Jamie Lee Curtis is today’s Awesome Woman. Why Curtis? I mean, she’s a flippin’ movie star. But here’s why she’s up here: with famous parents (Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh) and a famous husband (Christopher Guest) and a seemingly easily won career in as an actress and children’s book writer, she could have been good little Hollywood royalty and just played it safe. Instead she did something that by celebrity standards was pretty fucking brave--she posed for a national magazine without airbrushing, flattering lighting or make-up, and in her underwear. And not cute underwear--functional regular old underwear. Said Curtis in
More magazine in 2002:
There’s a reality to the way I look without my clothes on. I don’t have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I’ve got back fat. People assume that I’m walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It’s insidious—Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don’t want the unsuspecting forty-year-old women of the world to think that I’ve got it going on. It’s such a fraud. And I’m the one perpetuating it.
At 52, Curtis is feeling free. She’s let herself go gray and is doing Activia commericials. (Well, maybe the Activia commercials are a bit too feelin’ free, but I’ll cut her a little slack.) Curtis, a recovering alcoholic and painkiller addict is now living a clean life on her own terms, and challenging accepted “rules” on feminine beauty. And today, that’s good enough for me.
