We reside in a society obsessive about youth, petrified of demise and allergic to wrinkles.

However actress Mimi Rogers, who’s 67, is having none of it.

“That is me, that is my face,” Rogers says, “and I’m not going to point out up with fish lips.”

Rogers has a long-running tv function during which she performs Honey Chandler, a high-powered and fearless lawyer who’s, in additional methods than one, comfy in her personal pores and skin. I’d by no means met Rogers, however I’ve seen her work in “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy,” that are primarily based on the work of crime fiction author Michael Connelly. It’s refreshing to see a big-name Hollywood actor age naturally and gracefully moderately than grotesquely.

Rogers emailed me just lately to rage towards the fuel firm after I’d written a couple of 102-year-old World Conflict II veteran’s $526 invoice, and I requested if I may discuss to her about taking part in Honey Chandler. Rogers first wished to make her closing argument, as Chandler may, towards what she known as the manipulation of vitality markets and the value gouging of utility prospects.

Then she was glad to talk her thoughts — on the cellphone after which over lunch — about ageism, longstanding societal pressures on ladies to look younger, the double customary for males, and “the cosmetic surgery nightmares we see throughout us.”

“Supposedly, we’re in an age during which ladies are extra equal and have extra energy and respect than at another time,” Rogers mentioned. “And but we nonetheless have these weird pressures and expectations about wanting youthful. It’s nonetheless a horrible societal bias.”

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That bias and outright discrimination on the idea of race, gender and age have lengthy histories in Hollywood and broader tradition. For the time being, Rogers mentioned, older writers are frozen out of the sport.

“Mimi is true,” mentioned Catherine Clinch, who chairs the profession longevity committee of the Writers Guild of America West. “It’s a lot more durable for writers than anybody else relating to age discrimination as a result of older actors get to reinvent themselves. There’s at all times somebody older in a script, however that script is never written by somebody who’s older.”

Rogers mentioned she feels lucky to have been in a position to persistently discover work as she has aged, and he or she revels in her present function on “Bosch: Legacy.” Honey Chandler just isn’t outlined by romantic or familial pursuits — she’s a full-on, clever and proficient lawyer who performs her age whereas combating for her shoppers and her causes.

In some ways, Rogers mentioned, this can be a good time for older actors as a result of streaming of high-quality reveals has opened some doorways. However biases and double requirements are nonetheless firmly in place.

“It goes again to when Cary Grant was cavorting with 22-year-olds” on display, Rogers mentioned. “I believe it’s higher in Europe, however loads of ladies speak about this concept that previous a sure age, you develop into invisible. It’s like your sexual foreign money is gone, and that foreign money goes away way more quickly for ladies.”

We’re at one thing of a “turnstile second,” says College of Michigan cultural critic Susan J. Douglas, writer of “The place the Women Are: Rising Up Feminine With the Mass Media.” Stereotypes about feminine ageing persist, she mentioned, however there’s been a pushback and “a visibility revolt” during which actresses, together with Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, “are nonetheless opening motion pictures and TV reveals,” and political figures, together with Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, are “staking a declare to be seen in public life.”

“Mimi’s place is so essential to the remainder of us, as a result of superstar tradition usually units the usual for on a regular basis ladies — the requirements of slimness and sweetness and looking out younger,” Douglas mentioned.

Many ladies, Douglas continued, face a “punishing” dilemma — particularly these in leisure and public life. Wrinkles can threaten their livelihood, however “in case you go beneath the knife and don’t appear to be your self, you’re attacked for being narcissistic or wanting to carry on to the previous. So it’s actually onerous to win.”

After which there’s the multibillion-dollar “anti-aging industrial complicated,” as Douglas calls it, diligently grooming the subsequent cult of warriors within the battle towards the inevitable.

“It’s spas, anti-aging lotions, beauty procedures, gyms, all of that, and it’s actually fairly a superb marketing campaign,” mentioned Douglas. “They’re now advertising and marketing Botox to individuals of their 20s, and in case you get individuals to be phobic about ageing after they’re younger, you’ve gotten an ever-replenishing market to your merchandise.”

Rogers says she doesn’t wish to decide particular person ladies — or males — for his or her makes an attempt to look their greatest, and he or she’s not out to sentence all method of beauty surgical procedure. She mentioned that she’s not making an attempt to be “holier than thou” and acknowledges that she has experimented with minor therapy.

“I’ve tried very tiny quantities of Botox a few occasions, and I believe it’s essential to place that on the market,” Rogers mentioned.

Facelifts, tucks and different procedures aren’t for her, Rogers mentioned, however her proper eye tends to droop a bit, and he or she wished to see whether or not she may right that with out altering her look. Earlier than the therapy, she emphasised, “I don’t need you to attempt to do away with wrinkles. I’m at an age the place my face ought to have wrinkles and it could look bizarre if it didn’t.”

She mentioned she was supplied just a little further Botox to care for frown traces.

“I mentioned completely not. I need to have the ability to frown. And after I smile, I do need there to be wrinkles,” she mentioned.

“My situation is the compulsive and considerably irrational pursuit of youth,” she mentioned. “If I have a look at you and my first thought is, Oh, my God, what have you ever performed, or gee, your mouth appears bizarre, otherwise you don’t appear to be your self, or your brow gained’t transfer, to me that’s a fail.”

As but, there’s no anti-aging technique, therapy or product that may cease or flip again the clock. And shopping for into the parable “reinforces the concept ageing … is unhealthy, that outdated is ugly, and that evolution over a lifetime is proof of failure,” Dr. Louise Aronson wrote in her e book “Elderhood: Redefining Growing old, Remodeling Drugs, Reimagining Life.”

Aronson describes a scene at her fitness center, the place she realized that one other girl’s youthful look was manufactured.

“I noticed the place her pores and skin had been pulled and tucked and the way it fought with itself,” wrote Aronson. “All of the sudden she didn’t look so fairly. She appeared like a model in a horror movie. In some unspecified time in the future, whenever you take one factor and attempt to make it one other, you run the danger of the grotesque. Most likely they didn’t inform her about this threat; perhaps she didn’t care. Nearly everybody values the current greater than the long run.”

With just a few extra good function fashions, is it potential that we will all consider ageing for what it’s — pure, unavoidable and even dignified?

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