious toddler and a bun in the oven. Or, I should be the uber-bitchy workaholic who suddenly realized she squandered her life away working and now is single, alone and miserable. Somewhere in your 30s, according to Hollywood, you start losing sexiness. You start becoming the desperate best friend, neglected wife or miserly sister pushing the same age propaganda on your younger sister. And by 40? You're eccentric aunts, mothers of the leads in romantic comedies or, on the off chance someone still finds you hot, you're an even more desperately old and lonely spinster who has no intention of falling in love. If you're cast in a rom-com in your 40s, it's almost always the story of a woman who long since "gave up" on love who stumbles upon a widower or divorced man, full of flaws but seemingly the last hope for said spinster. A decade later, you're Jack Nicholas' bitter ex-wife or Ryan Reynolds' insane boss.
I doubt this skit is going to change what my aunt thinks of my hair or my best friend's eye roll when I wander into Forever 21, but I love the middle finger it thrusts purposefully in everyone's faces.
Last Effable Day
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