"Not Dead Yet" is Susan Hess Logeias' latest project in her second act as a filmmaker. Hess Logeias wrote, produced, and co-stars in this dramatic comedy about three actresses over forty who can't find roles for women their age. Joining forces to revive their acting careers by making their own film (and starring in it themselves), they unwittingly embark on a more essential quest to find themselves and challenge their roles as mothers, lovers, wives, workers, and friends.
With the recent media focus on Demi Moore's troubles and Madonna's Superbowl halftime performance calling attention to American's deep insecurities about aging, I wanted to interview a post 50 tackling those issues head-on. "Not Dead Yet" was produced by Hot Flash Films PDX, Hess Logeias' company, which is dedicated to "empowering audiences through thought-provoking entertainment and realistic media imagery that celebrates women as they truly are."
When she was still in her teens, Susan Hess Logeais became one of Europe's most successful fashion models. A former ballet dancer with a lithe figure and a fresh-scrubbed, all-American visage, she graced the covers of more than a dozen major women's magazines and strode down runways in Paris, Milan and New York. Later, she turned to acting and co-starred in numerous network television movies and mini-series.
But modeling and acting had a dark side. Logeais was continually plagued by a "deep-seated feeling of not being good enough" that was exacerbated by her experience getting -- and later removing -- breast implants. "I was five years old when I became fascinated with breasts," she writes on her blog. "My favorite technique for studying them was to slip a Playboy magazine into something more acceptable such as Ladies Home Journal, or LIFE, while my mother shopped at Albertson's. I was convinced that this was how all women looked, so imagine my shock when adolescence passed and my breasts still didn't fill an A-cup."
So began a personal journey that would later result in a commitment to challenging social norms and exploring the vagaries of body politics, ageism, advertising, spirituality and socially responsible filmmaking. "If somebody doesn't want to put me in front of the camera, I'll get behind it," she says.
I recently spoke with Hess Logeais about her life behind the camera and her social and creative convictions.
What inspired you to focus your energy on empowering older women through film?
Initially it was the fact that I carry a certain amount of guilt about having had breast implants. There was a period in the eighties where catalogs became the biggest outreach to everyday women around the country. They were being created in New York with a handful of models. The same girls did just about every catalog -- Neiman Marcus, Saks, Bloomingdales, Nordstroms. These were going all over the country in the mid-eighties and the women who were doing the modeling were my girlfriends. So when I got breast implants and began acting, like dominos, one after the other, they all got breast implants, too. Suddenly there was this big message going out there that everyone has the same B-cup breasts.
Whenever there's an ideal body type, you exclude everyone else. I had guilt about that because I felt that I definitely started the ball rolling. It might have been someone else, but I took it personally.
How did you deal with that guilt?
I shut off the TV for 20 years. I didn't watched television at all because I realized how I'd been shaped by media. I felt that if really wanted to know who I was and feel good about myself, with the body that I had, I had to turn it off. I ended up marrying a Frenchman and living in France for about six years. On the second or third date with my husband after meeting him -- this was two weeks after I had my breast implants removed -- I took off my shirt and said: 'This is it. Can you deal with this?' I wasn't horribly disfigured, in a way you could hardly tell, but I still had to show him. I said, 'If you don't like it, there's the door.' And he just looked at me and said, 'Fine. I don' t have a problem with this.'
After six years in France we returned to the U.S. and got our kids involved in a Waldorf school. We just got the media out of our house. No fashion magazines. No television. It was basically about avoiding the media culture. Years later, I started looking around again. I turned on the TV and started looking at magazines and I was horrified. Horrified. It was like, oh my God, what happened? It was worse than anything I had ever seen in our era. I'm 53 now, and when I was really looking at everything it was the early nineties. Since then everything has gotten incredibly sexist and objectified, with an increasingly younger audience. Now women over forty -- forget about it if you're an actress. Look at Demi Moore. It's hard to stave off the pressure to inject your face with things or starve yourself thin or do plastic surgery.
It's a personal choice -- people do what they feel they have to do, but it doesn't work. You are what you are. My reaction to all of this was the desire to make a movie. I thought: What a perfect opportunity to talk about this issue. I had studied advertising enough to know that advertising wants people to feel bad about themselves. Unhappy, insecure people are wonderful consumers. If you show perfected retouched images of women, their self-esteem is lowered. If you show them un-retouched images of women, they feel better about themselves. And I thought, well then, let's make a movie with women in their late forties or early fifties, and let's not light away our age.
Why do you think our culture has such a problem with aging?
I think there are a couple of perspectives. From a marketing perspective, one of the most easily manipulated and vulnerable markets is the youth market -- people between the ages of 14 to 25. That's where Hollywood producers focus their interest because that's the age group that doesn't reflect, that doesn't think, that buys impulsively. They look for brand loyalty, so they skew young. All this comes from advertising. By focusing exclusively on a particular age group, you render the other half or the remainder of the demographic invisible. By making the older demographic invisible, you make it valueless.
There's a bias against women, particularly older women. Every time we take a step forward in our cultural power, they (advertisers) make us smaller, thinner, and younger in media. And it's all really run by a handful of older white men.
Did this hit home when you made "Not Dead Yet"?
Yes. I didn't discover any of this until I made the movie and tried to market it. We had such fabulous reactions when people watched it. Women 70 years old would say, 'I've experienced everything in that movie' and 'Wow, you put words to my experience!' Yet why wasn't this movie embraced by more film festivals? Well, because most of the people who run film festivals and select the films are men. Some men really love it. Other men are uncomfortable with it because it's a feminine perspective. It's looking at the world through a feminine lens. It's not saying that men are bad, but it is saying: Why are we taking this?
Women over 50 need to recognize how much they really know and recognize the value in all the care they've given to their families. They also need to recognize that society should be compensating us for the care we give our families. If caregivers were recognized for the true value they offer society, then women would not be 65 percent of our poorest seniors.
We have to change and reclaim our power. I loved reading recently that our Constitution is based on the Iroquois Nation Confederation. Our Founding Fathers saw what a great job the Indians were doing, but they didn't take into our constitution the fact that the grandmothers ran the tribes. Once they had raised their children and were no longer of child-bearing age, the grandmothers were in charge. They chose the chiefs. They decided whether to go to war. They handled the money. If that were the case in the world today, we would have a very different situation.
What's the one thing you know now that you wish you knew growing up?
Self-acceptance and forgiveness.
What's one rule you feel you can break with impunity now that you're over fifty?
Women in particular are raised to be perfectionists and not to make mistakes. At my age, it's okay to be a fool and make mistakes. I don't care if I embarrass myself.
What goals do you still have?
I want to create stories and bring information to people that wakes them up. Time to wake up.
Until WE stop playing this ridiculous game, until WE stop mutilating our bodies, until WE quit whining that we're too ugly to go to the grocery store without makeup, until WE quit filling our lives and closets with crap we don't need --- well, until WE stop the insanity, we deserve every neurosis that we get.
Actresses see their careers slow dramatically after 40, and grind to a halt by 50. Their financial well being depends on 'looking good' - synonymous for looking young in our culture. And when every magazine, album cover, billboard, and now many video images have been retouched to conform to the current distorted concept of beauty, then we are hard pressed to imagine an alternative.
What is shocking is when educated people choose to support programming and products that demean women and perpetuate stereotypes. If WE could come together in support of alternative messages and imagery then WE wouldn't have an excuse. But if we don't see how we are being manipulated and why, then we'll never be able to change.
I applaud your opting out of TV. I've opted out, too, by being the only woman within a ten mile radius who has the audacity to let her hair go gray. By not feeling like I have to paint my face to go to the grocery store. By -- gasp! -- not lying to my overly surgically enhanced and botoxed friends that they look great when, in truth, they look like Stepford wives.
The point I'm trying to make is that we don't -- we can't -- change others. We change the way it is by changing ourselves. By not supporting the insanity with our dollars or our attention. We change the way it is by not making inane jokes about menopause or disparaging remarks about our weight or our necks or our no-longer-perky breasts. We change it by making authenticity the new cool. And when we've changed by not buying the bullshit that we're not okay exactly as we are, by not supporting their industries with our dollars or beliefs, they have no choice but to change.
I hear your little baby is adorable.
Love,
Suehess
I remained celibate for twenty years, believing that I was too fat to love. Until I stumbled into a man who wanted me and loved me exactly as I was. The really sad, sad thing? I just wasn't that fat to start with. It was all in MY head and that sense of feeling unworthy and not good enough broadcast itself loud and clear.
I've found men like us exactly as we are -- fat or thin, made up or clean faced, big breasted or flat chested --- they love us just as we present ourselves to them. It is WE who create the insanity of insecurity over nothing. It is we who incessantly play the "I'll be good enough when ____".
When WE stop the nonsense, it'll end. And men will have nothing to do with it, because they never did in the first place.
As to the no TV/fashion mag thing, if she was trying to prevent daughters from growing up with body issues, she could probably have done it just as well through education-- her educating them, I mean. I grew up without a TV for 14 years, but it was because my father was a writer who felt TV turned your mind into mush: as a result I grew up an avid reader who was much more active than many of my friends.
On the movie she has made, I say bravo, but she is hardly the first to tackle the subject; Debra Winger did so years ago. Lots of women are producers and directors, and yes, of actresses Meryl Streep would be a much better choice of 'example' than Demi Moore.
Because this coincided with the onset of catalog sales by the major department stores, images of models with augmented breasts went to households that might never have purchased a fashion magazine. Before then, lingerie models were naturally endowed and not generally the models you'd see on covers of magazines. But with the advent of implants, pressure was on for girls who weren't endowed to get implants and as a result, the public was inundated with images of bustier women, putting the pressure on them to live up to the standard being set.
In "The Biology of Belief" Dr. Bruce Lipton describes how our subconscious mind processes over 20 million stimuli per second as compared to our conscious mind, which processes only 40. In addition, our brain wave patterns are in the receptive state of delta from birth to age 2, and in theta from 2 to 6. This means that children absorb everything they see without filters. So even though I also educated my daughter when she was old enough to understand what she was watching, I chose to not expose her to it when she was too young to question any of it.
Just thought it was worth clarifying.
Best,
Susan
Yes, children do not question what they see. That is, they are curious and ASK questions, but a lot of what they are exposed to is simply absorbed. Limiting a child's exposure to a lot of media stereotypes is a good thing-- I would not disagree with you there. I'm grateful to my father for helping me to become the great reader that I am, through preventing me from becoming 'hooked' on The Box.
I am not sure that there even ARE 20 million stimuli per second, however-- that is a very large number. I readily admit I have not read Dr. Lipton's book, so perhaps he explains it.
In any case, I did not mean to sound dismissive of your work, and apologize if I did. It is always important to try and dispell some of the conceptions and misconceptions people have about aging and women. I appreciate that you're trying!
Best to you too,
Kate
No you are wrong. Babies, grown and infant find comfort in the large breast. The cushion is a comfort. Little children also like the comfort they get when snuggling up to a heavy set woman.
Betty Boop (big breast, small waist, medium bottom, legs) is for the fantasy. She is exotic. Betty Boop is boarder line minority, with a touch of Marilyn Monroe. Those equal a stereotype for sex.
If you haven't seen Miss Representation, I recommend it as it mentions many statistics regarding the percentage of older women in society as opposed to the percentage we see on the screen (TV).
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Best,
Susan
We could all learn something from her.
Who knows...she doesn't say. But, she does mention Demi and the message isn't clear other than pity even though Demi should be faulted the same as any man who chases young women (it's a reflective lack of maturity or emotional dysfunction).
Culture provides many opportunities...this woman was successful because of her physical appearance and now complains...seems, whiny. Might be more rewarding for her to have taken up a more meaningful cause, because this one seems to signal resentment toward what she lost...you know, the light that burns twice as bright, burns twice as fast.
Well, that is how I see my life. It is difficult in print to get the real feeling of a person's intention as there is no tone of voice, or body language to compliment the words.
Although I am described as an anti-breast implant activist, my real focus in on sharing the information people need to realize who they truly are. Perhaps my website would help clarify my motivation. http://hotflashfilmspdx.com
Just thought it was worth sharing my perspective.
Best,
Susan
I'm just saying....there's always a way without inflicting a wound.
Honestly, I have never understood this. I may be wrong here (and I'm sure many of you will send me an email and tell me so) but does she want the whole world to think like her? Every individual in the world watches TV but she doesn't? And, she wants everyone to think like her....what's that? Unhappy, depressed, withdrawn? Stop the world, she wants to get off.
Lady, someday you'll discover that happiness comes from WITHIN. If you think breast augmentation makes you a phoney, then what about wigs, make-up, jewelry, high heels, nylons, and, and, and............??? Please stop. Don't make the rest of the world like you. One of you is enough.
I chose not to watch TV in order to not be programmed by it. If you watch FOX you end up hating the Democrats, if you watch MSNBC you get a similar feeling for the Republicans. As a result, we waste millions fighting over our differences instead of recognizing what we have in common.
My journey to "find myself" was my attempt at dropping the programming I'd absorbed growing up in the 60's. It was my way of tapping into my real happiness, which comes from being of service to the world around me.
Best,
Susan