Gwyneth Paltrow is 46 years old. Though I hate to give her credit for it, I halfway respect the way she’s owned her real age and the sometimes messy ageing process. I mean, she’s not really talking about down-and-dirty sh-t with ageing – which is fine, women aren’t required to do that – but she talks about ageing with a lot of positivity. She backs it up by not looking like a Real Housewife with a frozen AF face too, which I appreciate. I feel certain that Gwyneth has had little tweaks here and there, but she keeps her face and body mostly natural and I like seeing that. Anyway, as part of Goop’s The Beauty Closet podcast, Gwyneth spoke about what it’s like to be one of those women held up as “f–kable and beautiful” in her 20s, only to see that go away as she got older:

Gwyneth Paltrow has given a frank appraisal of the ageing process. Speaking on her Goop The Beauty Closet podcast on Wednesday, the actress confessed she felt typecast in her younger years, leading to feelings of losing her identity because she was no longer considered ‘f**kable and beautiful’ as time went on.

The 46-year-old Oscar-winner said: ‘I’ve been considered, not by everyone… It’s a weird thing to be, I don’t mean in a pejorative way objectified, but sort of cast as something and put in a box….And then I think when you come to age, if you have this broad identity as that, like, what does it mean? To get wrinkles and, like, get closer to menopause, and all these things…what happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not f–kable and beautiful?”

Gwyneth went on to say that she believes that internal beauty begins to shine more as the years go on.

“Luckily, what’s happening at the same time in parallel … is you just start to like yourself,” Gwyneth added. “I think you get to a point where it’s almost like your sort of pulchritude is waning in a way and your inner beauty is, like, really coming out, and so it’s this funny shift that’s happening.”

Several years ago, I covered a Kristin Scott Thomas interview where she talked about what getting older meant to her in her daily life, and how she “feels invisible” at work and in life, and she said, “When you’re walking down the street, you get bumped into, people slam doors in your face – they just don’t notice you. Somehow, you just vanish. It’s a cliché, but men grow in gravitas as they get older, while women just disappear.” I always think about that, and how for beautiful women like KST or Gwyneth Paltrow – women who are always praised for their beauty, and put on “most beautiful” lists, etc – they all really have a moment where they’re no longer the hot young thing in town. I wonder if an ageing beautiful woman’s “invisible” is a normal woman’s daily life though? But Gwyneth’s question remains: “what happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not f–kable and beautiful?” Hopefully you have some personality and talent and drive and ambition to, you know, keep on existing in the world.