Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Justine Bateman.
(Audience applaud)
Justine Bateman. Hi.
(audience continue to applaud)
Oh my God! Hi.
Hi.
I'd love for you to tell us what was the impetus for this?
Apparently 10 years ago, you Googled yourself, Ellipsis,
what happened?
So I was writing my first book,
"Fame: The Hijacking of Reality" and I Googled myself
and the autocomplete was, "Justine Bateman looks old."
Oh.
I was like 41, 42,
and I was like, wait, really?
And I made the mistake...
for reasons that had nothing to do with my face,
I made the mistake of making them right and me wrong.
And it messed with my head
for a longer than I would've thought it could.
But I had to get to the root fears
that was making me bring in that idea
and making it a belief.
And so once I unwound that,
I was like, all right, let me look at
this is I find it psychotic that we're telling women
they have to change their faces,
so, why don't I look at what the root fears are in society?
And that's what I go into in each one of these stories.
This is a universal thing, aging, right?
And I know you have 47 different short stories in the book
and they're all true.
Yeah. I took my feelings
and feelings and experiences on the topic,
and then those of about 25 people I spoke to,
mostly women.
So, I just wanted to highlight
each one of these root reasons
and maybe somebody who's reading it
can go, "hey that rings true for me,
"I think maybe that's my root reason."
And then maybe in exposing that irrational fear
they can get rid of that fear
'cause it's not about this skin, you know,
it's about, I'm afraid I'm never gonna find a mate
or I'm afraid I'm never gonna find a job, like that.
You talk about plastic surgery being a Ponzi scheme,
can you explain that really quickly?
I thought that was so intriguing.
If somebody is afraid that they're not going
to find a mate or have keep a job,
or get that new job or something
and they're assuming it's because of their face,
they may go change their face
and think that takes care of the fear, but it doesn't.
So, the fear it's gonna be this bag
you're gonna continue carrying along with you,
regardless of what you do for your face,
so, in that sense, like you're never gonna win.
Or if you're doing it because of people pleasing reasons,
you wanna make sure that those people
that were criticizing you don't criticize you again,
you'll never win that.
If they wanna criticize you they're gonna find something
every single time.
So, why not just get rid of the fears
and get rid of the people pleasing,
and then you can just have whatever face you want
and live a freer life.
I Haven't been hooked into the idea
that you're also changing yourself
for other results in your life,
or a job or a partner.
Whoa! Justine.
Whoa!
I mean, I've had it too,
I look in the mirror and go like, oh, I'm getting like,
this catches the light now,
and there's not as much fat up here,
you know, what if I did this it would just,
you know and then I have to ask myself
if I eliminate that then therefore what will happen?
Like what will be the outcome?
And then I see like, oh, that I will more easily get funding
for my next film that I direct,
I don't think so (laughs),
I don't think this correlates with people giving me money
to direct a film.
Do you know what I mean?
So, it's that kind of thing.
These are the conversations I gravitate towards
because I want us to have health in all the right places.
Yeah. And I think it starts, don't you think Justine?
With making peace with yourself,
with that fear you talk about internally
before you can address external.
Yeah. And you know, some of the other women
that I really admired when I was little
were the European actresses of the 60s and 70s.
And they had like the bags under the eyes
and the hooded eye, you know. Yeah.
And to me because they were just exuding this confidence,
and I was like, I wanna be able to walk around
with this confidence, you know?
So, it's not about the skin,
to me it's about the confidence.
Yeah.
The day I die I wanna be
the most confident I can humanly be (laughs).
Once again, Yeah-
I want to be you Justine. (Ross laughs)
That's exactly it,
you have just got it so right,
in here, in here, in here,
head to toe, face. Thanks Drew.
"One Square Foot of Skin" is available everywhere now.
Thank you, Justine. (audience applaud)
I love you, I was so happy to see you.
Thank you. Nice to meet you.
(upbeat music)