Author(s): Justine Bateman

Sociology

Writer/director/producer Justine Bateman examines the aggressive ways that society reacts to the aging of women's faces.

Justine Bateman extends her creative talents to include fiction in this collection of vignettes that focus on how we've learned to react to women's faces as they age. Based on Bateman's own real-life interviews, the stories dig deep to uncover why we're uncomfortable with faces of a certain age, and argue that confidence--and not cosmetic procedures--are the answer to the problem.
--Town & Country, one of the Best Books of Spring 2021

In Fame, Bateman deconstructed the flimsy edifice of celebrity. In this equally fiery and potent follow-up, she does the same for our notions of what constitutes a beautiful face...Combining the author's intensely personal stories with relevant examples from the culture at large, the book is heartbreaking and hopeful, infuriating and triumphant.
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

Both protest and paean, Bateman's chronicle advocates for a power shift away from buying into the incessant selling of cosmetic perfection and toward the recognition that a woman's unaltered face is a record of earned intelligence, wisdom, and confidence. Bateman issues a call to invert the age-old paradigm, stop stoking shame about signs of growing older, and name the ultimate accessory that is powerfully individual to each woman, an aging face that has faced life.
--Booklist

I can't think of anyone better than Justine Bateman to start the conversation about how we've devolved into a society that doesn't allow women to age. Brave, brilliant, and unflinchingly honest, Justine is that writer you trust because she goes after every subject with a warrior's focus, and throws herself to the lions while she's at it. It doesn't hurt that she's a gorgeous woman who hasn't tried to erase an ounce of history from her face. I love the way she thinks, and am amazed at the many sublayers she manages to excavate while everyone else is scratching the surface.
--Mary-Louise Parker

These honest, no-flinch stories about womanhood, beauty, and meaning will make you mad, break your heart, will have you longing for a better world, have you rooting for her, yourself, for all women. And you will stand up and cheer when Bateman slides into home plate with an ending of grace and revelation. Riveting read Profound glimpses into the soul of our society.
--Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8

Face is a book of fictional vignettes that examines the fear and vestigial evolutionary habits that have caused women and men to cultivate the imagined reality that older women's faces are unattractive, undesirable, and something to be fixed.

Based on older face experiences of the author, Justine Bateman, and those of dozens of women and men she interviewed, the book presents the reader with the many root causes for society's often negative attitudes toward women's older faces. In doing so, Bateman rejects those ingrained assumptions about the necessity of fixing older women's faces, suggesting that we move on from judging someone's worth based on the condition of her face.

With impassioned prose and a laser-sharp eye, Bateman argues that a woman's confidence should grow as she ages, not be destroyed by society's misled attitude about that one square foot of skin.