The XX Factor: What women really think.

Pretty (Old) Woman

Yuck. Like Dahlia, I hate the way this Newsweek article on Julia Roberts perpetuates sexist assumptions—41-year-old women are "ancient"! Time off to raise children = career suicide!—while batting its eyelashes innocently. The author is effectively saying, gee, what a shame that people might think Roberts was a washed-up old hag ... just because I'm publishing a Newsweek article to that effect! Dahlia points to a few actors exactly Roberts' age, all of whose careers are currently at their white-hot peak: Jamie Foxx, Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman. And what about Clive "Methuselah" Owen, who's cast opposite Roberts in next week's Duplicity? He's 47, poor thing, just like our enfeebled, half-senile new president.

There are other, non-gender-related things that bug me about this article—for example, calling Roberts' massive, toothy grin a "Mona Lisa smile" seems simply off. Isn't the whole point of a Mona Lisa smile that it's the subtlest of expressions, almost not a smile at all? Then there's the fact that the author resignedly eulogizes Roberts' career without having yet seen her new movie. Duplicity, a corporate-spy thriller that's the second film from exciting new director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) stands an excellent chance of being both a critical and box-office success, and even if it's not, both Roberts and Owen have survived other flops. Before we declare Julia Roberts' "comeback" a failure, can we let her actually come back?