Getting Better All The Time
Bonnie Goldstein
Woman Up Editor
Posted:
05/18/09
Accompanied by then and now photos of ageless supermodels, Parade Magazine on Sunday featured an interview with fashion icon Iman. As Judy Howard Ellis noted here, the veteran model startlingly told Kevin Sessums she believes Michelle Obama is not "a great beauty," and that is a good thing because, "when you're a great beauty, it's always downhill for you." Instead, says Mrs. Ziggy Stardust, the First Lady is "interesting looking and so bright."
Iman's remarks are a sign of her own times. "If you're someone like Mrs. Obama," she says, "you just get better with age." That adage is true for ordinary folks as well. The 53-year-old's successful career as a model and cosmetics company founder has been built on looks but, as we all learn, youth fades -- no matter how much botox you inject.
Beauty is a commodity that relies on genes but, more than any other product, its value is in the eye of the beholder. Iman's Modigliani looks were considered exotic when a famous fashion photographer discovered the diplomat's daughter, then a Nairobi college student, back in the 1970's. Demonstrating that beauty comes in many packages, a generation accustomed to blue-eyed blondes embraced her refreshingly ethnic image. Iman is now learning along with her fans that, moisturizing notwithstanding, true beauty comes from within. Even for Iman, after 50, your age becomes part of your identity.