Justine Bateman has hit out at society's constant body shaming of women after trolls told her she "looks old".
The 57-year-old writer, director, producer, and actress - whose brother is actor Jason Bateman - famously starred in Family Ties alongside Michael J. Fox as fashion-conscious Mallory Keaton.
She recently spoke about the negative comments she'd received about her appearance during an interview with 60 Minutes Australia.
In that interview, she admitted that she didn't realize how obsessed the internet was with her looks until she decided to Google herself one day.
"I needed to google something to do a little research and remind myself of something that happened when I was famous, so I put in my name, googled my name, Justine Bateman, and then the autocomplete came up which was 'looks old,'" Bateman recalled, via The New York Post.
The mom-of-two then added: "And I was only 42 at the time …and I was like 'what?' And I looked at the pictures that they had as evidence and I couldn't see what they were talking about."
Later on in the interview Bateman was asked whether some people might find the whole notion of aging to be "beautiful", she replied: "I just don’t give a s**t. I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it."
She also said that she feels sad for women who try to reverse the effects of aging by using Botox and filler, as she thinks they're just "not enjoying" life. "I feel sad that they are distracted from the things they're meant to do in life, with this consuming idea that they've got to fix their face before anything else can happen," Bateman admitted.
"Forget about your face! That is what I'm saying. Get rid of the fear that your face being wrinkled is going to ruin a bunch of opportunities for you."
Bateman discussed this in her 2021 book Face: One Square Foot of Skin, where she explored women's desire to have plastic surgery. "Why is the idea that women's older faces are undesirable, what is the root of all that," she told Page Six at the time. "How did we get here and more importantly - and the thing that really bothers me - is how did we get to this point in our current society where cutting your face up, or injecting it, or inserting plastic or whatever is spoken about so matter-of-factly."
She continued: "We went from, 'Wow someone getting a face lift is quite unusual!,' to, 'It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.' To me it's really, it's like, psychopathic. It's lunacy, and I don't like that we're going along with it without pausing to think about it."
Well, there you have it folks! Bateman clearly doesn't give a hoot about what anyone thinks about her looks, and I'll be the first to say that's darn admirable!
