Collins’s feminine principles

Joan Collins won’t give up being glamorous for anyone, said Fiona Sturges in The Independent on Sunday (U.K.). Playing a big-shouldered megabitch on Dynasty made her the highest-paid woman on American television, but Collins also found herself instantly typecast. She complained to her agent, who offered some advice. “She said, ‘Oh Joanie, just let your hair go gray and get fat and then people will take you seriously.’ Ha! Can you believe it? I told her to f--- off.” Two decades on, Collins—now 80—is as defiantly glamorous as ever. “I think I probably am a feminist,” she says, “at least if it means when a woman is exactly equal to a man except physically. But wanting to cover oneself in jewels or couture or makeup and cherish being a woman, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.” There are limits, however. Collins will never go under the knife, and when she tried Botox she hated the frozen effect. “Never again,” she shudders. She is appalled at the pressure that young women come under to look a certain way. “I understand that young men today don’t expect women to have body hair anywhere. Even”—she points south—“down there. Ridiculous! Young women have been given an expectation of Barbie-doll beauty that doesn’t exist in real life.”

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