Shows like The Crown (Claire Foy and later Olivia Colman), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel , Grace and Frankie , and Big Little Lies demonstrated that ensemble casts of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s could generate massive critical acclaim and ratings.
The industry suffered from a collective cultural myopia that refused to see what was obvious to any paying audience: mature women are complex, dynamic, powerful, and deeply entertaining. They have lived. They have loved, lost, schemed, triumphed, and failed. Their stories are not the epilogue to a younger woman’s drama; they are the main event. milftoon+lemonade+movie+part+16+27l+portable
The 1990s and early 2000s were particularly brutal. The rise of the "chick flick" relegated women over 40 to the role of the mom in the bleachers or the shrill boss. Films like Something’s Gotta Give (2003) openly satirized the double standard when a 60-year-old man dating a 30-year-old woman was a "stud," while a 50-year-old woman dating a 30-year-old man was a crisis. Shows like The Crown (Claire Foy and later
Consider Grace and Frankie (2015-2022). Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, with a combined age of nearly 150, led a hit show for seven seasons. It didn’t shy away from sex, friendship, ambition, or the messy realities of divorce and aging. It proved that the audience’s appetite for stories about older women was a vast, underserved market. They have lived
We have moved from an industry that asked, "Can she still carry a film?" to an audience that demands, "When is she getting her own film?"
The next frontier is about . We need more stories about working-class older women. We need more stories about sexuality in retirement homes (as seen in the brilliant Australian film The Nightingale or the series The Kominsky Method ). We need more women over 70 leading action films. We need to see unretouched skin, flabby arms, and gray roots on the red carpet.