I interviewed a rising star – why did she refuse to tell me her age?

Victoria Beckham has slammed Chris Evans for forcing her to weigh herself live on TV in 1999, after giving birth to Brooklyn. “Can you imagine doing that nowadays?” she told Vogue Australia.

It’s shocking. It happened on Evans’s Channel 4 show TFI Friday, when Beckham was still a Spice Girl. In the clip, Evans says “Is your weight back to normal?” – before asking her to step onto some scales to check. “Eight stone’s not bad at all, is it?” he says jovially.

Beckham also talks about the media obsession with her body in the forthcoming interview: “I’ve had ‘Porky Posh’, I’ve had ‘Skeletal Posh’. After I had Brooklyn, there was a picture pointing to every single part of my body where I had to focus on losing the weight from.”

It made me think. We would never dream of mentioning a person’s weight in a profile interview on the culture desk – or talk about it unless they brought it up. But the media do routinely report a subject’s age. “The 41-year-old, Oscar-nominated actor…”

Is it always necessary we mention a woman’s age? Does it make them feel judged unless they are under 30? And how do we describe female subjects when they are older?

We tend to describe what our subjects are wearing and how they look. It might be a snappy sentence, but it’s generally in there. Men’s faces are craggy, which is still attractive – but a woman’s? Are they world-weary? Wise looking? Looking suspiciously young for their 70-plus age?

I might write that a man’s hair is grey – but would I bother to say that about a woman? Probably not. It’s not so sexy. I prefer focusing on a person’s body language, mannerisms, essence – even their laugh.

Sexism, ageism and gender inequality are still rife in the entertainment world. I interviewed one up-and-coming TV actor last year in her thirties who refused to tell me her exact age as she told me it impacts her casting opportunities.

Now, with Botox, fillers and nip and tucks, even face lifts – think of Madonna now aged 63 – true age isn’t reflective of how people look anyway. It’s important to get across your subject vividly, but while the media is still so obsessed with a women’s age, weight and looks – maybe it’s time to lose those details.

Yours,

Charlotte Cripps

Culture writer