The XX Factor: What women really think.

Old Spice

Susannah. The headline here is actually kind of worse than “Julia Roberts is OLD.” The headline—or subhed—is the coy suggestion that “Julia Roberts is a superstar, but her box-office reign might be over.” Then the piece is packed with arguments (as Dana points out, without any actual evidence) about how Roberts is old. I suppose you could read this piece as a comment on the punishing standards of beauty and youth in Hollywood. If, say, you skipped every other sentence. But I read it as a faux-defense, not unlike Maureen Dowd’s efforts to both celebrate and send up Michelle Obama this past weekend. Maybe this is some new form of double-lutz ironic journalism, in which we pretend to bemoan some appalling societal trend (strong arms, shallow Hollywood ageism ... ) while still wallowing in its every last cliché.

One Wedding, Three Children and ... a Funeral?

More for Susannah on Julia Roberts: I don't think either Dahlia or I were motivated to tear into that Newsweek piece on her by our undying love for America's sweetheart. Rather, we were struck by the article's disingenuousness, what I called its "eyelash-batting" quality. I get that by using the phrase "Hollywood ancient," the author is distancing himself from the assertion that the 41-year-old Roberts is hopelessly superannuated. But by never refuting, or indeed questioning, that assertion, he winds up simply reinforcing it, while also getting to wipe away a tear for JR's poor lost career.

Your comparison of Roberts' "comeback" with Mickey Rourke's is telling, in terms of what it reveals about our (unconscious?) presumptions about women, children, and work. On the one hand, there's Rourke, who made horribly self-destructive choices, alienated every director he worked with, then spent 10 to 15 years spiraling into addiction and despair before resurrecting his career with The Wrestler. Then there's Roberts, who took a planned five-year break at the height of her career to raise a pair of twins and a younger son. Mind you, this is no attack on Rourke, whom I love as both an actor and a public personality—I was delighted to welcome him back from obscurity, I wish he'd won the Oscar, and I'd far rather hang out with him than with Julia Roberts. But to compare his decade of darkness with Roberts' extended maternity leave—hey, they both stopped working, then started again!—is to reinforce the belief (held at a semiconscious level by many working mothers, including, at times, me) that opting out of the work force for a time is somehow a source of shame.

Pretty (Old) Woman

Yuck. Like Dahlia, I hate the way this Newsweek article on Julia Roberts perpetuates sexist assumptions—41-year-old women are "ancient"! Time off to raise children = career suicide!—while batting its eyelashes innocently. The author is effectively saying, gee, what a shame that people might think Roberts was a washed-up old hag ... just because I'm publishing a Newsweek article to that effect! Dahlia points to a few actors exactly Roberts' age, all of whose careers are currently at their white-hot peak: Jamie Foxx, Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman. And what about Clive "Methuselah" Owen, who's cast opposite Roberts in next week's Duplicity? He's 47, poor thing, just like our enfeebled, half-senile new president.

There are other, non-gender-related things that bug me about this article—for example, calling Roberts' massive, toothy grin a "Mona Lisa smile" seems simply off. Isn't the whole point of a Mona Lisa smile that it's the subtlest of expressions, almost not a smile at all? Then there's the fact that the author resignedly eulogizes Roberts' career without having yet seen her new movie. Duplicity, a corporate-spy thriller that's the second film from exciting new director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) stands an excellent chance of being both a critical and box-office success, and even if it's not, both Roberts and Owen have survived other flops. Before we declare Julia Roberts' "comeback" a failure, can we let her actually come back?

Hollywood Ancient

Jamie Foxx. Paul Giamatti. Benicio Del Toro. Liev Schreiber. Guy Pearce. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Pretty safe bet that if any one of these 41-year-old actors had been the subject of this Newsweek piece they wouldn’t have been run through the gender double-standard meat grinder—the one that permits Julia Roberts to be declared “Hollywood ancient” at the advanced age of 41. Oh, and those five years she took off to raise her kids? An unfortunate  “dry spell.”

I’m thinking it’s a pretty safe bet that if it was Philip Seymour Hoffman who had taken five years off in his mid-30s—even if it was to work on his rare African beetle collection—he’d be acclaimed upon his return as fresher, younger, and crackling with new energy.