In recent years, it has modified its criteria to let in married women, single mothers and transgender women. Despite its tokenism, the award went to a 22-year-old. But Soon-hwa owned her wrinkles, white hair and crow’s feet to win the Best Dressed award.
There is something about the granny era. After a lifetime of chasing professional milestones, looking after the family, this is, finally, their moment to do as they please. Go off the grid, cock a snook at convention and live it up. This is what 81-year-old Choi Soon-hwa from South Korea did. A former hospital worker, Soon-hwa took up modelling at 72 at the suggestion of a patient. Her children had flown the nest, the family income had almost never been enough, and the endless time after retirement only made apparent the loneliness that had always been on the horizon. This year, when the Miss Universe beauty pageant relaxed their age criteria — the earlier bar had been 28 years — Soon-hwa saw in it an unexpected opportunity: A chance to participate. That she didn’t win the South Korea leg of it mattered little. She was dreaming a little dream and the usually ageist beauty industry, with its impossible standards and its veneration of youth, was willing to play along.
There are several delicious ironies here, not least of which is the desperate attempt of the beauty industry to stay relevant by subverting its own prejudices. In recent years, it has modified its criteria to let in married women, single mothers and transgender women. Despite its tokenism, the award went to a 22-year-old. But Soon-hwa owned her wrinkles, white hair and crow’s feet to win the Best Dressed award.
Perhaps, there is another message in Soon-hwa’s confidence: The grannies know what 20-somethings trying to fit their lives into social moulds rarely do. That age is the realm of survivors, those who know what it’s like to wrest back control given half a chance and do things their way. As the British poet Jenny Joseph wrote in ‘Warning’, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/ With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me…/ I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired/ And gobble up samples in shops…/ And make up for the sobriety of my youth.”
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 05-10-2024 at 01:40 IST
