Female celebrities are thus forced to walk “an incredibly narrow and precarious tightrope,” as celebrity scholars Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn explain, in which “the aesthetic and discursive space in which one can age ‘well’ is severely delimited, as well as contradictory, capricious, and subject to change.”4 Work out, but don’t get arms like Madonna’s; work hard to keep your body ageless, but make that labor invisible. Put simply: you’re damned if you do; you’re damned if you don’t. Try too hard, and you’re disgusting; don’t try at all, and you’re invisible.
