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"There were no peptide serums," Gwyneth Paltrow said, on Sunday afternoon in the make-up chair. "Back when I first went to the Oscars."

This is true.

There was also no anti-wrinkle injections. No GLP1s. No lunchtime lifts. No lip-flips. No fillers. No-one knew what buccal fat was. Or a fox eye.

There were boob jobs and nose jobs and there were face lifts. Tummy tucks and lipo. And they were all seen as pretty extreme things that really rich people and really vain people did at their own risk. They were mocked, a little, for caring enough to do something so out there.

Things have changed. Obviously.

Watch: The hosts of Mamamia Out Loud discuss Gwyneth Paltrow selling her old clothes. Post continues below.

Now we live in a time of no excuses. You can't blame age for why you look a lil' shabby around the edges, not if your face and body have always been part of your business.

And not if you have the will, the funds and the time.

Gwyneth has all that, of course. And she also has the kind of raw materials, and hardcore commitment to self-optimisation, that really help the whole thing along.

Here's Gwyneth, back at the Oscars, in 1996, in a stunning white dress:

And here she is on Sunday, ready for the Oscars, in a stunning white dress:

She looks absolutely remarkable in both images, 30 years apart. A woman blessed with beauty and privilege, enjoying her life and her body and fashion and the wonders of Brad Pitt and smartphone cameras.

#grateful, indeed.

"If it takes this many people to get me ready," Gwyneth said this week, as she shuffles out the door in her glorious nude-panelled sheath, "I'm f***ed."

Yes, it's harder work getting ready in 2026 than it was in 1996, but not because of age.

In the three decades between these two pictures, Gwyneth Paltrow has become a business person, a founder, a lifestyle entrepreneur.

Along with the anti-wrinkle injections and the diet jabs, we didn't really have celebrity lifestyle entrepreneurs in 1996. 'Actor' was job enough for 90s-era movie stars. Now that's just plain lazy. What's your side hustle? Your production company? Where's your beauty line? Your tequila brand?

Normies have to have more than one job to keep themselves afloat in this whole late-stage capitalism, cost-of-living s***-show, and now so do the Beautiful People, apparently. No excuses not to get richer.

Everything is more work, more hustle, more effort in an attention economy that never sleeps. And that includes beauty. And ageing. And the way you have to show up to do your job (in this case, sell a movie).

When today's 50-somethings were in their 20s, it wasn't cool to look like you'd tried too hard. It wasn't it to look like you'd spent two hours in "glam", never mind that you'd laid down serious coin and significant down-time to renovate yourself.

Behold this candid of Nicole Kidman and Demi More at the Golden Globes in 1997. Yes, they're so young, and yes, they're conventionally gorgeous, but they also look like a fancier version of how 'normal' people look, if they get their make-up done and whack on a frock. They do not look like this photograph was months in the making.

Not so, in 2026.

In many ways, it was a less egalitarian time, beauty-wise. If you were gorgeous, in the way the world understood it, you just were. Kissed by the Gods. It was a matter of dumb luck, dressed up as your own virtuous achievement.

A great hairdresser, a trainer, ridiculous cabbage soup diets and some thick department-store make-up, it could edge us all closer to the agreed ideal of thin and blonde but you couldn't really will yourself beautiful, or work yourself beautiful the way that, say, a Kylie Jenner is widely agreed to have done. You could have a makeover, but you couldn't entirely shape-shift.

And so, if you had asked that 23-year-old Gwyneth what she would have looked like, going to the Oscars at 53, this naked-pants Armani Prive dream is not what she would have imagined.

She would likely have imagined a tasteful white suit, an arm-covering floaty frock, because that's how 50-something icons dressed, in the 1990s.

It's delighting, on many levels, that dressing up over 50 doesn't have translate to "wears a pantsuit", and "covers arms". It used to.

But also, the "no excuses but to be extraordinary" era comes with significant trickle-down nonsense for the rest of us.

The men on MAFS say they want a woman who "takes care of herself". What they mean is that she whittles down from her natural size and "optimises" her facial features in line with fashion trends.

Listen to the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud debriefing the 2026 Oscars. Post continues below.

"Wellness" – Gwyneth's favourite space – happily attaches beauty to a clean, virtuous self-deprivation vibe. The notion that how glowy and clear your face and body appears completely depends on how much discipline you can exercise when confronted with a bowl of pasta.

And then add in the complicated and unrelenting "advancements" in beauty technology, from micro-needling to cheek implants to keyhole facelifts

And yes, being beautiful in 2026 is marketed as an all-inclusive sport, open to all who can afford it. A status symbol, a flex, and absolutely non-negotiable if you want to live and work in the public eye.

Even for those in their (gasp) 50s.

Feature image: Instagram/ @gwynethpaltrow