Justine Bateman is opening up about why she is embracing aging and avoiding using Botox, fillers or other types of injections.
The 57-year-old filmmaker was featured in a “60 Minutes Australia” episode about women over 50 who are welcoming growing older.
During the sit-down with journalist Amelia Adams, shared on March 19, Bateman was asked if she has ever considered turning to cosmetic procedures to slow down aging.
Bateman, who played Mallory Keaton on the ‘80s sitcom “Family Ties,” acknowledged that it is tempting to look in the mirror and imagine getting a facelift or another operation that would remove wrinkles and extra skin.
“Sure, you can do all of that,” Bateman said, before stretching her face to show how different she would look. “And then I feel like I would erase not only all my authority that I have now, but also I like feeling that I am a different person now than I was when I was 20.”
She added, “I like looking in the mirror and seeing that evidence.”
Although Bateman and other stars like supermodel Paulina Porizkova, who was also featured in the “60 Minutes Australia” episode, are embracing the changes to their faces, plastic surgery continues to be popular. Buccal fat removal is one of the latest trends that has been widely discussed on social media.
When asked about her reaction to young women choosing to undergo cosmetic procedures to delay signs of aging, Bateman replied, “I feel sad for them.”
“I feel sad that they’re not just enjoying life,” the director continued, “I feel sad that they are distracted from the things that they’re meant to do in life with this consuming idea that they’ve got to fix their face before anything else can happen.”
Bateman chooses to not stress about the value society has placed on aging.
She explained, “When you say, ‘Is there beauty in aging?’ aren’t you really saying, ‘Do you think it’s possible for other people to find aging beautiful?’ And like, I just don’t give a s—.”
Before the interview concluded, she said, “I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it and so that’s basically the end of the road.”
Bateman has previously spoken about the dangers of fearing aging. The best-selling author penned a book in 2018 called “Fame: The Hijacking of Reality” about celebrity culture and the pressure of being in the public eye.
In 2021, she followed her debut with a creative nonfiction book called “Face: One Square Foot of Skin,” where she combined interviews and her personal experiences with aging to write about society’s fascination with how women’s faces change.
The Emmy nominee stopped by TODAY with Hoda and Jenna in 2021 to discuss the topics in her novels.
She said “Face” explored “the reasons why we’ve taken this idea that our faces need to be fixed and made it a belief.”
Bateman called the belief an “irrational fear” and a “psychotic idea” that burdens people.
The actor recalled Googling her name when she was just 41 years old and seeing comments about her looking old.
“They can read about it in more detail in that book, ‘Fame,’ but it took me down a rabbit hole. I made the people that are criticizing my face right and me wrong. And it affected me so much more deeply than I thought it would and for so much longer than I thought it would. But once I unwound that by getting to whatever my irrational root fear was that pulled in that idea and made it real for me, I wanted to do that for society as a whole,” she told Hoda Kotb at the time.
She also had a message for anyone who looks in the mirror and analyzes their imperfections.
“Nothing about your face needs to be fixed,” she said. “You are more than this one-square-foot of skin.”
Correction — March 2023, 8:23 PM: The headline on this story has been updated to reflect that Justine Bateman is 57.