When I was 17, Diane Lane, who is two years younger than me, was named one of the most beautiful women in the world. And beautiful she was, but I wasn't unaware of the impact that might have on the other seventeen-year-old girls I knew who suddenly might find themselves in a competition they never asked to be in. I wondered what being one of the most beautiful women in the world might do to a fifteen-year-old Lane.
Brooke Shields, who was the same age as Lane, had been living with the same sort of imposed title since she was thirteen. It's only been in the last few years since Shields felt like she could understand what happened to her enough to talk about it.
It's not that the world doesn't objectify boys; I mean, at eighteen, they pit us against each other with the tools to blow the limbs off boys the same age living in other countries--sometimes face-to-face and sometimes by remote control.
It's different with girls, though—or at least we pretend it is. We profess to try to respect their childhood, but then we push them into beauty contests and modeling contracts before they can even drive.
Even though she now plays Superman's mom and decaying socialites, Diane Lane is still one of the most beautiful women in the world. At fifteen, I worried what that title might do to her head. Now that she's almost sixty, she wears it less like a crown and more like a medal.
