Jane Fonda, queen of aerobics, puts on sportswear again and reconciles with her 85 years: "I regret having had a facelift"

"Did you know?

You can be very old at 60 and you can be very young at 85," Jane Fonda, 84, said in an interview on

while promoting the seventh season of the hit comedy

in which she stars .

with actress Lily Tomlin, 82.

It is not usual to see series starring actresses of those ages.

At most, they appear as great secondaries: they are the grandmothers, the eccentric or mystical neighbors or the comic resources at the stroke of bad milk.

As University of Adelaide professor Mandy Treagus pointed out in an article for

: "

is a series for women who are not usually represented on television."

It is so unusual to see these women that

is constantly compared to the only precedent of the style that exists on television:

, a series that ended in 1992 and whose protagonists, it must be said, were not so old They just seemed that way.

In its first season, Rose (Betty White) is 55 years old, Dorothy (Bea Arthur) is 53, Blanche (Rue McClanahan) is only 47 and Sophia played a 79-year-old woman, although actress Estelle Getty was one year old and two months less than Bea Arthur, who played his daughter.

When the

of the hit series

was announced , titled

many pointed out that its protagonists were the same age or even older than the golden girls (Miranda and Charlotte are 54, and Carrie is 55), but, in the year 2021, they did not look it.

More information

Jane Fonda: “I have come to not feel real”

Jane Fonda is 85 years old, but she doesn't look it.

She can perfectly appear 10 or 20 years younger, which allows her to play with an advantage in Hollywood, where many actresses have expressed complaints about the lack of interesting mature characters or the disparate treatment that is given between men and women in the industry.

A study by the University of Southern California published in 2017 reflected how only 8.2% of the recurring characters in the most followed US television fictions are over 60 years old.

As the writer and thinker Susan Sontag warned in 1979, in an article entitled

“as men mature, women age”.

That is perhaps why it is refreshing to discover a repentant Jane Fonda, not because of what she has not lived through or what she has lost, as is often attributed to people of a certain age, but because of what she did with the scalpel: “I did a facelift and stopped because I don't want to look any different.

I am not proud, in fact, of having done it to myself”, she has now confessed in an interview with the American edition of

magazine when questioned about the role that the

series has played in showing an unknown and different face of the third age: a happy face.

“There is no subject that I think we have left out,” commented Marta Kauffman, creator of the series with Howard J. Morris in an interview for

, "We've covered everything from the problem of vaginal dryness to vibrators to how hard it is to get off the toilet at a certain age."

And they have treated all this from humor and not from tragedy.

Jane Fonda (far left) in an open class at her Beverly Hills gym in September 1979. Ron Galella (Getty)

“I want young people to stop being afraid of getting old”, explained Fonda in

, “what matters is not age, it is not that chronological number, what matters is your health”.

With the series, the actress would like to show a world of possibilities: “Help people realize that just because you are a certain age does not mean you have to give up life, give up having fun, give up having boyfriends or girlfriends. , to make new friends, or whatever you want to do.

It is still in the realm of life possibilities for you.”

Jane Fonda with the acclaimed choreographer JaQuel Knight, also the image of the campaign, and responsible for some of Beyoncé's choreographies such as 'Single Ladies' or 'Formation'. Courtesy of H&M

Of course, for Jane Fonda, exercise will always be present as a form of personal care, both physical and mental.

The queen of aerobics in the eighties has not stopped being the girl in tights and heaters, only she has renewed her wardrobe a bit.

She walks a lot and plays sports, she doesn't stand still, and the benefits on her body are noticeable with the naked eye.

Proof of this is that it has been chosen as the image of the Swedish brand H&M in its new H&M Move campaign, a new line whose mission is, precisely, to democratize sportswear and encourage everyone to move as they wish.

That is why they have put Jane Fonda in front, the woman who managed to show that anyone could get in shape, even if it was from the living room of her house,

dressed as they please and without having to endure scrutiny around their bodies or uncomfortable looks: “I have spent much of my life making people move and I was naturally drawn to H&M Move's mission of encouraging everyone to move. world do it.

I also really liked his philosophy of

[clothes to move] on

[sports clothing].

For me, it's not about types of sport or being the most athletic, it's about giving your body the kind of movement it needs to stay healthy and so you can take care of yourself." her new role as ambassador.

Jane Fonda was always into the movement, perhaps that is why it has been so difficult to pigeonhole her: at the time she won her first (1971) and second (1978) Oscars, she was already a tireless civil rights activist and showed a deep opposition to the Vietnam War that led to her being arrested and blacklisted in Hollywood.

She got back on her feet after a broken ankle and gave up ballet for

, opening her first gym in Beverly Hills in 1976. At first, she taught a few classes herself to raise funds to support solar energy and environmental stewardship.

In 1981 her methods were so famous that she published a book on fitness,

which spent two years on the best-seller list according to

Then came the videos, the heaters and his role as aerobics guru.

To this day, she remains unclassifiable: from being arrested every Friday in Washington for demonstrating against climate change to starring in a series that breaks taboos.

It was a matter of time before she invited us back to sweat.

We miss, yes, the mythical heaters.