Sinéad O’Connor died this week. I’ve listened to “Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” my favorite song of hers, at least a half-dozen times since then. But I’ve also revisited “Nothing Compares 2 U” a couple of times — not the original, but her 2019 performance:
This is O’Connor in full middle age, and not hiding it. Her voice has lost some of its ethereality — she can’t hit all the high notes she once did. Instead we get something that, in the low notes, is more earthy, more Irish even. The young Sinéad sang this song as a young woman lamenting a breakup. This Sinéad has seen some shit. And yet there’s also still room for a small bit of joy here: As the performance comes to an end, her eyes pop open and she looks directly into the camera — giving a winsome small and a small, shy wave.
Also: She’s performing in a hijab and, apparently, without much in the way of makeup.
We didn’t always talk about her music, or her political stances. We focused — so much — on her looks. She was astonishingly pretty as a young woman, and she hated that focus, the way record execs wanted to use her beauty to sell her. That’s why she shaved her head, we’ve been told, but that only made us talk about what she looked like even more. It was impossible for her to escape the trap, at least completely.
She converted to Islam late in life. (She went by the name Shuhada' Sadaqat, though that’s not how most fans have remembered her.) That explains the hijab — but I’ve wondered if her embrace of the head covering wasn’t also born of the same impulse that caused her to shave her head as a young woman, another way to deflect all the eyes focused on how she looked, on her appearance.
And this was one more thing that was remarkable about her:
Sinéad O’Connor aged like a normal human woman. She’s a fifty-something woman in the clip above, and she looks it.
We’re not used to that in popular culture. Young women1 are often tossed aside as they get older, or if they survive it’s usually with the help of an army of trainers and Botox and plastic surgeons. If they don’t look at 43 like they looked at 23, or if they gain a little weight, we hate them for it. And if the plastic surgery goes a little wrong, we hate them for that, too. It’s impossible.
But people age. We get saggier, fuller. Men and women.
That’s what O’Connor did. While 90 percent of the photos shared in recent days depict her as the young woman we remember, the young woman we wanted her to remain forever, she didn’t play that game. She aged, naturally. Her body became a little stouter, her face a little rounder, her cheekbones a bit less prominent.
Honestly, I think it gave people who hated her one more reason to hate her.
This shouldn’t be extraordinary. This shouldn’t even be the stuff of comment, really — and I’m aware that by even pointing out this whole process, by focusing so much on her looks even as the evidence was that she didn’t want it to be about her looks, I’m also participating in. Damn it.
But if we’re remembering O’Connor as a rebel — against the music industry, against the patriarchy, against her Catholic upbringing and all the church’s scandals — then this one act also deserves to be noted. She embraced the ordinary process of aging, or at least didn’t fight mightily to turn back the tides. And that, like much she did, was extraordinary.
Men are also encouraged to remain youthful looking, but let’s face it: The pressures aren’t nearly as extreme. George Clooney walks around with a grey beard and everybody still thinks he’s sexy.
Threw a shout-out on this week's newsletter - and loved finding out that 'Last Day' is our mutual favorite Sinead song. https://theessentials.substack.com/p/for-us-leaders-age-isnt-an-issue?utm_source=activity_item