Who You Were, Who You Are Now, Happy? – FEMCOMPETITOR MAGAZINE

March 16, 2023,

It doesn’t just happen to movie stars.

We all have a heyday.

Is it right now?

Is it coming? Hard to say.

Or, sadly, is it in the past. Deep in the past.

Well, the answer to that often depends upon your age.

If you are young, your heyday should be now or hopefully in the near future.

Too often, extremely good looking young people’s best days were in high school.

The cheerleader in a small town who now waits tables or works as a secretary in an insurance office.

The high school football star who is now a long haul trucker or works in a meat packing plant.

We have many in our circle who would say their best days are behind them.

Let’s face it. There is nothing like being young.

At that age, there is a sort of perfect storm where things come together and part of the reason for that is because you are never going to be as good looking or healthy as you are when you are very young.

One of our associates noted, when he was young and had just graduated from college that, in his wide business and social circle, he was often invited to dinner to the homes of beautiful single young women and their families because he appeared to be a good catch for a husband.

Years later, after a failed marriage, he gets virtually no dinner invitations now.

Part of the challenge of your best days is that they are hard to sustain.

Actors and celebrities find this out the hard way constantly. So many celebs who were riding high made one big mistake, either picking a bad role, got in trouble with the law or suffered through massive legal battles and failed marriages.

Once they hit rock bottom, it is as though the floor was mopped daily with super glue.

For us everyday people, how do you come to terms with a fading life?

Your once close friends have married off or moved away. Important loved ones have passed. You are divorced or separated.

We have seen some deal with this emotional distress by engaging in extreme behaviors. Excessive sexual escapades is often the pathway of the disillusioned. They temporarily enjoy the behavior but eventually find it meaningless and empty.

Even if you are fortunate enough to have a lasting marriage, after your thriving career is over, what do you do then?

Go fishing?

Play tennis with a lot of pot belly hackers?

Watch a lot of TV and gain a pot belly yourself?

Travel the world, which, health wise, is not the same as when you were young?

Is it inevitable that our brightest days will fade? Except for rare occurrences, we seem to think so.

The question becomes, if that is the case, how do we deal with that?

Let’s turn to film, not for solutions, but comparisons.

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 American psychological horror thriller film directed and produced by Robert Aldrich, from a screenplay by Lukas Heller, based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell.

The film stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and features the major film debut of Victor Buono.

It follows an aging former child star tormenting her paraplegic sister, a former movie star, in an old Hollywood mansion.

Here is the storyline.

In 1917, “Baby Jane” Hudson is a spoiled and capricious child actress who performs in vaudeville theatres across the country with her father, who acts as her manager and accompanies her on stage on the piano.

Her success is such that a line of porcelain dolls is made in her image.

Meanwhile, her shy older sister Blanche lives in her shadow and is treated with contempt by the haughty Jane. As the sisters pass adolescence, their situations undergo a reversal; Jane’s style of performing falls out of fashion, and her career declines as she descends into alcoholism, while Blanche becomes an acclaimed Hollywood actress.

Mindful of a promise made to their mother, Blanche attempts to maintain a semblance of a career for Jane, going as far as to prevail on producers to guarantee acting roles for her. One evening in 1935, Blanche’s career is cut short when she is paralyzed from the waist down in a mysterious car accident that is unofficially blamed on Jane, who is found three days later in a drunken stupor.

This film is an absolute classic.

If there ever is a depiction of two sisters, who were once famous, but their stars faded, it is here.

Both at one time were on top of the world only to have tragedy strike or fade away.

It is how they faded away that was so disturbing.

We saw this happen to the character Blanche in the masterpiece A Street Car Named Desire.

Here is how the team at Just Great DataBase (jgdb.com) summarizes her situation, “Blanche Dubois is the main character of the story “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stella’s older sister, a noblewoman from the old, young, but impoverished family of DuBois. She is refined, intelligent, beautiful, but weak woman. She is about 27 years old, she is attractive enough, but all the time she tries to stay in the shade avoids direct exposure to light.

Endless disappointments led her to alcoholism and frivolous sexual behavior. In this way, in the desire to start a new life, the main character finds herself in the house of her sister and her husband, with whom from the very beginning she has a conflict.”

What a conflict indeed. What in part caused her decline?

Her husband committed suicide. Women did not have many career options in those days so their lifestyle was based upon their husband’s career, ability to make money and stature. By her standards, her looks were fading.

We talked about when people experience severe failure, especially the loss of their marriage, they engage in sexual promiscuity. In her case, she did that with a teen and the fall from grace slid into alcoholism.

In researching this, there are many films that speak to this well.

With celebrities, their fall is public.

Most of ours is private.

Mercifully.

Is it inevitable that our best days, for most of us, are when we are young?

We hope not.

Our experience has taught us, to combat that, you have to stay relevant in the present.

Mentally.

Financially.

Physically. Get to the gym often.

Most important, passionately.

Find a cause that positively affects others. Expand your circle of influence.